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.

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.

The Defense Department uses the metric known as procurement administrative lead time, or PALT, to measure the time between the date an initial solicitation for a contract goes out and the date a contract is awarded.

A government watchdog agency said that while there have been improvements in contracting processes since DoD began collecting data to measure PALT in 2018, the award lead times vary depending on total contract value, contracting approach, contract type, extent of competition and the type of product or service procured.

For example, the award time on orders valued over $50 million increased by 70 days in the last four years.

The Government Accountability Office found that the median DoD-wide award lead times decreased by more than 20%, from 41 days in 2019 to 32 days in 2022.

DoD-wide median lead time by contracting approach:

• Definitive contracts: 97 days
• Indefinite delivery contracts: 179 days
• Orders: 21 days 

Median order award times are generally shorter across the service branches, while definitive and indefinite delivery contracts take significantly longer to award. For example, the Navy takes 132 days to award a definitive contract and 185 days to award indefinite delivery contracts.

In some instances, it takes under a day to place an order since those can be fulfilled through an indefinite delivery contract awarded to one vendor where all terms and conditions are already established.

For example, the Defense Logistics agency awards many orders for commercial goods, services and  supply items on existing indefinite delivery contracts, often with the help of automation, which allows the agency to process the awards in under one day.

“Over 85% of all definitive contracts awarded and over 90% of all orders issued by DoD from fiscal years 2019 through 2022 were below $10 million in value and had shorter median PALT timeframes. PALT values, both DoD-wide and within selected components, were generally longer for the award of definitive contracts and orders with larger total contract values,” the report stated.

The Army and Navy contracting processes decreased by 13% and 12%, respectively, while the median award times remained the same for the Air Force and the Defense Logistics Agency.

Additionally, the award times decreased for competed contracts but remained the same for sole-source contracts or those awarded through other non-competitive methods.

For example, the Army takes 247 days to award a contract within the research and development category, but it takes 102 days for the Navy and 131 days for the Air Force to award a contract within the research and development category.

For comparison, the Army takes 69 days to award a contract within the electronic and communication equipment category, while it takes 55 days for the Navy and 42 days for the Air Force to award a contract within the same category.

Generally, the service branches have adopted strategies to monitor award times. 

The Naval Sea Systems Command categorizes its contract awards by competed and non-competed contracts and then sets its goals. 

For example, the command’s goal for sole source procurements is not to exceed 210 days, while competitive procurements cannot to exceed 240 days.

The Army categorizes contract awards into four groups and assigns award-time estimate to each group by dollar value and contracting approach.

For example, for $100 million to $250 million contracts, the award times range from 80 days for orders placed on an existing indefinite delivery contract awarded to one vendor to 270 days for awards of new contracts.

But DoD doesn’t have department-wide visibility and understanding of the award times. And the DoD’s PALT tracker has shown to be of  limited use because of its incomplete data.

Additionally, the military services don’t find the PALT tracker useful and “reported that it is burdensome and duplicative of other systems they use.”

“Given these different perspectives, DoD would benefit from engaging with the components to determine if the PALT Tracker is needed to enhance DoD’s visibility into PALT changes for higher-dollar value contracts,” the report stated.

The post DoD award lead times increased for higher value contracts first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The Defense Department will receive $18.7 billion for military construction and family housing initiatives for fiscal 2024. The six-bill spending package passed by the House yesterday, includes funding for 300 military construction and housing projects. The 2024 Military Construction-VA bill provides $662 million to build over a dozen barracks, with roughly $320 million going toward revitalizing five privatized housing projects. The legislation also includes $2.5 billion for shipyard infrastructure optimization plan projects.
  (Defense Department will receive $18.7 billion for military construction projects - Senate Appropriations Committee)
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the FBI and the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are among the agencies that will likely have to deal with less money for the rest of the fiscal year. In the House version of the minibus package of appropriations bills passed yesterday, the EPA is getting 10% less funding than last year, while the ATF will be down 7%. The FBI is facing a 6% reduction. The Senate is expected to take up the package of bills before the continuing resolution expires on Friday night.
  (House passes $460 billion package of spending bills. Senate expected to act before shutdown deadline - Federal News Network)
• Two agencies will be looking for new technology leaders in the coming months. The Education Department is in need of a new chief information officer. The Homeland Security Department will have to fill its chief information security officer role this spring. Federal News Network has confirmed Luis Lopez, the Education Department CIO since December 2022, is leaving on March 22. He will take a job in the private sector. Meanwhile, DHS CISO Ken Bible is retiring after 39 years of federal service. His last day is March 29. Bible has been with DHS since January 2021, coming over from the Marine Corps.
  (Education, DHS among agencies seeking new technology leaders - Federal News Network)
• Pretty soon, there may be lots more apprenticeship opportunities in government. An executive order President Biden signed Wednesday tells federal agencies to take better advantage of the Labor Department's registered apprenticeship program. Agencies have spent years trying to shift away from college degree requirements for federal jobs. Now the Biden administration said offering more federal apprenticeships should get those skills-based hiring efforts further off the ground. The order encourages agencies to eventually turn apprentices into full-time federal employees. As another new requirement from the order, agencies will now create labor-management forums, if they do not already have them. The forums are meant to help federal unions and agency managers address employee concerns more easily and before they escalate.
  (White House presses agencies to use apprenticeships for skills-based hiring - Federal News Network)
• The Department of Veterans Affairs said it plans to hire-and-market jobs to military spouses. VA is leading a public-private partnership to adopt employment policies, such as telework and job transferability, that benefit military families. The VA said it is a leading employer of military spouses and offers jobs that travel with them, whenever their spouse has a change of station. The VA also allows military spouses to telework overseas and to hold federal jobs stationed in the US. The department is rolling out these efforts as part of an executive order President Joe Biden signed last summer to address a more than 20% unemployment rate among military spouses.
  (VA makes historic commitments to hire and support military spouses - Veterans Affairs)
• Do agencies need new hiring tools to address steep increases in Freedom of Information Act requests? Agencies are struggling to retain FOIA staff and hire new employees to deal with their increasing FOIA backlogs, according to a draft report from the FOIA Advisory Committee. The report found more than half of all FOIA professionals across government consider staffing to be their greatest need. The draft report would recommend that the Office of Personnel Management give agencies direct hire authority for FOIA positions. The committee is expected to vote on the final report in April.
  (With FOIA backlogs on the rise, do agencies need direct-hire authority? - Federal News Network)
• The expert panel Congress chartered to give DoD's Cold War-era budgeting system a tune-up has a lot of ideas. The Commission on Planning, Programming Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) delivered its final report yesterday, after two years of study and hundreds of interviews. All told, there are 28 recommendations that DoD and Congress will need to implement over the next three-to-five years, but the key idea is to replace the slow PPBE process with a more modern one called the "Defense Resourcing System." Read more about the recommendations at Federalnewsnetwork.com.
  (Long-awaited report would replace DoD’s PPBE process with ‘Defense Resourcing System’ - Federal News Network)
• The Government Publishing Office (GPO) has a new senior leader to manage the agency's workforce and human resources office. The agency announced on Wednesday that Beth Shearer will step in as GPO's chief human capital officer (CHCO). Shearer has held various human capital roles over the last two decades, many of which were at GPO. As CHCO, Shearer will be in charge of agency employee policies and human capital initiatives.
  (GPO director names chief human capital officer - Government Publishing Office)
• A new report from the Congressional Budget Office finds that the basic allowance for housing (BAH) for military personnel is higher than what civilians pay for rent and utilities. On average, the BAH rate for E-5 personnel with dependents is about 47% higher than the median rents paid by civilians with similar age and education profiles. The difference narrows to about 20% for civilians with income similar to E-5 personnel. Those service members are usually between the ages of 23 and 28 and hold the rank of sergeant in the Army, Marine Corps and Air Force, and second-class petty officer in the Navy and Coast Guard.
  (BAH rate for military personnel is higher than 'civilians' rent - CBO)
• Federal employees would have to disclose any royalty payments they receive in carrying out their official duties under a new bill advancing in the Senate. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 12 to 0 to approve the Royalty Transparency Act on Wednesday. The legislation would also require members of federal advisory committees to disclose potential financial conflicts of interest. And it also requires that public financial disclosure forms for federal employees are made available online.
  (Transparency bill on royalties paid to government officials advances in committee - HSGAC)

The post DoD slated to receive over $18B for military construction initiatives first appeared on Federal News Network.

Multiple-award contracts don’t mean everyone who bids get a slot. A new federal circuit court ruling shows that losing companies can protest those who did get an award and maybe knock them off. For details on this important case, the Federal Drive Host Tom Temin  talked with attorney Stephen Bacon of Rogers-Joseph-O’Donnell.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin So this was protested, not to the [Government Accountability Office (GAO)], but to the court in the first place, the Court of Federal Claims. Tell us what happened here. Who’s suing who?

Stephen Bacon So this was a VA procurement, the [Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology-Next Generation (T4NG)] contract for IT services. Some of your listeners may know there’s a T4NG to second generation contract, that this was the first generation contract, and actually an onramp process where the VA was seeking to add contractors to the first generation of the T4NG contract. And so this protest involved a challenge to that competition for the on ramp.

Tom Temin All right. And they were going to add several. And this one company did not make the cut and protested.

Stephen Bacon That’s right. So the solicitation as is often the case for a multiple award contract, it said that the VA intended to add seven awardees, but it gave the agency flexibility to choose the number of awardees, and the agency ultimately made nine awards to proposals that were either good or outstanding. And REV was rated acceptable and so it didn’t make the cut and then challenged that determination by the VA.

Tom Temin So REV losing company challenged the findings of excellent or good of some of the ones that did get awards. And what grounds did they base that on? What information did they have that would allow them to say, hey, they should have been acceptable like us, or we should have been good like them.

Stephen Bacon So REV actually had two categories of allegations. It’s common in a bid protest. In the first instance, they challenged the VA’s evaluation of their own proposal saying instead of acceptable, we should have been rated either good or outstanding because of flaws in the way that the agency evaluated our proposal. But they also challenged six of the awardees and argued that they should have been eliminated from the competition for one reason or another. They made allegations that some of the awardees had organizational conflicts of interest that should have excluded them, or had some other defect in their proposal that rendered them unacceptable under the terms of the solicitation.

Tom Temin Right. So those are pretty serious findings, organizational conflicts of interests. Something that raises eyebrows. But initially at the Court of Federal Claims, they were just ruled out on jurisdictional grounds, standing grounds, I should say.

Stephen Bacon On standing grounds with respect to the second category of allegations. So in a bid protest, one of the key sort of thresholds that you have to get over is to be able to establish if you have standing to protest, meaning that you have the right to even bring your allegations into court. And so that’s a two part test. The first is to decide whether you’re an actual offer or in the competition that has a direct economic interest in the outcome. That’s typically easy to satisfy as long as you’ve submitted a proposal. But there’s the second part of the test that was really at issue here. And that’s showing that there’s prejudicial error that you’re alleging, in other words, that you can show that there was a substantial chance that you would have received a contract if the agency didn’t make whatever error you’re alleging in the protest. And so that prong of the standing test was really kind of the core issue that the Court of Federal Claims used to say that REV didn’t have standing to challenge the awardees, because in the first instance, it didn’t establish that the agency had made any error in assigning an acceptable rating to its proposal. The court took that finding that there was no error in the acceptable finding. And so even if REV was able to successfully eliminate some of the awardees, the court ruled that it didn’t show that it would have had a substantial chance at winning the contract.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Stephen Bacon. He’s an attorney with Rogers, Joseph O’Donnell. But then REV went to the Federal Circuit Court on appeal then and got a different finding.

Stephen Bacon That’s right. The Federal Circuit reversed, they brought this issue of standing, REV did, to the Federal Circuit, and the Federal Circuit disagreed with the way that the Court of Federal Claims addressed this standing question in the context of a multiple award contract where there’s no set number of guaranteed awardees. And the circuit disagreed with the Court of Federal Claims logic that if the six awardees that REV had challenged were eliminated, that they wouldn’t have had a substantial chance. The circuit agreed with the protester and said, if you had six of those awardees and they had been eliminated, there would have been room for REV to hypothetically get into the winner’s circle if its right about its allegations.

Tom Temin Well, that’s like the San Francisco 49ers saying, well, if it wasn’t for those people from the Midwest and Kansas City, we would have won the Super Bowl. What is the meaning of that of saying, well, if. Because the if didn’t occur, those companies were rated higher.

Stephen Bacon That’s right. So it’s sort of a hypothetical test that the court engages in to decide whether they’re even going to address the merits of your protest. And so this isn’t ruling in favor of the protester on the merits. It’s just simply saying that the court should have grappled with and decided whether those six awardees should have been eliminated because the Court of Federal Claims just didn’t even reach those issues. And so this decision kicks it back to the lower court to say whether there was an organizational conflict of interest or whether there were some reason that the protester pointed out correctly, potentially, that some of those awardees should have been eliminated.

Tom Temin So at this point, then, FEVS has spent a lot of time and money to break new legal ground, but not necessarily to get that contract.

Stephen Bacon That’s right. This doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily going to get into the winner’s circle, but it gives them another opportunity to go back to the Court of Federal claims and have their, at least at a minimum, have their OCI allegations heard and their allegations that some of the other awardees should have been eliminated, heard. And if that’s the case, if they’re able to prevail on that, then in theory they could get an award.

Tom Temin Right. But does that happen automatically? Once the Federal Circuit Court has rendered its opinion, is it up to the company to carry that back and get a new court date and retry the whole thing at the Federal Court of Claims?

Stephen Bacon That’s right. So it will go back remanded. Is the legal term, remanded to the Court of Federal Claims to then decide those other allegations on the merits based on the administrative record before the court. And if the court rules in favor of the protester, then that typically kicks it back to the agency to then look at the court’s findings. And if the protester was correct, that may change the outcome of the new evaluation that the agency has to conduct to comply with the court’s ruling.

Tom Temin And how long could all that take? By the time T4NG two comes out?

Stephen Bacon That’s one of the curious things about this case is they’re fighting over getting on the onramp on to the prior generation contract. And now there’s already been awards under the second generation T4NG contract. So it’s a little curious to wonder what what their real interest is in here. But I suppose there’s still some runway left on this first generation contract, and they’re hoping they can get on it. If the agency continues to award task orders.

Tom Temin In another domain of adjudicating cases, there is the concept of is this case precedential or is it simply routine application of what we already knew. Is this in some sense precedential?

Stephen Bacon Sure. Any time the Federal Circuit rules on a bid protest issue, I kind of think of them like the Supreme Court of government contracts in a sense. There’s very rarely does a bid protest go all the way up to the actual Supreme Court. So typically, the Federal Circuit is the court of last resort for government contracts. And so any time they rule on this kind of issue, it sets a precedent in this particular area. And here with the proliferation and importance of multiple award contracts, this does provide that helpful clarification that protesters really should have a right to go in and challenge awardees, even where there’s some flexibility that the agency has to make a particular number of awards.

The post Contractors have new grounds to protest their way into a multiple-award contract first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Pentagon’s massive project to overhaul the military’s system for moving members’ belongings from one duty station to another has cleared its latest technical hurdle and is finally ready to begin implementation, government and company officials involved with the multibillion dollar Global Household Goods contract said Tuesday.

A new round of IT integration testing, conducted in January, proved “successful,” Stuart Bradie, the president and CEO of KBR, told investors on a conference call. HomeSafe, the holder of the up to $17.9 billion Global Household Goods Contract (GHC), is a joint venture between KBR and Tier One Relocation.

Problems with integrating U.S. Transportation Command’s systems with the vendors’ technology, called HomeSafe Connect, were the latest hurdle in implementing the moving contract, which Defense officials previously planned to being using for military moves last September. Now that those issues have been ironed out, HomeSafe and DoD intend to start conducting “test moves” involving short-distance shipments this spring, Bradie said.

“The volume ramp will be in a controlled manner through the year with the expectation of significantly ramping up into 2025, especially the busy season and international moves will then follow as we head into 2026,” he said. “So in short, a delay of one year. Though a delay is always frustrating, I believe it has allowed both sides that time to direct the startup and of course the ramp, which ultimately is a good thing.”

On a conference call with reporters later Tuesday, U.S. Transportation Command officials said they intended to begin the test moves as soon as possible. Within the next few weeks, after some final consultations with the military departments, officials plan to publicly announce the first locations where the new moving contract will be implemented for the first time.

The first awards to HomeSafe for actual — albeit short-distance military moves — should be made within the “next couple of weeks,” said Andy Dawson, the director of TRANSCOM’s Defense Property Management Office.

“And then the next steps after local moves will be  interstate moves between installations, and then we’ll look to expand locations,” he said. “And there’s several ways that we can increase the volume. Whether it’s increasing the zip codes around an installation, or increasing those interstate shipments. Our first focus is on the domestic, and that is our initial priority.”

During the upcoming 2024 peak summer season, DoD only expects about 1% of its overall household goods volume to use the new moving contract. From there, it intends to start ramping up its use of GHC within the continental United States starting in September. International moves under the new contract aren’t likely to begin until September 2025 at the earliest.

“We’re finalizing [the timeline] right now, but I think what’s different this year is the ability to do these test shipments and actually see the systems in use,” Dawson said. “We can get feedback and make whatever adjustments are necessary, and that will help us drive the timeline this fall. That’s really the game changer for this summer: these test shipments and the ability to actually see the tools in use.”

Supplier base will be adequate, company says

KBR’s Bradie also sought to reassure investors that HomeSafe will have enough participation from the moving industry to successfully implement the contract. The company does not operate any trucks or employ any movers on its own; it will rely entirely on subcontractors to conduct the work.

Federal News Network reported in January that few, if any of DoD’s current moving providers are willing to take part in the GHC contract, partly because the rates HomeSafe is offering are significantly lower than what DoD is currently paying the companies under its existing moving system, known as DP3. Several traditional movers said they would lose money if they agreed to take shipments under the new rate structure.

But Bradie dismissed those concerns as “media noise.”

“The intent of this program is to redefine the moving experience of our military personnel and their families, and to deploy an IT backbone with intelligence to retain data and knowledge that allows for optimization and importantly, accountability. To achieve this, we require a certain level of disruption and of course, disruption leads to change,” he said. “The objective is to disrupt the industry so it becomes far more competitive and a lot of the middle layers are taken out. We get to focus on the actual truckers and their families, and we help them grow their businesses because they’re performing and they’re accountable. So I expect more noise in that sense. Am I concerned about the rate structure? No, I’m not. I think we will work through that with TRANSCOM.”

Bradie said HomeSafe now has 380 “fully executed” agreements in place with moving subcontractors, and that “several” large van lines have told the company they are willing to commit to working under the new moving contract once the program reaches higher volumes of moves.

Reached by email, a spokesperson for HomeSafe said the 380 companies who have signed on and passed its vetting criteria are a mix of existing military movers and firms with experience only in non-military moves. However, HomeSafe is declining to identify any of those subcontractors.

“Vocal opposition seeking to hinder the GHC roll-out leaves some of our subcontractors reticent to publicly disclose their partnerships with us,” the company said in a statement. “Much of the opposition to the GHC is a push to preserve the status quo, and it neglects to consider why we need the GHC in the first place: to correct longstanding issues with the military move process which have caused military families unnecessary harm and stress. The military community and Congress demanded reform, and HomeSafe is answering that demand.”

Subcontractor capacity remains unclear

Industry experts said it is difficult to know how much moving capacity will be available under the GHC contract without knowing which firms have signed up. They also cautioned that signing HomeSafe’s master services agreement does not guarantee that a given firm will actually conduct moves under the new moving contract.

“We don’t have independent numbers on [signed contracts], but it would seem to me that a signed agreement doesn’t necessarily mean a service provider is compelled to move any shipments just because they signed the agreement,” said Daniel Bradley, the vice president for government and military relations at the International Association of Movers. “Certainly, some of our members have said they signed the agreement as a way to learn more about compensation structure, because there have been times when potential service providers couldn’t get access to view rates without having signed an agreement.”

In a January interview, Matt Dolan, HomeSafe’s president, acknowledged the company faces an uphill battle in persuading moving companies to sign on.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do to convince them,” he told Federal News Network. “I don’t think the whole story has been told, but I think the one thing that’s definite is that this is going forward. TRANSCOM is committed, and we’re committed. Compensation will always be an issue, but TRANSCOM has been a great partner and there are methods to take that into account. I have great friends in industry who give me their straight feelings on it, and I don’t deny any of it. But we think we’ll be successful.”

The post DoD ready to start implementing multibillion dollar moving contract after solving latest tech hurdle first appeared on Federal News Network.

A new rule is expected any time now that will overhaul how the Defense Department buys from the Ability One program. That is the vehicle for non-profit employers of people with disabilities to deliver goods and services to the government. Contractors under the Ability One program worry the new rule will hinder a chief program goal of helping those very employees. To discuss concerns, the Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with Larysa Kautz, the President and CEO of Melwood, which supports children, youth, and adults with disabilities to “work and play where and how they choose.”

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin Briefly give us where Melwood fits within the apparatus. That is the Ability One program serving federal agencies and the Defense Department.

Larysa Kautz Sure, Tom. We are one of the tops of the 400 agencies around the country that serve as Ability One contractors. We’re a nonprofit. We’re a leading employer advocate and preferred provider for people with disabilities. We have about 60 different federal contract sites around the D.C. region.

Tom Temin And what types of goods and services do you generally operate with?

Larysa Kautz So we do custodial, we do landscaping. We actually grow all of the flowers for the Kennedy Center in our greenhouses, and we do all the landscaping there. We have a top-secret facility clearance because we make sure that the Attorney General’s office is clean. And the State Department, Fort Meade, we do building maintenance. I like to say that we help run the government.

Tom Temin All right, well, next time I’m at the opera, I’m going to take a close up look at the flowers at the Kennedy Center. And I’ll say, I know where those came from. There is a new rule that is about to come out any day now from the Defense Department. I guess it is from the controlling authorities for Ability One. And you’re concerned that this could make it tougher for companies, nonprofits like yours and disrupt long standing practice? What in general do you expect the rule to look like?

Larysa Kautz So, Tom, you know, the DoD did a review of the Ability One program a few years ago. It was very in-depth, and it had proposals to modernize the program, one of which is to add, a level of competition to the program to ensure that the contractors are performing with excellence and that there’s a chance to do a price competition potentially every five years for the contracts. Now, this has been reviewed by the Ability One Commission and the proposed rule, which is now in its final stages and expected to come out soon, proposes to compete contracts. At least the proposed rule proposes to compete contracts that are above $2 million a year, which will involve a very, very large number of contracts in the program and basically focuses on price, as the main differentiator between non-profits competing for that. It does not look at the biggest bottom line value proposition of the program, which is job creation. And there’s this trade off in the program between price and employment. If we lower our price to the lowest possible amount, we will be hiring the people who are least significantly disabled, who are more productive will be cutting costs with respect to coaching and job coaching and counseling and accommodations. You know, if we really go to the bottom line of lowering price at any cost, it’s not going to help achieve the mission of the program. The program’s bottom-line value is there is a return on investment to the government of this program beyond just the prices that the agencies are spending for the services. We did a study with Virginia Tech last year that showed that the program reduces government spending by about $38,000 per person who has been employed and served by Melwood. But this rule doesn’t take into an account any impact and calculations of that value proposition and what impact it will be to have a lowest price, technically acceptable kind of a shootout between the non-profits and how that will impact the general return on investment. Right.

Tom Temin And that $2 million that you mentioned, contract threshold, that is a significant reduction from the requirement for periodic competition now, which is 10 million.

Larysa Kautz So the 898 panel, which was the DoD panel that proposed competition, they were the ones that set the proposed $10 million floor because, you know, they know that competition is a disruptor, right? This program was created to have long term, stable jobs for people with disabilities. And as long as the nonprofit is performing the work satisfactorily, we keep the contracts. We don’t compete them every five years. And so, they knew that with this change we would have to hire business development people and pricing experts and really fight for the contracts, which in my opinion is a waste of charitable dollars since we’re all nonprofits and we take the margin on these contracts, and we reinvest it in the community. And so, they set a $10 million floor. And they also said that social impact would be considered in the value proposition of the competition. Now, that has been completely left out of this proposed rule, nearly 100 organizations, both the contractors and disability organizations and others provided comments to the proposed rule with respect to both that threshold and the social impact not being part of it. And I’m just hoping that in the final rule that we see some move from the proposed rule back to the way that the DoD originally had proposed it.

Tom Temin We were speaking with Larysa Kautz. She’s the president and CEO of Melwood. And traditionally, people working in the Ability One contractors because they’re disabled, sometimes severely so, have received much lower wages than are prevailing for people that are fully abled under, you know, federal labor law. And there’s been a move in recent years to raise the level of pay that those people receive because reasoning is, well, they’re working and they’re providing value. So why shouldn’t they get the same minimum wage as everyone else? Those two ideas seem to be in collision then, price competition plus, you know, dramatic wage raises for people with disabilities working for the contractors.

Larysa Kautz Absolutely, Tom, and I love that you bring this up, because it’s exactly what the problem is with this proposed regulation. It’s only looking at the price to the customer, and it’s trying to drive down the price to the federal agencies. Meanwhile, in the background, there are policy shifts. There are other regulations being proposed to the program to modernize it, to make sure that everybody’s being paid a competitive wage, to make sure that we shore up as non-profits, the vocational support and counseling that we do. A lot of those things are now becoming a priority and a requirement of the program. But at the same time, this regulation doesn’t take any of that into account. If there was a balance in the regulation where social impact and price and technical proposal and past performance, if all of those were weighted equally, then the government would truly get the best value and the best benefit from each of those contracts. But really, truly just focusing on price, I think it doesn’t acknowledge the real mission of this program, which is good jobs for people that are the most significantly disabled.

Tom Temin And in a practical sense, these are not big-ticket items in defense terms. I mean, it’s not like you’re supplying them the next generation of bomber, which has, you know, $1 trillion lifecycle cost. It’s services like you say, landscaping, cafeterias, flowers, pens and pencils, that kind of thing.

Larysa Kautz It’s significantly less than 1% of the DoD’s budget. I mean, we’re talking about half of a percent of the DoD budget. And there’s been so much time and effort and energy involved to really think through how to put competition into this program when I just, you know, we just did a renegotiation for our Fort Meade contract. We saved the government $24 million over a five-year period by sitting across the table, opening up all of our books, really talking to them about the services that they need on the ground. And we even, you know, we got a write up in an article that said that they really were extremely satisfied and surprised by sort of that open kimono type of negotiation. That’s what’s possible in this program, and that’s how this program was designed to run. I think by moving backwards to less transparency, to more competition with people bidding bare minimum amounts for the scope of the contract as it’s drafted, which then leads to misperceptions, modifications to the contracts, you know, actually more money in the long run that’s wasted in contract administration and right sizing the contract after the fact. I just wish that that had been investigated and quantified and thought about. But there really isn’t much in this rule that shows a cost benefit calculation in those terms.

The post Contractors say new AbilityOne Commission rule could undermine people with disabilities first appeared on Federal News Network.

Brian Goodger, the NITAAC director, said NITAAC is planning to keep CIO-SP3 open through October 29 and have the option for another six months after that, if necessary.

“The justification for approval to continue the contract still needs a final sign off,” Goodger said at the AFCEA West conference yesterday. “If you are on the CIO-SP3 contract vehicle, once the extension is approved, it will run through the entire fiscal year.”

Goodger said the reason for the new extension is, once again, because of protests holding up the CIO-SP4 governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC). He said the vehicle is facing six new protests before the Court of Federal Claims, and resolving those complaints could take up to a year.

“Those six are represented by the same one or two law firms. This Friday we will find out which judge is appointed by the COFC,” Goodger said. “That is important because some judges tend to side with the government and others tend to side with industry so we may be able to discern where this latest set of protests are going.”

Should this extension go through, it would push the expiration date of CIO-SP3 more than two years past the original sunset date of May 2022.

The six protests bring the total number of protests above 350 in two plus years. NITAAC has won a majority of the complaints.

The latest round of complaints came after Goodger said NITAAC alerted 464 vendors in January that they had tentatively met requirements of the contract for award, and now NITAAC is doing their due diligence before making a final award decision.

“We rescored and revalidated the bids that we got last fall,” he said. “The number of points needed to meet the threshold to win a spot on the contract went down. We increased the number of potential winners from 431 to 464.”

NITAAC’s CIO-CS gets new name

While NITAAC continues to push the CIO-SP4 contract across the finish line, Goodger said it’s about to start the hard work on the follow-on to the CIO-CS vehicle.

He said, first off, NITAAC is changing the name of CIO-CS from CIO Commodities and Solutions to CIO Commodities Store.

NITAAC awarded the 10-year CIO-CS GWAC to 64 companies, all value-added resellers (VARs) or other equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in 2015. CIO-CS is an IT products contract for end-user hardware and software as well as several other commercial technologies.

“I expect the number of awards to go up by 30% or 40% with an equal proportion of VARS and OEMs,” Goodger said.

He said NITAAC will issue a sources sought notice for the next version of CIO-CS in late March. The acquisition organization doesn’t plan on issuing a draft request for proposals, and plans to release the final solicitation in the June or July time frame.

Goodger said NITAAC expects to make awards by late January 2025, and if all goes well, the new CIO-CS contract would start by May.

He said NITAAC likely will not use a self-scoring sheet, and it will be based on best value evaluation factors and not lowest-price, technically acceptable (LPTA).

“We expect CIO-CS to get fewer proposals than CIO-SP4,” he said. “We likely will not have an on-ramp because the interest isn’t there for products like it is for services. But we will have an off ramp for those companies that are not competing or have not won any task orders and are not complying with the administrative requirements after a year or two.”

Goodger said NITAAC is paying attention to the experience of the Department of Homeland Security  and its FirstSource III contract, which similarly is for IT products. DHS is in its third year of trying to award this contract with a $1.5 billion ceiling. He said NITAAC met with DHS acquisition officials recently to discuss their approach and challenges to FirstSource III.

CIO-CS has been a fairly successful contract with more than $2.3 billion in obligations over the nine years, well under the $20 billion ceiling. By contrast, CIO-SP3 received more than $5 billion in obligations last year alone.

The post NITAAC seeking another 6-month extension for CIO-SP3 first appeared on Federal News Network.

The issue of whether the small business rule of two “shall” apply to orders goes back to the codification of the MAC concept in the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994. Initially, the consensus was that the rule of two applied at the contract level, considering the fair opportunity requirements that apply to MACs. Over the decades, there have been size protests, bid protests, reports to Congress, proposed and final regulations, as well as proposed and actual legislation, trying to settle once and for all whether the rule of two must be followed prior to placing an order or choosing a contract vehicle. The OMB memo, which is not a regulation and did not go through the traditional notice and comment procedures required by the Administrative Procedures Act, raises multiple operational and policy questions.

Is there an actual need for the policy? In fiscal year 2022, the Federal government awarded small businesses a record $162 billion, or 26.5%, of all contract dollars. [1] The Federal government has met or exceeded the statutory 23 percent small business goal for the last decade. Small businesses are doing even better under best-in-class MACs, receiving approximately 38% of the total dollars awarded. [2] Small businesses received 40% of the dollars awarded under the professional services OASIS MAC [3] and over 31% of the total dollars awarded on the information technology services CIO-SP3 MAC. [4]

Is this a cardinal change to the contract, such that large and medium-sized businesses should be entitled to adjust pricing to cover lost opportunity? These businesses competed for and priced these contracts based on an historic, expected level of competition and opportunity that will no longer exist.  This is especially significant for medium sized businesses that rely on MACs for procurement opportunities.

Will contract costs increase as a result of less competition? The scope of current MACs has essentially been expanded for small businesses as they no longer need to compete with large and medium-sized businesses for certain orders. Does the Federal government need to renegotiate lower contract prices from small businesses to account for this new, expanded set-aside within an existing MAC?

If small businesses are on a full and open MAC, presumably they can perform all orders under the scope of that contract. Under these circumstances, when will MAC orders not be set aside? Can an agency using a full and open MAC that includes small businesses ever successfully make a determination not to set aside an order? Simply put, the award of prime contracts to multiple small businesses under a full and open MAC is a determination that the small businesses can do the work.    Similarly, to the extent agencies have awarded side-by-side set-aside and full and open MACs (such as OASIS), will agencies ever use the full and open contract?

To what extent will the memo result in increased litigation and procurement delays arising from challenges to the contracting officer’s business judgment on the capabilities or fair market prices of small businesses? Similarly, SBA’s rules require size recertification on set-aside orders under full and open contracts. Are procuring agencies ready for the additional delays associated with size protests and appeals, which may end up in Federal Court if a party does not like the SBA’s size protest and appeal decision?

Does the memo implement congressional intent? In 2010, Congress attempted to address the issue and implement a recommendation from a 2007 Report to Congress by stating that agencies “may” set aside orders under MACs for small business. The courts and GAO are split on the interpretation of the 2010 statutory language, and Congress has not acted to further address the question.

Putting aside potential Administrative Law issues, is it fair or good public policy to impose such a momentous policy through a memo without the notice and comment that applies to traditional rulemaking? The memo likely will impact the majority of Federal contractors that employ millions of individuals around the country and world. Moreover, the very questions raised here are of a type that the regulatory notice and comment process, in part, is designed to address.

Streamlining regulations, reporting, and procurement processes will do more to attract new small entrants to participate in the Federal market. It is the regulatory and compliance burden that is driving small businesses from the market or preventing them from entering in the first place. These barriers to entry are simply too high and too costly for many small businesses.

For the benefit of government and industry, the agency may wish to consider pausing its implementation of the memo and engaging with all stakeholders to address the government’s goals and the memo’s impact.

The post OMB Memo on Increasing Small Business Participation on Multiple-Award Contracts first appeared on Federal News Network.

Part of that sigh of relief that you may have heard coming from the Pentagon when Congress passed the 2024 defense authorization bill was for no major new requirements for managing other transaction agreements (OTA) authority.

The two provisions in the NDAA around OTAs were minimal, including asking the Government Accountability Office to report on the Defense Department’s spending through this process.

The fact Congress left OTAs mostly alone is a good thing as DoD recently updated its guidance for using this tool.

MaryKathryn Robinson, the director for contract policy in the Office of Defense Pricing and Contracting, said the growth of OTAs over the last seven years truly precipitated the new how-to guide.

“We want to be able to help the DoD acquisition community as well as our partners in industry, academia and nonprofits to help define what an OTA is, and help them create the best OTAs that they can,” Robinson said in an interview with Federal News Network. “We made those updates based on changes in statute and regulation, and recommendations that we received from the DoD inspector general and from the Government Accountability Office. But then we also added administrative guidance and best practices for things like reporting funding, participation and validation of those non-traditional defense contractors, protest procedures, agreements, contract officer warranting and training, and then other considerations for folks to take into account as they move forward with their OTAs.”

DoD hadn’t updated its OTA guide in about five years and a lot has changed since then both in the use of these approaches as well as concerns about them.

Between 2016 and 2022, Robinson said DoD has taken about 15,000 OTA actions, which includes both new agreements and modifications. Those 15,000 actions were worth about $70 billion.

The real push for OTAs, however, came after 2018. In 2016, for example DoD took about 333 OTA actions worth $1.3 billion. By 2020, and that includes the use of OTAs as part of the response to COVID-19, DoD took 3,200 OTA actions worth $16 billion.

“We’ve come down a little bit in our dollar spend. But right now in 2022, our last year of full data, we had about 4,400 actions for about $10.7 billion. Right now we’re thinking that, and I don’t have the final 2023 numbers, but I think that 2023 is going to come in around that,” Robinson said. “I know that about 80% is for research and development. Then, we have a couple OTAs for weapons and ammunition, electronic and communication equipment or professional services.”

While 2023 data isn’t finalized, HigherGov, a government market intelligence company, estimated that in 2023, DoD had more than 1,200 active OTAs worth more than $23.6 billion.

During those growth years, Congress has paid close attention to DoD’s use of OTAs. In the 2020 NDAA, for example, Congress required a report from the Pentagon on the use of OTAs for prototype projects.

In the 2024 NDAA, Congress told GAO to submit a report by Feb. 1, 2025 on the use of OTAs with a focus on:

• The extent to which such transactions are used in accordance with policy and guidance related to the use of such transactions;
• The total number of transactions for each fiscal year made to nontraditional defense contractors;
• A summary of such transactions to which DoD is a participant for which performance has not been completed on the date of submission of such report, including— (a) a description of the entity or agency responsible for any consortium; (b) the number of members in each consortium, including the percentage of such members who are nontraditional defense contractors for each such consortium; (c) the total amount awarded under such transactions to each consortium manager for fiscal years 2022 and 2023; (d) the total amount awarded under such transactions to members who are nontraditional defense contractors for each such consortium for fiscal years 2022 and 2023; and (e) a list of contractors who have been awarded more than $20.0 million under such transactions, including a brief description of each such award, the number of awards made, and the total dollar amount awarded for fiscal years 2022 and 2023.

The second OTA related provision in the 2024 NDAA focused on clarifying the use of OTAs for installation or facility prototyping. Congress also increased the amount of the agreement to $300 million from $200 million.

Non-traditional vs. traditional contractors

Despite the growth, concerns and myths about how DoD is using OTAs continue to survive.

Robinson said one key feature of the guide is to dispel many of those myths.

One big one is “traditional” defense contractors get many of these awards. Robinson said while it may look like the big defense contractors are winning many of the OTA agreements, DoD measures participation by non-traditionals differently than just by who signed the agreement.

“The requirement is for a non-traditional defense contractor to be part of the team in a significant way. In fiscal 2022, 92% of our OTAs were awarded to those OTA contractors or performers that had a non-traditional defense contractor performer on they’re doing something and in a significant way,” she said. “What does it mean to say ‘in a significant way?’ The agreements officers are actually held to figure that out and make that determination and make that independent judgment. Significant is not necessarily dollars. Significant could be specifically a key technology or a specific cost reduction. Some of the things that we look at is does the non-traditional defense contractor supply a new key technology, product or process? Do they have a novel application or approach to technology? Do they have material increase in the performance efficiency of a key technology? Do they result in a material reduction in cost and schedule a project or to provide a material increase in the performance of the prototype project? So again, that does not necessarily mean that they’re the prime contractor on something. But it does mean that they’re doing some heavy lifting on the actual project itself.”

Another big myth DoD tries to dispel is that OTAs aren’t, or don’t need to be, competitive.

Robinson said DoD not only encourages competition for OTAs, but actually benefits the military service or defense organization in the long run.

“The other benefit of a competitive prototype OTA is that you can go to a non-competitive follow on production award out of that,” she said. “Another myth that we continually hear is that OTAs can only be awarded through consortium. In 2022, 50% of our OTA actions were awarded through or to a consortium. But again, it’s only 50%. OTAs can be awarded to a single company. They can be awarded to a joint venture. They can be awarded through partnerships.”

In addition to mythbusting, DoD included uses cases, a step-by-step approach to executing OTAs, legal considerations and definitions of the different types of agreements.

Robinson said there is a lot of training and other tools to help DoD use OTAs.

“OTAs are an opportunity for agreements officers to be flexible and to be innovative and to work with their partners in industry, academia, to come up with something terrific, novel and inventive for the warfighter,” she said. “Hopefully they recognize the guide is not here to prescribe any approaches, but it’s here to help them figure out how to use that OTAs appropriately so we can meet the warfighter needs.”

The post Growth of OTAs, corresponding myths gave DoD plenty of reason to update its guide first appeared on Federal News Network.

As another continuing resolution looms, agencies are in limbo as they consider starting new projects. Then you have some unfortunate protest rulings. No wonder federal contractors are nervous about calendar-year 2024. For one take on the the situation, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with federal sales and marketing consultant Larry Allen.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin  And Larry, it looks like there’s sort of weird news everywhere you look. But I wanted to start with something a little bit arcane. There was, as you’re writing about compliance, three recent developments companies need to know to stay on the right side of the ledger, including when low price can get you into trouble. Let’s give the thumbnails of what’s going on there.

Larry Allen So, Tom, these are three recent decisions that all came out of various judicial enclaves. And I think it’s they are things that contractors need to know about. First up, we talk so much about low price, technically acceptable in the federal government today. A lot of contractors can come away with the sometimes-false impression that low price rules always and everywhere. And yet there was a recent case that showed that a company actually bid an unrealistically low amount for a potential project. Now, Tom, I’ve been in this business for a while, and this is certainly not the first time that I’ve seen this, but that’s an important reminder because we actually don’t see it that often. If you’re a government contractor in your bidding on a project, you have to bid a reasonable price and you have to bid competitively. But that doesn’t mean that you try to buy the business by coming in so low that the government just rejects your bid out of hand, because they know from previous experience that they’re not going to be able to rely on people to provide labor in critical areas unless that laborers compensated at a certain level. And that was what was really at the core here. The second issue that I’m talking about this week has to do with whether or not your confidential information is actually confidential, and this is something that is really front of mind and should be for a lot of government contractors, specifically Tom talking here about a federal district court judge. So, judge that doesn’t normally deal day to day with government contract issues. He made a ruling on a Freedom of Information Act request. The Department of Labor had originally withheld information on over a thousand companies. Equal Employment Opportunity reports their summary report, citing confidentiality and important company information. Well, the petitioner for the Freedom of Information Act request went back and appealed that decision in federal court, and the court sided with the petitioner. As a result, the Equal Employment Opportunity Information from over a thousand companies is going to be released and released to Who? Well, in this case, Tom, it’s going to be a fellow member of the Fourth Estate from where you are. So, contractors may expect to see that, you know, they’re reporting on their goals on this important government area, may be out in the open for, others to see their competitors to see or would be interesting.

Tom Temin Yeah. And it always pays to venue shop when you’re in court because you can get different results depending on where you go. And your third issue has to do with firm fixed price contracts that can really sink you.

Larry Allen Tom. That’s in firm fixed price contracting has been looked at, particularly in the government, as the highest good, the one to aim for and government acquisition, because that way everybody understands what the parameters are. Well, yes and no. Tom, if you’re a government contractor, you have to always remember that firm fixed price bids come with inherent risk for you. As the contractor, you have to be very sure that the government’s got the statement of worked out correctly and that you, as the company, understand the scope of work before you bid that firm fixed price offer. And a lot of companies understand that in the government and bid accordingly, they give themselves a little wiggle room, if you will, and appropriately so. But however, the extreme case that I’m talking about here that should be of interest to everybody is Boeing, and their tanker deal. Right now, the company has lost over $2 billion, $2 billion. It’s not recoverable. And as they say in Joel James Bond movies, Tom, it’s $2 billion and counting. And that’s a lot of money even if you’re Boeing. So that’s a wakeup call to contractors that you should really understand what the risks are. And if you’re not sure about what the parameters are, have those discussions with the client before you sign on the dotted line.

Tom Temin And let’s hope those tanker doors stay shut. We’re speaking with Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners, and I wanted to ask you about, your take on we’ve been watching the Congress. And as Mitchell Miller reported here yesterday, there were some moves. Over last weekend, where maybe we’re moving toward a CR of indeterminate length and the really confusing situation. And if a CR were to go through March, that’s essentially half the fiscal year. And contractors have got to be just not happy about this any more than their agency customers are.

Larry Allen Tom, I think that’s fair to say. This is really no way to run a government. You know, we have been hoping to see appropriated bills for FY 24 in December. Certainly, February was not unrealistic to expect. Now we’re being told that will either be, I think, March 1st or March 8th or 9th before we get all of the bills together. And if you listen to Tom Cole over on the House side, he’s kind of hinting that they may even need a longer time to read through all 12 appropriations bills on their side of Congress. So, I think that’s something that should be of concern to everybody. Uh, it does not set up, uh, the government or contractors for a very good, uh, FY 24. You know, at best, you know, if Congress does pass these bills in March, it will be, you know, early to mid-April time before each, uh, individual federal office gets its final number for the remaining months of the fiscal year. And then we’re really going to see, uh, tremendous amount of activity and churn. And, you know, what happens when anybody has less than half of the amount of time needed to do the job, right? Uh, you’re going to have mistaken made. You’re going to have things that need to get done that don’t quite get done. You’re going to have a lot of missed opportunities, a lot of missed opportunities in government business. Uh, a lot of and when you’re talking about funding critical government programs and moving forward, it’s not just, oh, gee, you know, we didn’t get to go to the Taylor Swift concert. It’s something that’s going to have a little bit more national impact than that. Uh, sorry to all the Swifties out there who listened to your show, but, you know, there are some priorities out there that, uh, may not get done. And that’s real issue. And then, of course, we’ll have the oversight hearings, uh, next year on why that happened. Nobody really is going to say, but they should. Well, Congressman, if you’d pass the bills on time, this might not have happened.

Tom Temin Yeah. What we can expect if there are appropriations at the March deadline. Again, we don’t know what it is yet. That’s going to mean very busy contracting officers, the COs The 1102s get a lot of work dumped on them late in the year. And for vendors, it becomes a matter of finding a contracting officer that has the capacity to take on what it is you need for your program to buy.

Larry Allen Well, that’s right. I think we’re going to be seeing, uh, two things, Tom. First, every bit of work that can be done on a project up until the actual execution of the RFP or RFQ is going to be done. So if you’re waiting for the funds to come out as a contractor before you talk to your agency, you’re going to be way behind the curve, because I think a number of federal agencies are going to have projects that are to borrow an older phrase, shovel ready, uh, to get going the second they get the appropriations in their accounts. Uh, that’s where we’re also going to see, as you know, just accelerated use of assisted acquisition services. There are only so many contracting officers in government to go around. And we’ve seen already the assisted acquisition operations in the General Services Administration, the Department of Interior, and even over at NIH all increase in popularity before this happened. Every person with a government contracting warrant is going to be busy from probably the middle of April to September 30th.

The post Contractors can be forgiven if they’re grumpy this month first appeared on Federal News Network.

Industry experts have quietly been wringing their collective hands over NASA’s plans for the small business size standard it detailed in the draft solicitation. The worry is the new size standard would exclude or make it nearly impossible for a large swath of small businesses to compete on the contract.

Those fears broke through the surface in a new letter from Reps. Roger Williams (R-Texas) and Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), chairman and a member of the Small Business Committee.

“The committee is concerned that the revenue-based size standard proposed for use in SEWP VI limits small business’ ability to service task orders without compromising their size status,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The previous vehicle iteration, SEWP V, showed remarkable small business inclusion with small entities winning an estimated 80% of contract dollars. The apparent success of SEWP V makes the decision to use a revenue-based overall contract NAICS code even more concerning. This decision could restrict the ability for small businesses to access task orders and prevent them from fully participating in SEWP VI.”

Williams and LaLota are asking NASA to answer two basic questions and provide a staff level briefing by Jan. 18.

The questions are:

• A detailed rationale on the decision to use NAICS code 541512, including any effort to reconsider its use;
• A detailed narrative describing concerns or limitations of understanding related to the use of the nonmanufacturer rule as it relates to NAICS code 541519.

“We have heard concerns that these changes by NASA will prevent small businesses from partnering with the space agency,” said Williams in an email to Federal News Network. “All small businesses deserve the right to compete for government contracts, and we must ensure the fine print in these large deals allows them to do so. I look forward to hearing from the agency about these changes and how they believe it will benefit small businesses.”

A NASA spokesperson said in an email to Federal News Network that the space agency is reviewing Williams’ letter.

“NASA’s SEWP plays a critical role in helping the agency innovate for the benefit of humanity with the help of small businesses. Currently, under SEWP V, 106 small businesses collectively received approximately $9.7 billion of the total $12.2 billion spent in fiscal 2023,” the spokesperson said. “The SEWP program provides several ways for NASA to assist small businesses, including providing direct support to small businesses that do not have the sales and technical resources available to them. The agency has a goal of dedicating more than 60% of SEWP VI award dollars to small businesses. NASA continues to provide effective oversight of this program to help ensure small businesses get an opportunity to work with the agency.”

Potential long-term consequences

Stephanie Geiger, the CEO and founder of the Geiger Consulting Group, a federal marketing and communications expert, said if NASA continues to use the current small business size standard, it would be a major blow to small firms.

“Based on the revenue size standard currently included in the draft RFP, many small businesses have already met and surpassed that size standard making it difficult for small businesses to pursue SEWP VI without JVs or mentor/protege agreements unless they want to shift categories,” Geiger said. “We predict there will be no small businesses left within three years of contract award.”

Eric Crusius, a partner with Holland and Knight, said the changes NASA is suggesting would have far reaching consequences on the vendor community for many years.

“Small businesses with few employees will now be competing with the largest contractors in the world for those contracts,” he said. “The change in the NAICS Code may result in lower performance metrics because the companies that will qualify as small businesses will be much smaller and may not have the experience of providing large scale product orders to the government.  It may also cause more turnover because smaller companies handling these orders will more quickly size themselves out of the small business thresholds.”

NASA outlined its initial plan for SEWP VI earlier this fall. It said SEWP VI will, again, be a 10-year contract and expand to more than just products and related services, but offer more complete IT services. The draft RFP includes three categories:

• IT solutions to include products in the information and communications technology (ICT) and audio visual category.
• Enterprise-wide IT solutions and services, to include everything from managed services to program integration to cloud and cyber services.
• IT professional services solutions focused on ICT and audio visual services.

NASA held an industry day in October to receive feedback and plans to release the final request for proposals sometime in 2024 with an award by May 2025.

The concerns over the changes to the small business size standard is concerning because of the success of the SEWP program over the last 30 years, where it has been one of the most successful governmentwide acquisition contracts. The latest version, SEWP V, which is in year 8 out of 10, has 142 companies, 100 of which are small businesses, and expects to top more than $10 billion in sales in fiscal 2023.

Other options for NASA

Jeremy Nusbaum, the founder and principal consultant of the Luminary Consulting Group, a firm that provides proposal and capture planning help to contractors, said NASA should look at similar contracts that have successfully utilized NAICS code 541519 and received waivers to the non-manufacturer rule.

“Two years ago, the Homeland Security Department obtained a waiver from the Small Business Administration for its FirstSource III procurement that involves a similar mix of products and services. Sources at the SBA confirmed as recently as last week that the process DHS followed for FirstSource III was excellent, and it would benefit NASA if they followed a similar approach requesting a waiver for SEWP VI,” Nusbaum said.

Crusius added another way to solve these concerns is to have a separate track using the products NAICS code for orders focused on products.

“This will allow NASA to keep doing what it has done so well while offering additional solutions building upon the strong base they have made with the previous versions of SEWP,” he said. “It is not surprising to see Congress taking an interest in this because the impact of the changes in NAICS codes will impact dozens of businesses owned by service-disabled veterans that have been trusted partners with NASA for many years.”

The post Concerns over NASA’s SEWP VI small business strategy come to surface first appeared on Federal News Network.

The General Services Administration got out from under one protest of a major acquisition initiative, only to be sucked right back into another protest.

Thus is the always entertaining world of federal procurement — on step forward, one step back.

Welcome to another installment of “As GSA’s Acquisition World Turns.”

This episode starts with the departure of a leading man, Sonny Hashmi, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service on Dec. 29, and addition of a new (yet to be known major or minor) character, Eric Mill, as executive director for cloud strategy in GSA’s Technology Transformation Service, and the ongoing story arc of the status of several new governmentwide contracts.

New players appear, in this case ePS- National Diversity Veteran Small Business with its protest of the follow-on contract for the Commercial Platforms Initiative.

Foes are vanquished, in this case Boston Consulting Group, losing its OASIS+ bid protest at the Government Accountability Office.

And a new branch of the story line emerges with the release of the draft performance statement of work for the ASCEND cloud service blanket purchase agreement after “being in a coma” for almost 18 months.

The new player

GSA had hoped to award the next generation Commercial Platform Initiative (CPI) contract before Dec. 23 when the current contracts with Amazon, Fischer Scientific and Overstock expired.

In an expected plot twist, GSA is facing a new protest of the new contract.  ePS-National Diversity Veteran Small Business filed a complaint on Dec. 21 over their disqualification from next generation competition.

On top of that, awarding contracts tends to take longer than expected and GSA, had to extend the current three contracts through March.

GSA is expected to make anywhere between 6 and 8 awards. Along with ePS-NDVSB, other bidders may have included Amazon and Granger.

As for the new protest, ePS-NDVSB filed the protest on Dec. 21 and the Government Accountability Office has until April 1 to decide.

David Saroli, the CEO of ePS-NDVSB, said GSA’s decision to disqualify his company is perplexing. He said GSA disqualified his company around three deficiencies, even after submitting a bid, going through a live demonstration and going back and forth with email questions and answers during the fall.

The three deficiencies were: GSA said ePS-NDVSB didn’t provide the ability to have a minimum order quantity; didn’t demonstrate a data dashboard; and didn’t have a marketplace unique for government use.

Saroli said that ePS-NDVSB already provides its e-procurement platform to the Army, Air Force and two Navy commands and they meet and exceed the solicitation requirements.

“It’s clear that they misevaluated our bid. They had our capabilities in writing and visually, and they still missed it,” he said. “When you say deficiency, it means we didn’t have the capability. But we did and that means they made a big mistake on their review.”

Saroli said being left off the next generation CPI effort would not only be disheartening but it would impact small businesses.

“We are a small business,” he said. “On the platform now, we have mostly small businesses and where Amazon charges businesses 12%-15% per transaction, we charge 5% per transaction, which is important for the government and the small businesses on our platform.”

This is the second protest GSA has to contend with around the CPI solicitation. GSA took corrective action after the National Industries for the Blind, the Association for Vision Rehabilitation and Employment and the National Association for the Employment of People who are Blind filed a pre-solicitation protest in February over the mandatory sourcing requirements for products provided under the AbilityOne program.

Written out of the script, for now

Just when the plot twist around the CPI acquisition threw you for a surprise, the soap opera storyline takes a turn toward the OASIS+ acquisition.

In this part of the narrative, GSA comes out like the good looking leading character winning a climatic fist fight.

In this case, GAO denied Boston Consulting Group’s protest, which it filed in August.

GAO decided shortly after Thanksgiving that BCG’s pre-award protest didn’t have merit. BCG protested several evaluation factors in the solicitation, including the requirement for offerors disclose breakdowns of their proposed labor rates. GSA said this requirement was to ensure price reasonableness of the services any one company is offering.

BCG complained the requirement violated the Federal Acquisition Regulations and the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA) for commercial items.

In denying the protest, GAO wrote the agency reasonably determined that assessing the individual cost drivers associated with each offeror’s unique labor rates was the only acceptable method for making reliable and accurate cost/price reasonableness determinations.

GAO also found the solicitation is consistent with FASA’s stated preference for the acquisition of commercial items as GSA took action to accommodate commercial item contractors and to encourage their participation. GAO also said no other vendor filed a protest and BCG did bid on OASIS+ in the end.

Back to the frontburner

After almost 18 months of being a backburner character, the cloud contract known as ASCEND remerges to launch a new storyline for 2024.

GSA issued its second draft performance work statement for pool 1, which is for infrastructure-and platform-as-a-service, and detailed initial thinking for pool 2, software-as-a-service, and pool 3, for cloud IT services, in late December.

Comments on the draft PWS and details about pools 2 and 3 are due by Feb. 21.

The ASCEND program first burst onto the scene back in April 2022 and GSA released the first version of draft PWS in May 2022.

“The ASCEND BPA will establish baseline requirements for acquisition, business, data, environmental, sustainability, operational and technical requirements,” GSA wrote in the draft PWS. “The BPA establishes baseline governance requirements ensuring procured cloud services and cloud related IT professional services are procured through streamlined acquisitions procedures, maximize cost avoidance and cost savings, are effectively/efficiently operated and managed and leverage the full capabilities and investments of the federal government.”

GSA is planning for a three-year base contract with one three-year option and two one-year options for a total of eight years.

The desire to use cloud services is clear across government. Deltek forecasts that agency demand for vendor-furnished cloud computing goods and services will grow from $15.9 billion in fiscal 2023 to $23.5 billion in 2027.

This is where the soap opera story arc could take a turn: Will industry and agencies see the need for another cloud BPA?

One industry source, who requested anonymity to talk about an ongoing procurement, said BPAs must be based on a bona fide need that is specifically spelled out in the solicitation. GSA says there is such a bona fide need but hasn’t yet detailed which agencies are expected to use the vehicle.

The source said agencies regularly ignore the bona fide need rule.

“It’s hard for companies to bid when there is no there. What incentive is there for people to bid on it? Why spend the money to bid if there is no guarantee anyone will use the BPA?” the source said. “GSA has a track record of BPAs that were flops. There is a lot of concerns around whether this BPA is unnecessary duplication of contracts because what the BPA is potentially offering can be bought under the schedules or other contracts today.”

GSA could still answer the bona fide need question more specifically in the final solicitation, adding some drama to the soap opera.

There are, of course, many more players in this soap opera. The new year brings more excitement over Alliant 3 and COMET version 2, and whether Polaris gets out from under the protest albatross.

So tune in next time for another edition of “As GSA’s Procurement World Turns.”

The post Three new story arcs of ‘As GSA’s Acquisition World Turns’ first appeared on Federal News Network.