Acquisition

Daily Dose: Finding the FBI a New Home

The Washington Post reports that the J. Edgar Hoover building is in need of repair. Since 9/11, the FBI has grown considerably, and has outgrown the current facilities. The Post reported that prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the FBI had 9,700 headquarter staffers working at seven locations, today the FBI has about 17,300 employeesRead… Read more »

The Three Hats of Mission-Support Leaders

How do you assess the effectiveness and impact of mission support functions — human resources, acquisitions, finance, technology, etc. — on an agency’s mission? That was the question posed to a roundtable of experts at the National Academy of Public Administration yesterday. And the question was raised none too soon – President Obama that morningRead… Read more »

Thursday’s political law links

LOBBYISTS ON TWITTER. Sunlight’s watching. “The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation is today launching a tool designed to track the personal Twitter activity — be it musings about the Kardashians or latest meeting with a congressmen — of Washington’s influence class.” KAISER LOAN TALK. Politico. “Advisers to Obama fundraiser George Kaiser discussed Solyndra and other government contractsRead… Read more »

Using Sources Sought As A Marketing Tool

The government has many ways to perform market research, as described in FAR Part 10. One way is to issue a sources sought. Issuing a notice saves the government valuable time of reviewing sources to fulfill a requirement, it also ensures: Access to the market’s capability Determine acquisition strategy Assist with small business goal attainmentRead… Read more »

LA-RICS RFP #2 – $600 million up for grabs … again!

Deltek Sr. Analyst Jeff Webster reports. On November 9, Los Angeles County, Calif. released the much-anticipated LA-RICS request for proposals (RFP) number two. This RFP is a rebid of the original RFP, which was released in April 2010 and canceled in July 2011 due to a breach in procurement rules. Since then, the LA-RICS JointRead… Read more »

‘Rock Your Tech Report’ Aims to Give Contracting Officers a Leg to Stand on

Here’s an all-too-common occurrence: The government issues a Request for Proposals (RFP); companies respond with their proposals; the contracting officer (CO) requests a technical analysis of the proposals to help guide the decision… and the technical report that comes back, in plain terms, stinks. Sterling Whitehead, a contracting enthusiast who writes his contracting blog AllRead… Read more »

Rock Your Tech Report Launches

When contracting officers get a new proposal, they often ask engineers to write a technical analysis. This tells the contracting officer if the proposal is technically solid. Unfortunately, many engineers aren’t trained to do this. Rock Your Tech Report aims to help fix this by giving engineers a cheat sheet of sorts with tips, bestRead… Read more »

Daily Dose: Federal Buildings May Become Smoke-Free Facilities

This past Friday, Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would ban smoking within 25 feet of all federal buildings across the country. Efforts to push for smoke-free buildings began in 1997, and continued making incremental progress throughout the Clinton and Bush administrations. “Exposure to secondhand smoke is a serious health issue that drivesRead… Read more »