It is an old story, but new versions keep happening. A high-level military official negotiates with a contractor. He seeks employment, leaves the government, and joins the contractor. He may not have a conflict of interest, but if it looks like he does, that’s trouble. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin discusses this potential problem with Zach Prince, a procurement attorney with Haynes and Boone, LLP.

Interview Transcript:  

Tom Temin Zach, tell us about the most recent decision resulted from protest, but a company was left out of a competition because of that appearance. What happened? Yeah.

Zach Prince So this is a procurement involving, dual band decoy system, which is intended to be, mitigation system for radar guided missiles that are targeting military aircraft and specifically the F-18. So right now, that you’ve got missiles that use two bands of radar to track aircraft, it’s very challenging to have effective countermeasures for them. So, the Navy is trying to develop and then implement a replacement for their current solution. So, they had two rounds of this and they’re going to have multiple iterations of the program. The first was a technical demonstration type portion that started a few years ago and followed on with an engineering, manufacturing and design phase and phase. Now, ultimately, it’ll go into, you know, low rate and full rate production. BAE and Raytheon were both recipients of the contract for the demonstration of the existing technologies. As part of this, at some point between that portion and the next portion, Raytheon started discussing employment with a Navy employee, longtime mathematician and technical expert with the Navy, with Navy Air, specifically who was running this program. And he left and joined Raytheon and then began representing Raytheon back to the government as a concern. This program had something to do with their response to the Navy’s request for information for the second round, some disputed amount of involvement for the submission of the proposal for the second round. And at some point the Navy realized, hey, this at least has a bad smell to it, and started doing a pretty thorough investigation.

Tom Temin Right? So, this fellow VK had participated in all of the work on the Navy’s behalf for the first phase of this long-term program, and while he was negotiating and dealing with Raytheon, he was also trying to get a job there, basically, and got the job. And now they’re into the dealing with the Navy for the follow on.

Zach Prince Yeah, to be fair, it wasn’t as egregious as I think. We all remember the tanker case from back in the early 2000 with the Air Force and Boeing. This guy VK was not actually negotiating for the government. He was doing some very technical work making recommendations on the technical implementation of the program. He wasn’t deciding solutions, but he did have access to proprietary information. And he had signed an NDA with the Navy expressly saying that he wouldn’t work for anybody who was part of this program.

Tom Temin Okay, so if it’s a very wide gray area, he was at one edge of it, let’s say, and a contracting officer decided to pull on that thread.

Zach Prince Yeah, he did. And somebody from the government raised the issue internally. The Navy did exactly what they’re supposed to do. They did a very thorough, extensive, monthslong investigation where they spoke to a number of people in the Navy. They gave Raytheon multiple opportunities to offer, comment and respond. And ultimately, they concluded that the appearance of impropriety here, they didn’t say there was necessarily impropriety, although it was really close, but at least the appearance was enough that they felt they had to exclude Raytheon from the competition.

Tom Temin And therefore I imagine Raytheon said, nope, we protest.

Zach Prince That’s right. I mean, it’s an important program. And the initial award, the MD phase, I think it was maybe $50 million. So, it’s not huge. But I think long term this is going to be multiple hundreds of millions of dollars not to get into full rate production or more. So, this is an important project for them. They protested to GAO and lost. Because the agency has a lot of discretion in these types of determinations. And then they filed that on to the court.

Tom Temin Right. And what happened at the court level?

Zach Prince They lost again, they had some pretty extensive briefing, some interesting arguments raised about why the mere appearance of impropriety without real hard facts that taint the procurement is not enough. But ultimately, their arguments tried to sideline some pretty clear Federal Circuit case law and the consistent decisions of the Court of Federal Claims, which really uphold the decisions of the contracting officer on this issue. In fact, Judge Sampson, who wrote this decision, said he did a survey of all the cases that have been decided by the court on this issue, at least since a federal Circuit decision that sort of set the precedent in the early 2000s. And not once has the court overturned the government’s decision on this.

Tom Temin Yeah. You wonder what the motivation of the company, or at least the judgment of the company was. I mean, you can see from an employee standpoint, the industry beckons with compensation packages, you know, in a cushy type of situation. But the company institutionally knows these shoals, especially long serving old line company like Raytheon. I mean, we can only speculate. So right now, then they’re out. Period. The end.

Zach Prince Yeah. That’s right. And my impression from reading these cases, I don’t think Raytheon really knew at all how much in-depth involvement this guy had with the program, and they knew that he was a fairly senior, very technically skilled individual from the Navy office that they have dealings with. And I think the level of expertise in electronic warfare countermeasures, particularly that this guy had, are really unique. So, Raytheon wanted to hire him on. He didn’t tell them that he had involvement with this program. And in fact, he called HR, the record shows like two days after he started with Raytheon and said that his involvement was very, very light in this program. He didn’t tell his ethics people that in the government, when he got his ethics letter, it was pretty clear that he was obfuscating his involvement because he did want to go to the private sector.

Tom Temin Right. So, one of the lessons is you don’t have to be part of the source selection board to get the government and your future employer into trouble.

Zach Prince Yeah. That’s right. If you’re a contractor, don’t let your contracting officer counterparts be blindsided by stuff like this if you possibly can. And maybe they couldn’t have. Here, make sure that you’re coming up with some mitigation strategy as early as you can. And Raytheon, as much as I just said, yeah, they probably didn’t know his full involvement. The record also shows it, BAE sent a letter to Raytheon not long after this guy started saying, hey, we know that you’ve got this guy. We think that there are some major issues with you having had this guy, because he had major exposure to our technical solutions and IP, you know, make sure to be following those government employment restrictions. They didn’t really.

Tom Temin Yeah. It’s almost what happened with the Defense Department more recently with the cloud contract, the Jedi contract that ultimately got sank. And one of the reasons involved there was that someone had worked in the government and ended up at the cloud company, or had been at the cloud company, then at the government, whatever. Not a source selection person necessarily, but an influencer, an adviser deep in there. And somebody ferreted that out and that ultimately helped sink that whole program, which they’ve now replaced with the joint warfare cloud capability. And that one is going and its multiple vendors. So, any other lessons that companies ought to take from this?

Zach Prince Yeah. It’s always such a challenging balancing act because on the one hand, as a company doing business with DoD, you want to have people who understand the inner workings of DoD. On the other hand, there are many situations were hiring just those types of people can create at least the appearance of conflicts, and that’s enough to taint the procurement. If the government is not convinced that there are mitigation mechanisms in place. So, you do want a firewall. People like this off from their former programs as much as possible, set up some ways in advance that you’ve documented for avoiding the appearance of impropriety, because otherwise you could end up in this type of situation precluded from doing work in a major program.

Tom Temin Yeah, sometimes the revolving door leads to a brick wall, you might say.

Zach Prince Good way to frame it.

The post When the door from government-to-industry leads to a brick wall first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Off the Shelf, Jason Workmaster from Miller Chevalier provides a legal and policy update for government contractors.

Topics include key provisions in the 2024 NDAA impacting procurement and the industrial base, the DFARS commercial item rule and regulatory creep, the impact of a recent federal circuit decision on EULAs and third party suppliers’ ability to seek redress under a government contract.

Workmaster also discusses the lessons learned and the impact of the CIO-SP4 bid protest decisions, and the split in bid protest case law (GAO vs. Court of Claims) on key personnel requirements.

The post A policy update for government contractors first appeared on Federal News Network.

His discussion with host Roger Waldron focuses on the evolving healthcare environment and the implications for the VA’s mission.

Principi highlighted the advances in medical technologies, treatments, and protocols that have reduced the need for hospital beds and resulted in a VA medical infrastructure that is a mismatch due to its surplus number of hospitals and facilities. He also talked about efforts over the last 20 years to address the VA’s healthcare infrastructure taking into consideration the evolving healthcare environment.

Principi outlined the critical role the VA healthcare system plays in our nation, including medical research, training, and serving as the national healthcare backstop in times of emergency. The conversation also included Principi’s thoughts on leadership and management, often drawing on key experiences during his time in government.

Finally, Principi highlights the noble mission of the VA in delivering critical healthcare to veterans.

The post Healthcare and its impact on the VA’s mission first appeared on Federal News Network.

The long-awaited and much-anticipated update to the basic management standards for the federal grants community is out. The Office of Management and Budget’s 2024 Revisions of the Uniform Grants Guidance aim to streamline, simplify and expand the overall reach of the $1.2 trillion in grants and cooperative assistance agencies pay out each year.

“Terms like federal financial assistance and Uniform Grant Guidance may sound mundane or, perhaps, a little bit bureaucratic. But it’s really the plumbing of our federal programs, and plumbing matters,” said Jason Miller, OMB’s deputy director for management, at an event in the White House yesterday celebrating the roll out of the guidance. “I’m particularly proud of one area of this guidance, something our team has been really focused on from the get go, ensuring that an overhaul to this guidance lowers burden on recipients. Of course, we need strong and clear rules for how federal funds are spent. But those rules should add value not create check the box burdens and red tape, even when well-intended. [Red tape] increases costs and reduces the amount of federal funding recipients can spend on delivering outcomes. Lowering burden, which is exactly what this new guidance will do, means that we get more value from every dollar, shifting minutes and shifting dollars from administrative work and overhead to mission work.”

The guidance, which hasn’t been updated since 2020 and hasn’t seen a significant update since OMB issued the initial standards in 2014, aims to revamp the grants oversight and delivery process in several ways. First, OMB says it instructs agencies to make grant announcements as clear and concise as possible. It also provides a template for agencies when developing notice of funding opportunity (NOFO).

Miller said through this streamline template, agencies are directed to use plain language and write in a manner and a level that is accessible for any potential applicant.

“We’re broadening the pool of potential recipients, for example, by ensuring federal agencies can now use languages other than English and conducting their work. The guidance has been fully rewritten from top to bottom in plain English. So it’s clear, consistent and more accessible and understandable to everyone will say the guidance, we believe strengthens accountability and integrity, accountability and burden reduction should be symbiotic not in conflict with one another,” he said. “In fact, if the language is simple. It makes compliance easier. It makes oversight more consistent, because the updated guidance fixes language that led some federal agencies to interpret the guidance differently than other federal agencies.”

HHS grants pilot shows promise

The Department of Health and Human Services recently piloted the new approach to NOFOs.

Andrea Palm, the deputy secretary of HHS, said the pilot showed that reducing the number of pages that make up NOFOs can be done and the grant still meets all the compliance and outcome goals.

“It’s been my experience at HHS, that over time, you just keep adding pieces of paper, but nobody ever looks to see which of those could be peeled back. Are they still necessary? Or is there duplication? Does it add value? Is it really helping us deliver? So really taking a look at all of those things, and only including necessary information is a way in which we can simplify this process, make it more accessible to communities all across the country and be really clear about the eligibility requirements,” Palm said. “These updates, we believe, allow for greater flexibility and a design of a NOFO that’s much more intuitive, that allows us to get really where we need to be in a more efficient way.”

OMB also believes its update will make it easier for eligible recipients, including in underserved communities, to access funding. The updates also make it easier for recipients to use federal funds to invest in the continuous improvement of their programs by using the money to support evaluation, data gathering and analysis and community engagement.

Miller said the Council of Federal Financial Assistance (COFFA), which OMB established in October, will lead the implementation of the updated guidance over the next year or more.

This update to the uniform guidance comes as the Grants modernization effort is picking up steam.

RFI to seeking feedback from providers

Andrea Sampanis, the acting director of the Grants Quality Service Management Office (QSMO) in the Department of Health and Human Services, said the guidance, a new request for information and several other initiatives are part of the long-term grants modernization effort.

The Grants QSMO released the RFI on Tuesday and it will remain open through April 30.

The QSMO will use results from the RFI as part of its evaluation of commercial options for grants management systems and services to expand and improve the current marketplace tools for federal awarding agencies to take advantage of in the coming years.

“We’ve always used Medallia software to ourselves to bring that feedback in. As we are pushing out our RFI for commercial vendor research, we’re actually updating some of the questions based on feedback we get in those Medallia surveys, either from vendors that give us feedback, but mostly from our buying agencies to make sure I’m asking the questions that they have so that they don’t have to go ask vendors all separately,” Sampanis said in an interview with Federal News Network. “This is very similar to the other one and we do this on an annual basis. Unlike the financial management QSMO which has a special item number (SIN) on the GSA schedules, our process is different. We, instead, are working with GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service on what we call the catalogue of market research. But in order to do that approach, we have to keep it up to date. So we’re going to start doing the survey every other year because in the beginning, the marketplace was changing a lot. Now I think we’re feeling good, we have a really good grasp on it. Obviously, we’ll always engage with vendors.”

Along with the RFI, Sampanis said more agencies are taking advantage of the shared services provided through the QSMO marketplace.

Migrations to shared services happening

Over the last year, the National Institutes of Health’s eRA and HHS’s GrantSolutions have brought on or started the process to bring on the departments of Commerce, Agriculture, Labor and parts of Veterans Affairs into its shared service systems.

“That said they can’t really handle all that capacity. So we’re really excited that we have partners in the commercial space to create our catalog of market research, and really help agencies save a lot of time when their needs can’t be met by the federal space. We help them save some time in acquiring those federal or those commercial solutions,” Sampanis said. “We have one quote it says working with the Grants QSMO market research puts us 1,000 steps ahead in our procurement. That’s really our goal to speed up the acquisition and give them a lot more buying confidence that they know when they go to the vendors on our catalog, they’re going to meet their standards. They’re going to be compliant with 2 CFR 200 [OMB’s new guidance]. Other people have used them. It just lets them really focus their attention on a fewer amount of providers.”

Sampanis added that the Grants QSMO team meets with the grant experts in agencies as well as agency chief information officers more and more to answer questions about the security and technology behind these shared services. And then, they help the agencies reviewing potential options when they decide its time to move off their legacy grant systems.

At Commerce, for instance, they are moving off of three custom applications that eventually will be decommissioned when they fully implement the NIH eRA system.

Labor is getting away from a 30-year-old custom built system.

Sampanis said the marketplace current includes seven grant shared services options, mainly around awards management with integrations with SAM.gov, Login.gov and Grants.gov.

The post OMB’s new guidance, RFI boost grant modernization efforts first appeared on Federal News Network.

Does the “theory” jibe with reality or has the FAR gone too FAR?

The current FAR is over 2,000 pages long, and a new Part 40 on cybersecurity and supply chain risk management is coming. There are also over 30 agency FAR supplements accounting for thousands of additional pages of regulations. In addition, various procuring agencies have issued thousands of pages of internal acquisition guidance, most, if not all, of which have not gone through public notice and comment. The sheer number of contract clauses, certifications, prescriptions, representations, reporting requirements, and compliance mandates is staggering. This highly complex regulatory framework increases administrative burdens, performance costs, and compliance risks for small, medium, and large businesses. As a result, the federal customer has reduced access to innovation and best value solutions from the commercial market.

The data is clear. The industrial base supporting the federal government is shrinking. Small business participation in the federal market has fallen approximately 50% between 2010 and 2022, during a decade where the overall economy grew, and the number of small businesses increased. From fiscal 2011 to 2020, the number of small businesses receiving Department of Defense (DoD) contract awards decreased by 43% despite obligations increasing by 15%. The number of large businesses receiving contract awards fell, on average, by more than seven percent annually over the same period. A telling indicator is the decrease in the number of small businesses participating in the federal market, while at the same time, overall obligations to small businesses have increased. This dynamic reflects a market where the regulatory barriers to entry have stymied the growth of the industrial base, leaving an ever shrinking “incumbent class” of contractors available to the federal customer.

The federal customer deserves streamlined, efficient access to competition and innovation driven by the commercial market. Acquisition teams across government are looking for the path of least resistance in acquiring innovative solutions from the commercial market. Significantly, spending by the DOD and other agencies under Other Transaction Authority (OTA) has increased by 1,600% since 2015, at least in part, to avoid the FAR processes and associated requirements. Other popular streamlined procurement channels outside the FAR include the Department of Homeland Security’s and the General Services Administration’s commercial solutions opening (CSO) authority. These streamlined channels are evolving into strategically important procurements tools at a time of growing competition with near-peer adversaries.

The increasing interest in procurement frameworks outside the FAR-based system is likely based on a view that the system cannot reform itself. In this regard, the commercial item regulatory framework is instructive. Ten years after the FAR was issued, Congress streamlined the Federal procurement system by promulgating the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 (FASA). FASA created a streamlined commercial item contracting regime and institutionalized a preference for exempting commercial items and services from new laws unless the law provided otherwise. The impact was immediate. In 1995, there were 28 FAR clauses that could be included in a commercial item contract, with only six clauses required.  Today, some 90 FAR clauses can be included in commercial item contracts and more than 30 clauses are mandatory. Regarding clauses that flow down in subcontracts for commercial items, in 1995 there were four, today there are at least 22 clauses that must be flowed down.

Individual agency FAR supplements include additional clauses that apply to commercial item contracts. For example, there are 110 Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) clauses applicable to commercial item contracts. As the Section 809 panel report noted:

“Since FASA was implemented, the number of DoD‐related commercial buying provisions and clauses has increased by 188 percent, and the number of commercial clauses that may be flowed down has increased five‐fold. In 1995, the FAR and DFARS contained a combined total of 57 government clauses applicable to commercial items. Today there are 165 clauses, with 122 originating in statute, 20 originating in executive orders, and 23 originating in agency‐level policies.”

Since the 809 Panel report was published in 2018, things have not gotten better. This re-regulation of commercial item contracts has contributed to customer agencies and contractors looking to mechanisms outside the traditional FAR framework to get work done.

Significantly, FASA provided the FAR Council with the tools to maintain the streamlined commercial item contracting framework. The FAR Council has the statutory authority to essentially exempt commercial item contracting from new laws and executive orders. However, the default position over the last 30 years has been for the FAR Council to determine that it would not be in the best interests of the Government to exempt commercial items and services from most new laws and executive orders. In 2018, the Section 809 Acquisition Advisory Panel recommended eliminating the 55 DFARS provisions applicable to commercial item contracts and, despite a recent Congressionally mandated review of the DFARS clauses, the resulting review left approximately 50 DFARS clauses still applicable.

So as the FAR enters its 41^st year, it is time to identify and empower a governmentwide champion to streamline procurement. This champion would be responsible for a section-by-section review of the FAR to identify and address/eliminate requirements where the cost/burdens outweigh the benefits.  Additionally, this champion would conduct a review of the various procurement processes and establish criteria as to when the default acquisition methodology should be an OTA or CSO depending on the nature of the requirement.

The Coalition stands ready to work with all stakeholders to streamline the procurement process to ensure sound business opportunities for commercial firms that deliver best value mission support for customer agencies. Let us know your thoughts on streamlining the FAR!  Ideally, we would love to have them before our spring training conference, on May 8^th and 9^th. Good ideas come from all stakeholders across government and industry.

The post Happy 40th birthday to the FAR, but has it gone too far? first appeared on Federal News Network.

Contractors feeling beset by false claims act lawsuits, feel that way for good reason. The number of cases launched by the Justice Department reached an all-time high last year: 500 cases. How come? For details, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Perkins Coie partner Alexander Canizares.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin You’ve compiled these and 500 cases. What is behind this uptick? What’s going on here?

Alexander Canizares Well, there’s a number of things you could draw from this. I think the uptick in numbers of cases that DOJ initiates on their own reflects, in part, a reliance on data analytics that DOJ is using to identify cases. Remember that False Claims Act a large number of cases every year are driven by lawsuits filed by whistleblowers. So under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act, and that’s still continues to be the case. The particular metric that you just mentioned, I think is significant, 500 new cases that DOJ is bringing on its own. So these do not originate from a qui tam lawsuit. Looking at those numbers, I think 378 of those numbers come from cases that are not health care or Department of Defense related. And I suspect that reflects a large number of cases related to pandemic fraud. So that is a continuing priority of the Department of Justice to bring these PPP loan fraud types of cases that we’re seeing. Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that DOJ is actively enforcing the False Claims Act.

Tom Temin And if it was pandemic fraud, they could probably have 10,000 cases a month. Is there a floor or a dollar value that they suspect has been going wrong, that set some kind of a bottom limit for what they’ll go after?

Alexander Canizares Well, the PPP loan fraud cases that they’ve been bringing have tended to be low dollar value cases. But there are some larger value cases that DOJ is bringing as well. And I think that just underscores the fact that the False Claims Act can be used for small companies. These cases can be brought against big companies. And I think the PPP loan cases reflect that DOJ is willing to invest in these cases. As a policy matter, regardless of the dollar value, it’s just an important priority for the department.

Tom Temin And how much is the government recovered in the same year that fiscal 2023?

Alexander Canizares In fiscal year 2023, DOJ, the numbers show that they recovered $319 million in other cases. So that’s not DoD, not health care related. And I suspect that a good number of those do relate to these pandemic types of cases.

Tom Temin And health care fraud then is mostly Medicare, Medicaid, that type of thing.

Alexander Canizares Yes. The health care types of cases under the False Claims Act continue to be the driver for a lot of the False Claims Act. The variety of cases involving doctors and physicians and hospitals, pharmaceutical companies is significant. But the numbers this year actually show that the proportion of cases related to health care is a little bit lower. We’ve actually seen more procurement types of cases this year than in prior years. And again, with those pandemic numbers, the dominance of healthcare types of cases has ebbed a little bit.

Tom Temin And what about the DoD cases? Is there any particular quality or characteristic that characterizes them?

Alexander Canizares Yes. So the statistics show that the DoD types of cases increased more than five times in fiscal year 23 from the prior year, so that was $550 million in recoveries. There was a single settlement of about 377 million that really drove that number. But that was the largest recovery in DoD false claims act cases since 2006. So that was a sign that for government contractors, the types of companies that I work with, that the False Claims Act continues to be a very robust enforcement tool for the government.

Tom Temin And what do we know about that 377 million? Who was it?

Alexander Canizares That was a settlement with Booz Allen Hamilton. It was a case that took some time to finally get settled, but it was a case involving allegations related to cost counting.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with attorney Alexander Canizares. He is a partner at Perkins Coie. And I guess my question for the Department of Justice is if they are using data analytics, are they finding things that, for example, the Defense Contract Audit Agency is not finding, because isn’t that also a source of false claims activity?

Alexander Canizares It is. And I’d say the [Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA)] and DCAA and the offices of Inspector General are all entities that tend to identify these kinds of cases. And I think DOJ’s use of statistical analytics is predominantly focused on health care types of cases, from what I can tell. But that’s not to say that these procurement types of cases can’t originate from that type of analysis. I think the biggest area that we’re seeing in terms of enforcement activity for government contractors relates to cybersecurity. And in the same context as announcing these statistics, the head of the civil division for DOJ highlighted the priority for cybersecurity under the DOJ civil cyber fraud initiative, and that remains a very big area of activity.

Tom Temin And as the other parts of the government, the Labor Department, basically the White House, but through the Labor Department’s compliance division and through the White House rulemaking apparatus and the different agencies, there’s a lot more rulemaking. The CMMC program for DoD. There could be a civilian version of that, not far behind, there are so-called climate provisions being laid on contractors and the DEI provisions laid on contractors. It sounds like the potential for false claims is expanding.

Alexander Canizares I think that’s fair to say. Remember, the False Claims Act is a civil fraud statute and it’s basically based on an alleged misrepresentation of some kind. And as you’re seeing these new compliance programs, particularly with cybersecurity, but the others you’ve mentioned as well. Any time a contractor submits a claim and there is an allegation that there is an underlying noncompliance with some material requirement in their contract, that can be a potential basis for false claims act allegation. A large number of these cases can be started by a whistleblower. So somebody inside a company who thinks that this company is doing something wrong can file a lawsuit, and DOJ has an obligation to undertake an investigation in that context. So I agree with you that with these new regulations, there is an increased risk in terms of False Claims Act liability.

Tom Temin Yeah. It sounds like a company could even be wanting to comply. Not that you want to let anybody off the hook for lying to the government, but there could be a big compliance exercise, and a whistleblower could find some minor infraction of one of these things. And next thing you know, you’ve got a case on your hands. So intention does not save you from false claims, does it ever?

Alexander Canizares Well, this was an issue that the Supreme Court actually waded into last year in a case called SuperValu. And what they did is they analyzed the meaning of the term knowledge under the False Claims Act. And this is an area that has been litigated heavily for many years. But finally, the Supreme Court said that knowledge requirement under the False Claims Act has to be looked at using a subjective standard. So what is your subjective intent when you’re preparing a claim and you’re asking the government for money? And I think the takeaway from that case is for many companies in this area, they’re heavily regulated. They need to document their decision making. They need to reflect that they’re making good faith determinations. There is a knowledge requirement to the liability. So a good faith, reasonable interpretation should not run you afoul of the False Claims Act. But there’s a lot of gray area in there in terms of whether you actually are running afoul of the requirement.

Tom Temin And the big companies, you would think, Booz Allen and the big aerospace contractors, etc. They have compliance departments. They have senior counsel for compliance. What’s your sense of whether smaller and mid-sized companies have the compliance capacity, even if they want to do business with the federal government?

Alexander Canizares A lot of smaller companies do not have the same resources for compliance. And in some cases that increases the risk. They really need to be sensitive to the False Claims Act and anything they do if they’re taking government money. And for many of the companies that we work with, it’s a matter of really prioritizing how you allocate your resources. Again, I mentioned cybersecurity because the risk for cybersecurity is specifically targeted at the small companies in the supply chain. And yet those are the ones who maybe have fewer resources to allocate towards it.

Tom Temin So it’s a rocky world out there.

Alexander Canizares I think it’s fair to say it’s a rocky world for the foreseeable future.

The post Contractors feel the pinch of false claims act cases first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Air Force is out with a new multiple award solicitation to modernize all of its base network infrastructure.

The request for proposals uses the phrase, “enterprise IT-as-a-service” only a handful of times, but for all intent and purposes, this potentially 10-year contract with a $12.5 billion ceiling is considered Wave 2.

The new RFP calls for a group of large and small businesses to “modernize, operate and maintain the network infrastructure on all Department of the Air Force locations, to include Guard and Reserve bases.”

The Air Force is planning to award at least five contracts to 8(a) firms as well as a minimum of three awards to HUBZone companies, women-owned small businesses, service-disabled veteran-owned small business firms and other small businesses not in a socioeconomic program.

“This effort takes lessons learned from the EITaaS risk reduction effort network-as-a-service effort as well as lessons learned from existing base IT infrastructure modernization efforts to modernize the future base area network (BAN) offering at Air Force bases worldwide,” the RFP states. “This effort intends to modernize the Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router (NIPR) and Secure Internet Protocol Router (SIPR) BAN through an as-a-service model utilizing contractor provided networking services.”

The Air Force says its goal through the BIM vehicle is to obtain standardized, innovative and agile IT services, increase integration through a modern streamlined network and to be an investment for future mission sets.

Air Force to reduce data centers

Winston Beauchamp, the deputy chief information officer at the Air Force, said the goal is to award the multiple award contract later this spring with the first set of task orders going out before the end of the fiscal year.

Beauchamp said the Wave 2 EITaaS RFP comes as the Wave 1 effort is picking up steam.

“They started by essentially absorbing the bases that were part of our risk reduction experiment originally, that preceded the acquisition, and they are right now delivering common central services that will be applicable to all bases,” Beauchamp said in an interview with Federal News Network after speaking at the AFCEA NOVA Space IT day. “We’re talking about things like a centralized helpdesk automation so that folks can do certain things on their own, like resetting passwords, and answering tier zero help desk type questions. Then also to come there’s field services. The option for folks to use our contract to put people in the field to support them at the bases of all that for centralized security and help desk services.”

The Air Force is using the base infrastructure modernization contract as a key piece to its centralization strategy. Beauchamp said not every IT service needs to be an enterprise service, but there are a wide variety of opportunities for the Air Force to improve how it delivers technology to its users.

For example, across the 185 Air Force and Space Force bases there are about 1,000 data centers running.

Beauchamp said the CIO’s office is making a big push to move applications to the cloud, where it makes sense.

“We fully expect that more and more applications will be moving into our cloud architecture. That’s called CloudOne today, and that contract is up for renewal. It will be re competed, and it will be calling it CloudOne Next, but the intent is that it will be just the next evolution of the CloudOne program,” he said. “The interface between that and the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) our intent to leverage that contract to the maximum extent possible by buying cloud services capacity through JWCC, and then managing it under the CloudOne contract. The expectation is that we would continue to acquire cloud through JWCC, where it’s cost effective to do so in bulk and then we would provision it with security services that DevSecOps and the other layers of services that we’ve built up over the years on the under the CloudOne contract.”

Three cloud contracts in the works

The Air Force released its request for information for CloudOne Next in September and just in March, it offered more details on its acquisition strategy.

The Air Force expects to release three solicitations for CloudOne Next in the third quarter of 2024 and make the award in the fourth quarter of this year. It will be three single-award blanket purchase agreements on top of the schedules program run by the General Services Administration.

The three BPAs will focus on:

• Cloud service provider (CSP) reseller and software management
• Architecture and common shared services
• Enterprise application modernization and migration

Beauchamp said the Air Force is evolving from siloes of excellence where every system built its own technology stack to a series of enterprise capabilities where the burden to sustain, modernize and secure is shared.

“We really have is an opportunity to look at the degree to which there may be commonality between those approaches, either in factor or in potential, and where we can either use collective buying strategies to reduce the overall cost collective across the Air Force and collectively across DOD, to get the best possible deal through economies of scale,” he said. “If there’s an architectural approach that perhaps could leverage an existing enterprise service, we want to make sure that we have the ability to see them and to make those recommendations to really free up the time and resources so that those dollars can be applied towards more effective mission capability.”

This approach to IT portfolio management is one of the six lines of effort Air Force CIO Venice Goodwine outlined in her strategy.

Other lines of effort include the acceleration of cloud adoption, the future of cybersecurity, including zero trust, workforce development and training, software management and data and artificial intelligence.

Beauchamp said IT portfolio management, or line of effort 4, is one of the most exciting opportunities for the Air Force. He said IT portfolio management can create leverage across the entire department that can result in both savings and money redirected toward mission needs.

“Overall, I think that each of the sub objectives within line of effort four are going to contribute in some way in that direction. Everything from implementing a capital planning and investment control (CPIC) approach within the Department of Air Force, which we are piloting this year, to improving our monitoring of the user’s experience, which really enables us to target our modernization efforts on those areas where folks are suffering the most will allow us to make better use of the resources that we have for free enterprise IT,” he said. “One of the things we’re going to have to do is really reexamine how we’re implementing CPIC. When I say the pilot, what we’ve done is we’ve selected a major command and a couple of functional areas, where we’re going to put a more rigorous capability in place to really meet not just the letter of the law, but the spirit as well, and apply the data to actually make business decisions. That’s the key. If you if you’re going to go to the trouble of collecting all this data about your programs, you might as well use that data for informing your decision making.”

The post Air Force begins phase 2 of enterprise IT service delivery first appeared on Federal News Network.

Election years tend to dampen contracting. If an incumbent loses re-election, policy shifts and new people can put contracts on hold. For how contractors should prepare for whatever might happen this year, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with the President and CEO of the Professional Services Council, David Berteau.

Interview Transcript:  

Tom Temin  And I guess the good news is, at least there’s a full year appropriation as we talk.

David Berteau That’s right. Tom, good morning. And I think this is probably the first time in nine months that I’ve taped on your show, and we haven’t had a looming impending potential government shutdown, in the next few weeks. But we’ve bought ourselves a few months here now, although I suspect by the end of the summer we’ll be talking about the possibility of a shutdown again, because obviously the margins of, of voting in the House are very, very thin, getting thinner. And, and there are a number of things where we’re pretty sure we have the votes, but we’re not quite sure how we get the vote.

Tom Temin Right.

David Berteau To get to a vote. Right. Like the Ukraine supplemental, which will probably now have a key bridge, supplemental added into it if, if it makes any sense. So. But in the meantime, we are in an election year, and, and there’s a very interesting dynamic that occurs in year four of a four-year term. And I think it’s useful for contractors to think about how they interact with their existing programs and their potential new ones. In that kind of a context.

Tom Temin Yeah. Why does contracting tend to get dampened a little bit?

David Berteau Well, I think there are three things that happen there. Number one is, of course, the incumbents, the people who are in those jobs right now, in many cases are already starting to turn over. I think we’ve seen, just in the Defense Department alone in the last week, we saw the announcement of the departure of at least three senior government officials. And, you know, when we see this also at the beginning of an administration, when there are vacancies at the political level, decisions just tend to slow down a bit. Right. And so, you can keep going with what you’re doing right now pretty well. But anything that’s new, anything that requires a decision at a higher level, will just slow down because there won’t be as many people. The second reason is there’s a different focus, right? There’s a lot of focus, particularly if it’s the first four-year term of a president, on reelection and on what you’re going to finish this year and what you’re going to postpone into next year. And oftentimes there’s a lack of a recognition by the by the political appointees of how hard it is to get something done in year four, especially if it’s new. And then the third is and we’re seeing this, in spades this year. The other side gets a vote here as well because there are incentives in Congress and in other places to delay decisions until after the election in case your side wins. And we certainly saw that with respect to the bipartisan agreement in the Senate on immigration reform, that was pulled and never even got a vote, because the candidate for the Republican nomination said I’d rather keep the issues and, than solve the problem. It’s not even clear whether H.R. two, which is the House Republicans own version of immigration reform, would be allowed to come for a vote because that would, in fact, eliminate the issue. So, all of those are things that contractors need to keep in mind, particularly as they’re bidding on new work.

Tom Temin Sure. And there are things they can do, though, to maybe mitigate the effects of the, let’s call it the election effect itself by working closely with agencies you’re already doing business with.

David Berteau Absolutely. And my, my experience both serving in the government and observing it very closely from the outside for quite a number of years here, is that there are there are things that that you can help you if you want to move forward on an initiative or help the your customer move forward on initiative. I think first is focused primarily on the projects and goals for which good foundations have already been laid. Right? So, avoiding new starts do the stuff that, that is already well developed and put into place. We’ll talk about some of those, perhaps later in cybersecurity where, I would say there’s a lot of things where a foundation has been laid. Whether that foundation is good or not is a different question, obviously. And I think if you focus on those, then you’ve got a chance of getting things done, while the administration is still in place. The second is to plan with very good detail and clear timelines. And I think that’s particularly as people start to leave. You’re not sure what that timeline is. So, you have to have some off ramps or some alternatives in case things change partway through the process. Those are two first key steps that I think matter a lot.

Tom Temin We are speaking with David Berteau. He’s president and CEO of the Professional Services Council. I think yes, there’s sometimes an administration wants to leave a legacy or maybe a department does, let’s say, you know, a new electronic record system or some major type of project like that. And so maybe contractors can actually help them get that over the line and get it started maybe in the last year.

David Berteau Right. And it helps that we now have appropriations for the rest of this fiscal year. And as we mentioned earlier, it’s only six months. Today’s April 1st. Is there exactly six months left in fiscal year 24. But at least the funding is stable, and you can get it started in that regard. I think it’s also useful to look a little bit in history. Tom, you know, every decade since the 1920s has had at least one incumbent win reelection. And so, it’s pretty common that that happens. And there’s only 2 or 3 elections per decade, depending on how you define the decade, and starting with the zero or the one. But, but there’s only every one of those. And so that’s, that’s historically pretty much a guarantee that somebody is going to, an incumbent will win an election. On the other hand, only four of the last 11 presidents have actually served a full eight years, and only five of the last 13. And so that says don’t necessarily plan on anything beyond this current year. Right. And so, I think it’s important to get for contractors to support their customers by getting solidified those things that are that are in place. Another thing that’s important here is actually building support, right. So, what’s going to keep it going in the event that the political appointees change, or you have vacancy there for a long period of time? So, you know, identifying and enabling those supporters and champions in the program and across the broader agency, across the cabinet department, in other agencies, and perhaps most importantly, on the Hill. Those are things that you can work on as well in this timetable.

Tom Temin Yes. Because sometimes when something is established already, even if the next group coming in, maybe not wanting that. Sometimes you see a pause or a reset or a re baselining, but you don’t often see them killed off altogether.

David Berteau A good example for that is the DoD Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Program, right, where the guidance was issued in 2020. Under the previous administration, the new team came in immediately, put a halt on it, said, we’re going to take another look at it. And three years later, they have a draft, proposed rule out that is, comments have been submitted and may be adjudicated, and it may mean that four years is not even enough to issue that rule, although I know they’re committed to getting the final rule out before, before the end of the term.

Tom Temin Yes. And we’re seeing now some, new rulemaking coming, which is going to last into the next term, whoever it might be from CISA, speaking of cybersecurity. Aside from the Defense Department rules, there is the new CISA gambit.

David Berteau And there are several games out there, that have been floated around. In fact, it’s very interesting how many different cybersecurity rules are in various stages of process. I mentioned CMMC out of DoD. You’ve covered a number of times on this show, Revision three of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, NIST standard 800-171. There are SEC rules out there. Even the White House Office of, the National Cybersecurity Director issued a request for input. PSC provided comments on behalf of our members to this, on how to harmonize all these various things. And in the midst of this comes a whole bunch of new initiatives. There were two, proposed FAR rules, which we submitted comments back in early February. One of which, by the way, would if you’re a contractor and you report a breach, would allow both, DHS’ CISA agency and the FBI to come into your systems and look around a little bit, which has caused some concern for folks. How would you handle that? Would that create a new incentive for not reporting? That’s not what we want, obviously. And now CISA has come out with a notice of proposed rulemaking. So, the actual proposed rule is not out yet, but it should come out on, Thursday of this week. It’s almost 450 pages long, and it covers, cybersecurity incident reporting. And they’ve asked for a lot of comments on this. They have given us 60 days, to comment, but it covers the broad swath of territory. By the way, this is not just for government contractors. This is for the whole economy. And, and that’s a dilemma as well, where you have, different rules applying to contractors and applying to the economy. But the broader economy rules also apply to contractors, and they don’t always match or coordinate with one another.

The post How election years affect federal contracting first appeared on Federal News Network.

• Women-owned small businesses won more federal contracting dollars in fiscal 2023 than ever before. New data from FedMine, a government business intelligence platform, shows women-owned small firms won more than $25.5 billion in federal contracts last year, up from $22.6 billion in 2022. FedMine said that 13% year-over-year increase represents about 3.3% of all federal contract dollars going to women-owned small businesses. That is still below the governmentwide goal of 5%. FedMine also found that out of the more than 13,000 companies that won contracts in 2023, more than 1,500 of them were first-time awardees.
  (Women-owned small firms won more federal contracting dollars in 2023 - Fedmine.us)
• Letter carriers are getting recognition from their union for saving lives and other heroics. The National Association of Letter Carriers track about 150 cases a year where its members act as first responders in an emergency. Now the union is rewarding these letter carriers for going above and beyond. Phillip Moon is a letter carrier who has been delivering mail on the same route in Amarillo, Texas for 27 years. He won this year’s Heroes of the Year award for saving a woman and her two dogs from an attacking pitbull. Moon said he is honored to receive the award, but does not think he is a hero — just someone who did the right thing. "I don’t consider myself a hero. I’m just very grateful and honored and thankful that I was in a place where I could be of some assistance to somebody in need," Moon said.
  (‘We are on the front line:’ USPS letter carriers recognized for heroic acts - Federal News Network)
• The Navy is updating its basic training phone call policy by allowing boot-camp recruits to use their personal cell phones to call family and friends. Most recruits who don't make it through boot camp tend to drop out during their first few weeks. The service hopes that allowing personal cell phones, instead of using a pay phone, will reduce the dropout rate. Recruits are allowed five phone calls during their 10-week training period. The updated policy is one of the latest changes the Navy has introduced to its basic-training experience, as the service struggles to meet its recruitment goals.
  (Navy updates basic training phone call policy - dvidshub.net)
• The Department of Health and Human Services is trying to centralize its cybersecurity resources. HHS’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) will be the department’s one-stop-shop for cybersecurity, according to Brian Mazanec, the deputy director of the Office of Preparedness at ASPR. "There are too many doors into cybersecurity when engaging with the federal government generally, let alone HHS,” Mazanec said. “Within HHS, there are a lot of different players. So we're in the process now of really establishing this front door through ASPR to all of those resources.” HHS is also working to set new cybersecurity standards, as well as potential requirements, for the health sector.
  (HHS looks to create ‘one-stop shop’ for healthcare cybersecurity - Federal News Network)
• Here is your chance to help ensure your agency buys artificial intelligence tools and capabilities in a responsible and trustworthy way. The Office of Management and Budget is seeking help to inform the development of guidance to ensure the responsible procurement of AI by agencies. In a new request for information, OMB is asking for feedback around 10 questions as part of its initiative to develop a set of requirements to ensure that agencies buy AI systems and services in a way that aligns with the recent guidance required by the November executive order for secure and trustworthy AI. This RFI is the first step for OMB in meeting the deadline to issue this new AI acquisition guidance by late September. Responses to the RFI are due by April 29.
  (OMB issues RFI for responsible acquisition of AI tools - Federal Register)
• The Defense Department awarded $17.6 million to 27 universities to strengthen basic research in defense-related areas. The research collaboration competition winners from West Virginia University, Arizona State University and the University of South Carolina, among others, will receive up to $600,000 over three years to pursue DoD-related science and engineering research. Louisiana Tech University and the University of Tulsa will receive up to $1.5 million over two years as winners of the capacity-building competition, to pursue activities that will help them achieve basic research excellence in areas relevant to DoD.
  (DoD finances 27 academic teams under its competitive research program - DoD)
• The Department of Homeland Security used some limited exceptions to the Buy American Act last year. In fiscal 2023, DHS said it executed 1,050 contract actions valued at $67 million, by using the domestic non-availability exception under the Buy American Act. That represents less than 2% of applicable procurement dollars obligated by DHS last year. Most of those contract actions were awarded by the Coast Guard for various aircraft components that are only made in foreign countries.
  (DHS fiscal 2023 annual posting of Buy American Act domestic nonavailability waiver actions - SAM.gov)
• The Census Bureau is looking to roll out a remote work policy it drafted at the end of last year, but is rethinking how many employees can opt in after Congress recently set minimum utilization rates for federal buildings. The bureau recommends employees should not move outside the commuting area of their official duty station until they are approved for remote work. The Census Bureau is also consolidating office space while its headquarters is being renovated by bringing in employees from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Census HQ renovation is expected to be complete this summer.
  (Census Bureau rethinks scope of remote work policy, consolidates office space - Federal News Network)

The post Women-owned small businesses win record $25.5B in federal contracts first appeared on Federal News Network.

This week on Amtower Off Center, GovCon expert Katie Helwig of MildRed joins host Mark Amtower to discuss the value of GovCon associations.

Topics include:

• Creating visibility in GovCon
• The GovCon association landscape
• Criteria for selecting the association which will be best for you
• Getting involved with your association

The post The value of GovCon associations first appeared on Federal News Network.

Two commercial space companies have agreed to work together on enhancing national security capabilities in the commercial space domain. Voyager Space and Palantir are using their abilities to help support and protect new technologies to be used on the International Space Station, and the soon to come Starlab commercial space station. I wanted to find out more about what this agreement means and get an overview of those involved, so I spoke to Matt Kuta, Co-Founder, President and Chief Operating Officer of Voyager Space.

Interview Transcript: 

Matt Kuta Voyager Space and Palantir are both Denver based companies. And Voyager, we’re a space technology company, largest commercial user in the world of the International Space Station. Notably, we’ve also are prime contractor to build through a public private partnership the replacement of the International Space Station, owned by private industry. And when we think through a space station and, the platform, there’s a lot of data that is generated in space, structured and unstructured data. And for lack of a better analogy, the ability to send all of that data down the pipes are restricted to pipes are kind of clogged. It’s very difficult to send all the data down to Earth to transmit it. So when you think about how do we capitalize on all this data that is, generated on a space station that’s privately owned, and then think through the concept of maybe computing on the edge, or you’re using a company like Palantir, and they’re proving credibility and capability of artificial intelligence and machine learning to basically kind of transmit down to the customer, the end user, the answer or and a few options of answers for them to then go use however the customer might need. That’s how you kind of arrive at this really unique partnership with Palantir and Voyager space, where Palantir is not in the business of building space station. Voyager is. At the same point Voyager is not in the business of, creating from scratch in organic AI machine learning capability. So that’s kind of, how it came about.

Eric White So when you say AI and the machine learning capability, you primarily mean creating a mechanism that can take all of the vast amounts of data that, you know, whatever machine you have up in space right now is gathering at all times and being able to do what with it, break it down, or just categorize it in a way that’s actually useful because it’s a lot it is a lot of data, as you mentioned.

Matt Kuta Right? Yeah, it’s a little bit of both. I, I actually turn out to say it’s a little bit of what the customer needs. Right. So, some customers might say, hey, here’s our constraints and our, our desired outcomes and send me the answer like it’s maybe it’s to track, certain things in the ocean or something like that, or send something down to a warfighter on the battlefield. And it’s a very precise solution we’re delivering to a customer. But it can also be to your other point, hey, you know, we have all this data. Here’s more curated assemblage or smorgasbord, if you will, of options for you to kind of go and use. But the bottom line is, how do we leverage a space station’s higher power supply computing on the edge to partner with a company like Palantir to send a much more concise, user friendly answer versus giant packets of data that, might not be able to all complete and be able to be transmitted down to Earth.

Eric White And so let’s focus back on those said customers. Who might that be? Would that be government agencies, I imagine, and maybe some other entities that could find that data useful. Who are you looking to work with? And what are the fruits of the labor going to look like?

Matt Kuta Yeah. Well, I say, as I mentioned today, Voyager is the largest commercial user of the International Space Station. As a matter of fact, Voyager and Palantir have actually already worked on a joint proposal to a Department of Defense customer already. So, they think to replace that ISS. It’s a spectrum of it’s a continuation of stuff we’re already doing today and what will occur in the future, if you think to those customers, certainly national security customers. But, given the future space station called Star Lab will be a commercial station, it can certainly also be both national security and commercial use. So, example could be maybe in Star Lab, we’re serving, a DoD customer, for example, maybe like United States Navy or something like that to help support naval assets. But we think through a commercial application. Maybe there’s some, tangential or direct application of helping a commercial company with our shipping vessels. Something like that.

Eric White Got it. We’re speaking with Matt Kuta. He is the president of Voyager Space. And so, as you talk about these national security implications, you know, just from a person who covers this, beat, and sees the amount of business that these commercial space companies have been doing with defense entities all over the world really, that amount of work together has exploded. And it’s part of the importance, you know, in defense industry and Defense agencies seeing the importance in space. But can you talk about a little bit about that and how, you know, how much more are you working with, government entities for national security purposes?

Matt Kuta Yeah. Well, it’s a bad a bad use of the word when talking to a space guy about the industry exploding. oh. Yeah.

Eric White Sorry. We’re full of puns here at Space Hour.

Matt Kuta Right, right. But when you think through rapidly growing, if you will. Yeah, it’s really exciting time to be in a space, sector. Commercial space sector. You know, just a couple things. One, the I’ll call it the national security apparatus is in this transition. And what you know it won’t happen completely for many reasons. But it’s in this transition where instead of the U.S. government owning some of these hard assets, government owned, government operated for decades, they’re seeing how efficient the private sector can be and looking to capitalize on that efficiency, both in the capital markets, that innovation nimbleness speed to execution and completion, and have the ability to buy it as a service. You know, we talked about the space station. You know, the International Space Station today is owned by the government. It’s really five space agencies, five kind of government entities. It’s NASA, the European Space Agency, Roscosmos, JASA, the Japanese space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. It’s effectively owned and capitalized by those five entities. And when the International Space Station is deorbited in 2030, which is publicly announced, the United States government will never own another low-Earth orbit space station. It will be owned by private industry. That’s what we’re working on. And when it is in orbit, the industry will own it. And then the customers governmental customers like NASA, ESA, national security customers, commercial customers like pharmaceutical companies, life science companies or basically build a microgravity laboratory. We’ll use it as a customer. And it’s an infrastructure investment. And there’s a precedent for this. If you go back in time to the late 1990s, early 2000s, and you ask yourself, well, who owned the space shuttle with the wings, you know, come in and land? That was the government. Government owned that NASA. And then, early 2000s around 2006 seven, the US government ended the space shuttle program. And so, we have to privatize it. And at a time, two companies want a public private partnership contract called a Space Act agreement. One was Orbital Sciences is with now orbital ATK, owned by Northrop Grumman. They built a Cygnus resupply vehicle down to about two dozen times to the ISS. And the second company was a four-year-old SpaceX. It had never launched a rocket. And fast forward 15-20 years, if you ask anybody, well, who owns SpaceX, who owns the rockets? No one says the government. They say, well, the company does, the investors do. And then the customer, the government, venture capital backed satellite companies, tourist, whoever pay SpaceX as a customer to launch their payload and they charge margin. You’re seeing it you being used in applications like in the in the Ukraine conflict with Russia and Planet and Max are you know, governments are buying imagery from commercial companies now. So, there’s lots of exciting, you know, developments in us.

Eric White And talking a little bit about the past, before I talk about the future, I’d like to get a little bit more into Voyager’s past itself. You’ve mentioned a couple times now on how you’re the biggest commercial user of the ISS. How did you all get to this point? And, you know, where did you all start? Where did you all actually start out?

Matt Kuta Yeah. So, over the last few years, Voyager has been basically vertically integrating core parts of the space station supply chain in anticipation that the US government was going to look to deorbit the ISS and privatized ISS. Over the last couple of years, Voyager has a series of seven acquisitions as part of our space station supply chain, strategy. And so, Voyager itself, the company is, just over four years old, the underlying operating history of Voyager, it goes back, you know, about 20 to 30 years.

Eric White And so now, towards the future, what is it looking like? You know, you just spoke a little bit about how you’re preparing for that deorbit of the ISS. But, you know, as this moves forward, do you all see you yourselves going into other areas of space acquisition or, you know, working in other sectors as you increase, you know, in the national security realm as well?

Matt Kuta Certainly. I mean, as I mentioned, we do a lot of work on the ISS today. We do a lot of work, in communications. I think, we have around over 4 million space flight hours in communication technology and in orbit. I think we have about 450 assets in space today. So, when you think through space station and the space station replacement, that’s, a very marquee program. It’s very exciting. It is a strategic asset. It’s a demonstration of sovereignty in orbit, to the to the United States and our allies. But at the same point, there’s a lot of other exciting, opportunities both within space sector that Voyager, you know, is already capitalize on. And we’ll continue to we’re very excited about the continued development of cislunar infrastructure, basically the place between Leo and in the moon, a lot of, for lack of a better word. Railroad tracks need to be laid between, the Earth and the moon. There’s a lot of stuff happening on the moon. So, I think there’s a lot of opportunity here or there over the next, you know, 10 to 20 years. And, of course, always, close to home. And Leo is kind of the government agencies have ceded through, you know, ceding investment, if you will. The lower Earth orbit, geography, and economy, they’ve been working on it for 70 years. And what you’re seeing in the last ten years is a slow transition, where now NASA and the government can free up budget dollars to go deeper into space. As they hand the baton and the keys to private industry for the stuff closer to home, in low-Earth orbit.

Eric White Matt Kuta is the co-founder, president, and chief operating officer at Voyager Space. Find the rest of this interview at our website at Federal News network.com. Search the Space Hour.

The post A joint business venture to help maintain national security in space first appeared on Federal News Network.

GSA is expanding the number of providers from three to eight, including six new ones.

Along with current platform providers Amazon Business and Fisher Scientific, GSA awarded spots on the next generation Commercial Platform Initiative (CPI) contract to:

• e-Procurement Services
• Grainger
• Noble Supply & Logistics
• Pacific Ink
• Social Glass
• Staples

Four of the awardees, ePS, Noble Supply, Pacific Ink and Social Glass, are small businesses, opening the door for agencies to obtain small business credit for these small dollar buys.

“This is about meeting our customers where they are with a modernized user experience and streamlined process for government purchase cardholders,” said Tom Howder, the acting Federal Acquisition Service commissioner, in a release.

GSA created the CPI program under a proof-of-concept moniker with awards to Amazon, Fischer and Overstock Government in 2020 under direction from Congress with a goal of capturing data on and managing products under the micro purchase threshold of $10,000. Initially, GSA thought the market was about $6 billion, but came down in the last few years to the potential market being about $500 million.

Overstock Government decided not to bid on the next generation platform, sources say.

Lawmakers detailed its desire for GSA to pilot online commercial platforms in Section 846 of the 2018 Defense Authorization bill. The House Armed Services Committee’s initial goal was to make federal procurement less complex and more competitive through the use of commercial platforms.

“GSA’s announcement of eight contracts awards for the commercial platform initiative represents the passing of a significant milepost on its journey to bring enhanced electronic commerce to agencies,” said Roger Waldron, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, in an email to Federal News Network. “Collectively, these contracts represent a streamlined channel through which agencies can acquire commercial off the shelf products quickly. They also put competitive pressure on the Schedules program to improve its administrative efficiency, which is a positive result that will help buyers and sellers in the market.”

The awards come at more and more agencies are using the initial three platforms, though data shows Amazon Business received the vast majority of the orders, accounting for 96% of all orders in fiscal 2022, according to an August 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office.

GSA says for 2023, 34 agencies spent $80 million, which is double the amount of money spent in 2022.

GSA also says total orders also increased to 305,000 from 105,000 in 2022, and 52% of all users were repeat buyers and agencies spent on average between $250-$350.

“This is a pivotal turning point in the Commercial Platforms Program as we expand the number of platforms available, including a number of small business awardees,” said Keil Todd, the Commercial Platforms program manager, in the release. “We’re excited to move out on the next-generation of this program to further our commitment to agencies in helping them get the products they need to support their missions.”

With the additional companies GSA is adding, agencies have access to buy from well-known diverse companies like Amazon Business, Fischer Scientific, Staples and Grainger that provide a large variety of products, but from the four small companies.

Noble Supply, for instance, provides the Defense Department with access to products from 13,000 companies.  Pacific Ink offers office supplies and Social Glass provides access to small purchases across 50,000 products. And ePS  filed a protest of the solicitation in December only to gain corrective action and win an award.  ePS is a platform providing access to small business suppliers.

“We are looking forward to assisting GSA in meeting the goals of the Commercial Platform program. This award allows us to bring other federal agencies the benefits that federal buyers are currently experiencing within the e-Procurement Services (ePS)  Army and Air Force eMarketplace programs,” said David Saroli, CEO of e-Procurement Services (ePS), in an email to Federal News Network. “Being part of the Commercial Platform program will also help increase the growth our small business suppliers are currently experiencing through the Army and Air Force ePS e-marketplaces.”

The journey to this award, and it’s unclear if GSA has crossed the finish line given several unknown factors like how many bidders there were and if any that were unsuccessful would file a protest, was not an easy one. GSA took heat for initially overlooking, or ignoring, the requirement to comply with the Javits-Wagner-O’Day (JWOD) Act. The 1938 law mandates the AbilityOne Commission publish a procurement list that identifies commodities and services that the commission has determined are suitable to be furnished to the government by companies who employ people with disabilities. Agencies must buy these specific products and services unless there are specific circumstances that require exceptions.

GSA ended up fixing the solicitation to satisfy the protestors’ concerns.

The post GSA’s commercial platforms program to grow by five providers first appeared on Federal News Network.

An employee at the Federal Acquisition Service in the General Services Administration suggested using modern technology like 3D scanners to improve the maps of federal buildings to benefit emergency responders and others.

And two federal employees at the departments of Veterans Affairs and Commerce’s Census Bureau submitted an idea to translate ethical artificial intelligence principles into technical steps by developing processes to assess AI at every level, from inception to development, production and continuous performance evaluation.

These are just three of the 16 ideas from 10 agencies that GSA’s 10x program is considering for possible funding in 2024.

“Our fiscal 2024 investment priorities centered on ideas for reimagining public engagement and promoting equity in delivery. We also emphasized ‘Moonshot’ ideas: the biggest, boldest and most ambitious ideas to transform digital public services,” GSA wrote about 10x in a new blog post. “This round, ideas for artificial intelligence projects emerged as a standout category. Nearly one fifth of all the submissions we received were related to AI.”

GSA launched the 10x program in 2015, and it is now part of the Technology Transformation Service, as a venture studio where they ask federal employees to send ideas and then makes small investments with the goal of improving federal digital experiences.

GSA 10x to begin analysis

For the 2024 funding opportunity, 10x received almost 200 ideas from more than a dozen agencies. Along with AI, other topics included accessibility technology, public-to-agency communications and improving data sharing.

10x now will move these 16 projects into phase one of the program where cross-functional teams of technologists will try to answer the simple question, “Is there a there there?”

“They investigate the problem, get a sense of how and if this idea could impact the public, and explore whether a technology solution is possible,” GSA wrote. “We use the phase one findings to guide our investment decisions as we decide whether or not to move a project into subsequent phases.”

In a phase two, the 10x team analyzes the idea to decide if it’s ultimately a technology problem or not. If it’s more of a people, policy or funding challenge, 10x will not invest more resources in developing a product or service.

In phase three, the 10x team makes sure the solution integrates with the agency partner’s existing priorities and technology capabilities. The team is reviewing workflow processes and how the agency can continue to sustain and support the technology. Most 10x projects end after Phase 3, when the product is handed off to its agency product owner.

Then in phase four, 10x and the agency sponsor look to scale the technology to support different use cases across agencies and programs that drive the biggest impact with an ultimate goal of transforming digital services for the public.

10x says most ideas never make it to phase 2. For instance in 2022, of the 25 ideas that made it to phase one, only seven received funding for phase two. Additionally, 10x says fewer ideas actually make it to phase three and four where the team scales the solution to the public.

The notify.gov project is an example of a 10x funded program that made it to phase four.

Another example is the site scanning platform that offers real-time intelligence to help agencies improve website performance and compliance with government mandates by providing web managers with a customizable, automated scanning service.

The post GSA’s 10x to take deeper look at 16 ideas submitted by feds first appeared on Federal News Network.

When it comes to blue collar wages, a different standard seems to apply to federal agencies and to contractors. Two standards appear to apply when it comes to Trade Agreement Act Compliance. What’s going on? For on view, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with federal sales and marketing consultant Larry Allen.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin You are pointing to a Gao report and some other activities of the government which show that sometimes they don’t follow the rules agencies when paying things directly, that they expect contractors to follow. Tell us more.

Larry Allen A time that’s right. I think the bottom line is contractors need to always remember exactly where it is they stand when they’re doing government business, and that places at the bottom of the ladder. Even if you’ve got people working side by side in a government agency. The only real difference being the type of bad contractors need to understand that a different set of rules apply to them. That’s come out quite clearly recently. As you alluded to, the Government Accountability Office came out with a report recently saying 75% of federal agencies pay their hourly wage workers incorrectly, while some agencies pay more than the prevailing wage, a number of the pay less. And that was kind of the end of the GAO report. By contrast, if a contractor had been found to not be paying prevailing wage rates either under the Services Contract Act or in construction via Davis-bacon, they would have been really taken to the compliance woodshed. And that’s just a very much a double standard. Contractors need to be aware of that issue, and contractors can spend a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars for larger companies every year, ensuring that they stay in compliance with labor and wage rate requirements. It’s a whole thriving legal practice in and around the Beltway, too. Then the second part of it was the trade agreements that we read recently about the General Services Administration CIO getting taken to the congressional woodshed for his agency’s failure to do all the due diligence it should have done around the Trade Agreements Act. By and while getting taken to the congressional woodshed is never pleasant. It pales in comparison to the sometimes years long, 7 or 8 figure defenses that contractors have to put up when they are accused of Trade agreements act wrongdoing. That’s the second issue, and I’m just using these two issues to highlight the fact that contractors, again, they need to understand where they are. They can be scapegoated. They can have fingers pointed at them, even when things may not entirely be their fault, it’s easier to blame the contractor. So, you just have to be smart about how you’re approaching government business. Understand that there’s sometimes can be two standards. As I often told my teenage children, life isn’t fair.

Tom Temin That’s right.

Larry Allen I think you just have to remember that you.

Tom Temin Can’t win by saying to the government, well, you only paid those people less than the federal minimum wage or less than the Missouri or Michigan or whatever. It is minimum wage. But that’s not going to help you in federal government.

Larry Allen So a little bit like the parents of the teenagers in this case, Tom, it’s definitely do as I say, not as I do.

Tom Temin Right. In the Trade Agreement Act. By the way, the GSA incident that you mentioned concerns the acquisition of Chinese made conference room cameras, where presumably China has the potential to listen in on what’s going on in federal conference rooms because of that little cute camera sitting in the middle of the table.

Larry Allen If the Chinese are having trouble staying up at night, I recommend that they listen in on a lot of GSA conference calls.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Larry Allen. He’s president of Allen Federal Business Partners. And let’s talk about the appropriations bills that are now law. And we are into the second half, almost of the of the federal fiscal year. And there’s actually appropriations for 2024. The numbers are good for contractors.

Larry Allen Tom. They are good for contractors, particularly if you’re selling to the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security. Both of those agencies received funding increases over what the president had originally requested in his FY 24 budget request, particularly in the Department of Defense. You’re going to see things for all kinds of weapons programs, for research to maintain the U.S. technological edge across the board. In DHS, a lot of that funding is going to go to the southern border. And while a lot of it’s going to go to higher personnel, it’s also going to go to technology that the personnel can use in the conduct of their mission. So those are two good opportunities. And really what we’re talking about here is, you know, essentially by the time each individual office gets its numbers, spending number, we’re talking about five months left in the procurement. Cycle for this year. So just to modify a phrase, it’s very much, ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.

Tom Temin Yeah that’s right, because it takes a few weeks for the moneys to get deposited in the accounts.

Larry Allen What happens now is the Office of Management and Budget takes all the appropriated money. They pass it out to a certain degree for each agency. Give that back to the finance people in each agency, and then the agency further subdivides it to get into individual spending accounts. It’s a process that usually takes 4 to 6 weeks, depending on the agency.

Tom Temin Yeah. So that puts us into or puts federal contractors and buyers into what, May before they can actually.

Larry Allen That’s right. So, if you were planning on taking that spring vacation, think again. Bloomberg government recently reported that the sustained delay in implementing appropriations resulted in a 40% decline in government business. That’s a lot of business that’s going to have to be made up between now and September 30th.

Tom Temin What’s your best advice for contractors? I mean, they’ve got to somehow get the government to focus on spending and focus on letting these contracts, because the money is not multi-year money. So, it’s either spend it or lose it for a lot of these dollars in the in the 5 or 4 and a half months, it’ll remain when the government can actually do something.

Larry Allen Indeed. So, Tom, and I think one of the main things that contractors can do now is make sure you’re ready with a fast and reliable acquisition method that you can recommend to your government buyer. While some government agencies do have preferred acquisition methods, others are going to be looking for ways to get money obligated. That’s the key word. Get that money obligated by midnight, September 30th. And if you’re a contractor and you’ve got a couple of good fast options, whether it’s one of the many government wide acquisition contracts like GSA is a line three, or whether it’s, socioeconomic status like AA sole source, whatever it is that you’ve got that you can recommend as a fast and efficient way to get that agency to commit the money, you’re going to be that much of a better partner.

Tom Temin It also points to the fact of the need for being on the right contract vehicles for task orders because that’s the most efficient route from the government standpoint. And so, it really underscores the importance that you got to be able to have vehicles.

Larry Allen Well, right. And Bloomberg government recently came out with a report on that as well, talking about the use of best-in-class contracts. And while a lot of these are in the information technology world, Tom, there are also plenty of big spending that happens in the professional service, logistics, transportation worlds as well. So, agencies, more and more particularly civilian agencies are looking to these best in class, short name big contracts to do acquisitions. And what you find is that successful government contractors have 2 or 3, sometimes more, of these vehicles that make it easier for agencies to do business with them. And while there could be some grumbling among contractors about which type of contract gets a best-in-class designation, the fact is that agencies often view that as a symbol, that it’s a gold star type of program, that you can use, that nobody’s going to second guess you about.

Tom Temin All right. So, some work to do, basically.

Larry Allen Lots of work to do in a very short period of time to do it in.

The post Contractors wonder which of two procurement systems applies to them first appeared on Federal News Network.

Spring also means it is time to get organized and clean things up for the rest of the year. At home, that means putting together my “Spring Cleaning Checklist.” This year my home checklist includes, against all odds, turning my garage, which currently serves as a home storage unit, back into a garage.

Spring also means it is time for a Procurement Policy Spring Cleaning Checklist highlighting the key initiatives that will shape procurement operations for customer agencies and industry partners. Set forth below are just some of the items that should appear on the “Fair and Reasonable” checklist:

• Cybersecurity. The winter months saw a tsunami of proposed rules, management memos, and attestation forms all addressing various aspects of cybersecurity. Do all these “directives” provide a coherent, government-wide approach?  Is there an opportunity to improve harmonization of the cybersecurity framework? How do firms, especially small businesses, find the resources to make sense of it all?
• Artificial Intelligence (AI). Increasingly, AI is making its way into procurement operations.  What are the implications for government and industry? How is AI being leveraged to streamline procurement processes and evaluations? How is industry using AI to compete and win government business? And what of the data that is the “fuel” powering AI? How is that data validated and being used to avoid bias?
• Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Price Evaluation.  Significantly, the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) is revising its guidance to contracting officers regarding the evaluation/negotiation of MAS contract pricing. The Coalition appreciates the efforts of FAS to maintain dialogue with industry on this important guidance. Our members look forward to providing additional feedback when FAS issues a request for information regarding the proposed update.
• Small business opportunities. A host of recent studies have identified the shrinking industrial base serving the federal government and the corresponding impact on competition, innovation, and costs.  In the case of small businesses, while the overall amount of funds going to small businesses has increased over the last decade, the number of small businesses supporting the federal government has decreased. This decrease is a strong indication that structural barriers to entry into the government market are limiting the government’s access to the commercial market and small businesses. Over the coming months, the Coalition will be offering our recommendations on reducing barriers and increasing opportunities for small businesses in the federal space.
• Follow-on IT GWACs and more. Alliant, NASA SEWP, Polaris, CIO-SP4, ASCEND BPA, and OASIS+ are in various stages of the procurement process. As such, 2024 will be the year that shapes the interagency contracting market for the next five to 10 years. The Coalition has appreciated the engagement with each of these programs and looks forward to continuing the dialogue on ensuring they provide sound business opportunities for industry partners that deliver best value mission support for customer agencies.
• Sustainability. Recognizing that a significant amount of plastic waste comes from “one and done” packaging, the General Services Administration (GSA), among the largest government buyers purchasing a diverse set of products, sought information in connection with an anticipated rule on single-use packaging in products on the MAS. There are other policy initiatives under consideration, as announced in a recent Coalition Green Committee meeting by designated officers on the GSA Acquisition Policy Federal Advisory Committee (GAP FAC). These initiatives include addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and human health risks in federal procurement. Further action on single-use plastic packaging is expected later this spring, but vendors certainly will want to keep an eye out for the next steps associated with all these initiatives.
• GSA’s legislative proposals. A key legislative proposal recently announced by GSA seeks to amend the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) of 1984 to adjust the statutory authority for the MAS  program by clarifying what constitutes “competitive procedures” under the law. Currently, under CICA, the MAS  program is deemed a competitive procedure if participation is open to all responsible sources, and if orders and contracts under the program “result in the lowest overall cost alternative to meet the needs of the Federal Government.” (Cf. 41 USC 152(3)). When CICA was enacted, the MAS was a mandatory source limited to products, like commodities, and the language “lowest cost alternative” was interpreted as the lowest price because price was the most discriminating factor. The world, however, has changed in four decades. The Schedules program no longer is a mandatory source; most acquisitions under the program are for services; and the products and solutions sought include some of the most cutting-edge technologies, such as cloud, geospatial, and cyber solutions. Government buyers want and need the best value solution, one that encompasses price and other factors that may prove critical in driving buying decisions, such as the unique experience, technology, delivery terms, time, and/or the solution offered. GSA’s proposed legislation would address these government buyer needs and will fundamentally improve procurement operations for agencies and the American people.
• E-commerce follow-on. GSA has been working on the award of the next generation of the Commercial Platforms program, which was to expire last December. The program was extended under a short-term bridge contract and that extension is set to end next week. The program has become a significant channel for the acquisition of routine Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) items, as well as a means for vendor market access. How GSA moves forward this spring promises to be quite newsworthy.
• Supply chain risk management and domestic sourcing. Recently, the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs notified industry of the White Paper on Protective Equipment Procurement (PPE), Current State of Personal Protective Equipment Procurement by Make PPE in America Act Covered Agencies. This paper includes forecasts for the PPE needs of all three agencies and, borne of the nation’s experiences with COVID-19, is part of a larger effort to reduce Government reliance on essential foreign goods, including PPE. The government is planning to host events for industry to provide feedback on the paper and strengthen the domestic PPE supply chain. Such government-industry collaboration is important here, in connection with other supply chain issues, to assure continuity of mission, especially in times of crisis.

Based on the foregoing, readers readily can see that spring chores abound in federal procurement. Given the nature of a presidential election year, however, less time than usual may be available for all the chores to be completed. Rest assured, the Coalition stands ready to engage to offer a common sense perspective to improve the system on which so many rely.

The post Procurement policy spring cleaning checklist first appeared on Federal News Network.