Acquisition

Hitting a Home Run; Baseball and the Acquisition Process

From The Acquisition Corner An interesting post by Bill Gormley of Washington Management Group described parallels on two of my passions, baseball and improving the acquisition process. It is an interesting read and a fun way of discussing what can be a somewhat difficult process and subject. Some specifics points he makes and my take:Read… Read more »

Buy America? Bye, American Jobs

Here’s the ultimate irony, one with dramatic consequences to US families: a federal policy to stimulate our flagging economy that actually puts more of our jobs at risk. “Buy American” provisions found within this year’s $788 billion stimulus spending package expose US workers in several manufacturing sectors to job loss. It’s that the stipulations ofRead… Read more »

GSA Billing

So which is better, Centralized or Direct Bills when using GSA contracts? I get the impression that most agencies do NOT examine their GSA monthly invoices closely anyway so… Is it better to simply let GSA pay vendors the way it’s done with Centralized billing or should the vendor send bills directly to the customerRead… Read more »

When the Lack of Oversight on Government Contracts Has Dire Consequences

From The Acquisition Corner One of the most blatant examples of contractors running amok with little to no oversight has come to light recently as a result of an investigation and subsequent report by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). This report was created based on information from current and former employees of ArmorGroup NorthRead… Read more »

The Role of Performance Indicators During Fiscal Stress

By: Anthony Rainey Anthony Rainey is treasurer and CFO of Hyattsville, MD. In 1975 Peter Drucker (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices) identified five prioritization and performance approaches of successful organizations: They clearly define the nature and scope of their function, mission and activities. They set clear objectives. They set priorities, concentrate on the objectives andRead… Read more »

Project of the Week – Better Buy Project

GovLoop’s Acquisition2.0 group is an amazing group of over 300 people from government and industry who share a passion for making the government buying process more efficient, transparent and collaborative. The group shares ideas on everything from career advice to detailed FAR cases to improving the entire acquisition process. Out of this group came anRead… Read more »

Lessons from the great 2009 Birmingham City Council website disaster

The night before last – and in the night – Birmingham City Council without much fanfare switched over to its rejigged website. Within moments the twittersphere was alight. It was crashing, it had obvious faults and it looked terrible. Over the next 36 hours reviewer after reviewer found fault after fault. This would not beRead… Read more »

Do You Manage Multilingual Websites?

Join Lee Vann for Web Managers University’s Best Practices of Multilingual Websites: http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/wmu/fall2009/bestpracticesofmultilingualwebsites.shtml Do you need to build a multilingual online presence and don’t know where to start? This webinar will provide strategies for building a business case for multilingual websites and for effectively building, maintaining and marketing foreign language sites. Using the exploding U.S.Read… Read more »

Action Needed Now on Acquisition Workforce Reforms

From the Acquisition Corner A recent piece in FCW from Dee Lee, now executive vice president of federal affairs and operations at the Professional Services Council (PSC), highlights the need to temper acquisition workforce analysis with action. Her piece is a follow up to her Aug. 5 testimony before Congress to discuss the multi-sector acquisitionRead… Read more »

Federal IT Dashboard: Putting the “R” in ROI

Kudos to OMB and Federal agencies for completing the ratings of 100% of their major IT investments, which by the way was no small undertaking . So we now have a complete and well presented view via the Federal IT Dashboard (http://it.usaspending.gov/) of how well our “major” Federal IT investments are adhering to cost, scheduleRead… Read more »