The federal government spends upwards of $90 billion every year on IT. By June, a surprising amount of the budget remains unspent and unobligated. And every year around this time, technology vendors hope to cash in on the year-end money the federal government must spend by the end of the fiscal year — September 30.
Source: The Truth About Federal Year-End Money | Government Sales Insider
Contractors hoping to protect their right to file bid protests got much of what they wanted in the conference report for the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which also contained several provisions to streamline the Pentagon’s acquisitions.
Source: Acquisition Reforms Survive in Defense Authorization Bill – Contracting – GovExec.com
Most Government contractors with cost-type contracts have been subjected to “paid voucher” reviews. These are reviews where contract auditors (usually DCAA or Defense Contract Audit Agency) will take a voucher that has previously been paid in the last year and trace the amounts claimed, billed, and paid to source documents. This is a fairly recent program coming out of DCAA with dubious benefits. One former auditor speculated that after DCAA transitioned most of its important work to DCMA (Defense Contract Management Agency), it has been scrounging around looking for purposeful work. Whether paid voucher reviews provide a benefit to the Government or not, most of the testing steps do not require the skills of professional auditors (Certified Public Accountants). Many “testing” steps are those that anyone, with minimal training, could perform – e.g. did the contractor pay the vendor in 30 days?
Source: PNWC’s Government Contracting Update: Paid Voucher Audits
The Defense Department’s extra appendages aren’t being lopped off by Congress just yet.
The House and Senate agreed to a singular version of the 2019 defense authorization bill Monday and the proposed legislation keeps the Pentagon’s “fourth estate” intact.
The fourth estate refers to 28 agencies that are not part of a military service and employs 200,000 civilian personnel and nearly 600,000 contractors.
The FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulation) Council is considering an addition to FAR to establish a survey to solicit voluntary feedback from companies who bid on Government contracts. They are seeking public input on the potential benefits and burdens of voluntary feedback surveys. There shouldn’t be any burdens really. When we’re asked to respond to a survey, we always answer ‘no’ or delete the email. That’s not much of a burden. The real question concerns the benefits that can be derived from surveys and whether the Government is willing to, or is permitted to, take action or make changes to the procurement system based on survey results. A related question is whether the Government should make changes based on survey results. Voluntary survey results are not statistically valid, are they? We suspect companies that have issues with the procurement process are over-represented in the universe of participants.
Source: PNWC’s Government Contracting Update: Government Procurement Satisfaction Surveys
In today’s Federal Newscast, the Government Accountability Office said only 15 out of 53 agencies met DATA Act requirements for complete, timely and accurate spending data reports.
Source: Most agencies are still not fulfilling spending data requirements – FederalNewsRadio.com
So, the GAO sustained your bid protest? Perhaps surprisingly, a sustained protest doesn’t necessary mean GAO will recommend that the agency cancel the award and re-open the solicitation. You may just walk away with your bid preparation and protest costs. In Savannah Cleaning Systems, Inc., B 415817.2 (Comp. Gen. Apr. 23, 2018), GAO addressed whether it must recommend a fairly standard remedy—such as, cancelling the award and reissuing the solicitation—when it sustains a bid protest. Under certain scenarios, the answer is no.
Source: A Successful Bid Protest Doesn’t Mean a Second Bite at the Apple – SmallGovCon
Navy officials are moving into the final stretch of preparations to release a pair of contracts that will divide and replace its $3.5 billion Next Generation Enterprise Services (NGEN) contract later this year.
Source: Navy makes final preparations to release RFPs for multibillion-dollar NGEN
July 2018 Monthly Insights: Top 5 GovCon Events
Source: July 2018 Monthly Insights Newsletter | Top 5 GovCon Events
Changes are coming in the way the General Services Administration purchases services. In April the Office of Federal Procurement Policy released a new strategy to use category management to reduce multiple award contracts, and contractors will begin seeing the results soon.
Source: Changes coming to professional services thanks to contract management