New rules in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) may impact how you do business with the Federal Government.  A number of these new rules relate specifically to small businesses.

Consolidation and Bundling:  DoD, GSA, and NASA are issuing a final rule to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to implement sections of the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 and regulatory changes made by the Small Business Administration, which provide for a Governmentwide policy on consolidation and bundling.

Small Entity Compliance Guide: This document is issued under the joint authority of DOD, GSA, and NASA. This Small Entity Compliance Guide has been prepared in accordance with section 212 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996. It consists of a summary of the rules appearing in Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2005-91, which amends the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). An asterisk (*) next to a rule indicates that a regulatory flexibility analysis has been prepared. Interested parties may obtain further information regarding these rules by referring to FAC 2005-91, which precedes this document. These documents are also available via the Internet at http://www.regulations.gov.

Sole Source Contracts for Women-Owned Small Businesses: DoD, GSA, and NASA have adopted as final, with a minor edit, an interim rule amending the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to implement regulatory changes made by the Small Business Administration (SBA) that provide for authority to award sole source contracts to economically disadvantaged women-owned small business concerns and to women-owned small business concerns eligible under the Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Program.

Updating Federal Contract Reporting of Veterans’ Employment: DoD, GSA, and NASA are adopting as final, without change, an interim rule amending the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to implement a final rule issued by the Department of Labor's (DOL) Veterans' Employment and Training Service (VETS) that replaced the VETS-100 and VETS-100A Federal Contractor Veterans' Employment Report forms with the ETS-4212, Federal Contractor Veterans' Employment Report form. Reference Article

The General Services Administration first brought up the concept of having an “unpriced” schedule a year or so ago.

The idea is to evaluate vendors for their capabilities, past performance and overall skillsets, and not on their prices. And then let the price competition happen at the task order level.

This concept would be a huge change in the federal market where price has always been a factor in the evaluations of bids.

But the recent success of governmentwide multiple award contracts such as OASIS, and the acceptance of a similar approach for the recent $11.5 billion Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS) procurement and the soon-to-be released solicitation for Alliant 2, there is a growing recognition that this may be the future of federal contracting for multiple award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity vehicles. Reference Article.

A growing number of agencies no longer believe prices under the General Services Administration schedules program are "fair and reasonable."

Along with the Defense Department, NASA quietly issued a memo in March that requires its contracting officers to do additional research to ensure GSA schedule prices are the best value for the government. Industry sources say other agency memos could follow from the likes of the departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Energy.

Using Sequestration to Your (GSA) Advantage

In addition to the political outcome this winter, there is something else that people are concerned with, but don’t totally understand: Sequestration. The OMB has plans to reduce the budget by nearly 10.3% by January 3, 2013.

For organizations involved with defense spending, difficult decisions will need to be made. If the Department of Defense cuts approximately 108,000 Federal employees, Contractors will be forced to make some cuts to their staff as well.  Some defense contractors have already issued 60-day notices to a portion of the workforce.  Even though the budget cuts won’t immediately reflect the 10.3% decrease in spending, now is the time to start thinking about a few things:

First, what are your current staffing levels?  If you’ve been running lean for the last few years, do you have room in the budget for new talent?  There will be some very accomplished professionals released from the public and private sectors.  Think about your staffing needs and some of the changes you can make that you may not have considered before.

Are you taking advantage of all of the set-asides available to you?  Are you bidding on every contract that has a high probability of win?  Have you formulated a new Marketing Plan for the next ten (10) years, with these budgetary changes into account?  Are you on the GSA Schedule?

These are all important things to look at right now.  GovPartners understands the coming challenges and are assisting many clients navigate the uncertain future we’re facing.  Here are some areas we may be able to help:

·         Market Research and Capture Management:  GovPartners will research the opportunities that are available for your organization to help alleviate some of the uncertainty in the market.

·         If you’re not on the GSA schedule, GovPartners can assist you in determining which schedule is right for your company, prepare the submission and follow it through to completion.

·         Teaming:  GovPartners has recently relaunched the SubTeamPartners (STP) network. Through this network, GovPartners can assist you in facilitating teaming partnerships for targeted government opportunities.  STP matches your teaming needs with other contractors complementing each company's areas of service and/ or socio economic statuses for set-aside requirements. This provides you with the visibility and capabilities to  bid on opportunities that may not have been available to you before.

·        Proposal Preparation:  In the past, most companies had staff that were dedicated to preparing their company proposals.   The environment and economic climate has changed, and more companies are utilizing 3rd parties to assist with each proposal effort.  GovPartners develops lasting relationships and partnerships on integrity. Our proposal preparation team allows our clients to experience a service that provides proposal with the ambiance of your own in-house proposal department.

·         Once you’ve acquired the contract, GovPartners provides Acquisition and Contract Management and Administration to include kick-off meeting attendance, invoicing, Quality Control, Performance Evaluation, deliverables, close-out reporting, etc.

Let GovPartners help you Prepare to Win and  Perform to Expand.

The General Services Administration (GSA) said on Thursday, 10 August, that federal travelers can save up to 73 percent off commercial airfare under its City Pairs program beginning Oct. 1, Federal Times reported.

GSA released a list of routes online offered by the program but declined requests for more details on how the program will be changed from current offerings. GSA anticipates the government will save roughly $6 billion annually in reduced airfares through the program.

SA released a list of routes online offered by the program but declined repeated requests for more details on how the program will be changed from current offerings.

GSA anticipates the government will save roughly $6 billion annually in reduced airfares through the program.

One change for fiscal 2013 is the addition of a 48-hour auto-cancellation clause, according to GSA. Airlines will have authority to cancel reservations that have not been paid for 48 hours before the flight departure time. Reservations made less than 48 hours before departure may require immediate payments.

Currently, federal employees can reserve a seat on a City Pairs flight without paying for it. But airlines lose money on empty seats if the employee doesn’t cancel the reservation, airline and travel officials said.

The 48-hour cancellation clause falls short of mitigating the risk that airlines assume in participating in City Pairs, said Jeffrey Haag, government relations manager for Southwest and AirTran airlines. “But it certainly is a step in the right direction,” he said.

Eleven airlines are participating in the City Pairs program in 2013, compared with 13 this year. AirTran Airways is now part of Southwest Airlines, and Mesa Airlines is not participating in the 2013 program. Reference Article.

GSA issues IBM a 'cure' letter for problems with procurement system: he General Services Administration has officially ordered IBM to fix the troubled System for Award Management (SAM).

Sources confirmed GSA issued IBM a "cure" letter Aug. 7. In the official notice, GSA told the company to develop a plan of action and milestones for how they will make SAM work more smoothly. Under the program, GSA wants to consolidate eight acquisition databases, including the Central Contractor Registration, the Past Performance Information Retrieval System and six others.

GSA hired IBM under an eight-year, $74.4 million contract in 2010.

"The agency is committed to working with IBM to quickly resolve the issues with the system" said GSA spokeswoman Mafara Hobson in an email statement. "The goal is to get it up and running as soon as possible."

GSA's decision to issue the cure letter comes as frustration grows across the government. Sources said the Chief Acquisition Officer's Council held a meeting earlier this week and discussed SAM's problems.

Agencies issue "cure" letters when a vendor fails to deliver or perform according to the contract. It provides the contractor with a period of time to correct the problems and tells them what would happen if they were unable to fix the system.

GSA launched SAM on July 31 after a month-long delay, and almost immediately the system struggled. GSA took SAM offline for a few days. It went back up Aug. 7, but is still having latency and other issues.

Sources said GSA told IBM to fix the system or risk penalties. Full Article.

A new federal acquisition rule is seeking to ensure enough competition for purchases made through General Services Administration schedules.

GSA schedules are long-term programs meant to make the buying process easier on federal agencies by pre-negotiating prices and other terms. Multiple companies can hold a spot on a schedule, but they must compete for individual orders, meaning they have to win twice to see actual work.

Earlier this month, the government issued a rule that ensures that all companies on a given schedule — schedules are sorted by type of purchase — are notified of each opportunity worth between $3,000 and $150,000. Opportunities worth more than $150,000 are already governed by traditional procurement regulations.

These contractors must be given the opportunity to to make an offer and have it considered by the contracting officer. Read Full Article.

FAIRFAX, Va., Sep 28, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The American Council for Technology (ACT) - Industry Advisory Council (IAC) and the U.S. General Services Administration today announced that they will jointly host Acquisition Excellence 2012 to provide a collaborative forum to discuss and develop actionable ideas on federal information technology acquisition, policy, and program management issues in these challenging budget times. The collaborative forum will expand and refocus the goals of the Interagency Resources Management Conference, commonly known as IRMCO, and will maintain a two-to-one government to industry ratio. More than 500 government and industry executives are expected to attend the forum on March 29, 2012 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C.

"GSA is committed to a collaborative process where government and industry work to improve the government's acquisition and use of IT," said Kathleen Turco, GSA's associate administrator for Governmentwide Policy and Acquisition Excellence 2012 government chair. "GSA selected ACT-IAC, a non-profit educational organization, as our partner for the spring conference based on their proven public-private partnership outreach with the federal IT community. ACT-IAC will be key to helping us transform this event to provide an open and collaborative environment to continue our role in assisting agencies meet IT and acquisition management challenges." Read Full Article

Last year, the federal government spent more than $40 billion through the GSA Schedules program. This year it may well spend even more. A GSA Schedule contract is, quite simply, the easiest point-of-entry into government contracting – the most effective way to get your products or services in front of the world's largest buyer of products and services.

A GSA Schedules contract gives you access to more than 260 federal, state and local government buyers who have an easier time buying from you than they do your competition.

If you know that, you've already applied, or you're planning to.

After all, it seems hard to fail once you have that contract in hand. Yet a remarkable number of companies do just that.

That's not just a one-time missed opportunity. It can mean the end of future opportunities as well. The GSA requires schedule-holders to do at least $25,000 worth of business through their contract in the first two years they hold it, and another $25,000 every year thereafter. Fall short of that number, and they may terminate your contract. Full article.

Sep 08 2011: This Request for Offers (RFO) transmits the Filing Instructions (FI) for the submission of Emergency.  Response rate offers on behalf of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other Federal civilian agencies that require transportation services for Federal disasters and emergencies. Rate offers filed in response to this RFO and its FI will be in accordance with the terms and conditions of the GSA Standard Tender of Service (STOS) and this RFO and its FI. Please note in some instances this RFO and its FI will deviate from and will supersede certain provisions and requirements published in the STOS. Rate offers accepted in response to this RFO and its FI are due by 10:00 PM Central  Standard Time (CST), October 7, 2011. Rate offers submitted and accepted for the traffic identified in  Section 9 will be for the time period November 1, 2011 through October 31, 2012. Rate offers submitted and accepted and for the traffic identified in Section 10 will be for the period November 1,  2011 through October 31, 2012 with the Government’s option to extend from November 1, 2012 through October 31, 2013.

Traffic to be included under this RFO and its FI will be freight-all-kinds (FAK) shipments moving via closed van for less than truckload and truckload, and for flatbed, single/double drop, lowboy and power  only units. The transport of travel trailers and mobile homes is also included.  Click here to request more information about this opportunity.

Want to learn more about GSA's State and Local programs? Join the webinar for a brief overview.

Webinar: Introduction to GSA State and Local Programs

Want to learn more about GSA's State and Local programs? Join the webinar to get a brief overview on:

Cooperative Purchasing
1122 Program
Disaster Recovery Purchasing
Public Health Emergencies

Date/Time: SEP 8, 2011 - 1:00pm EST

Instructions:
1. Simply click on http://gsafas.adobeconnect.com/schedules to Join.
2. Turn up your computer speakers for sound, and chat in any questions you have.
3. OPTIONAL: You may Dial 1/877-783-3073, passcode 1967262 if you need to speak and do not have a computer microphone/headset.

If you have questions about the Webinar please email david.orcutt@gsa.gov. Click here to register online.

Don't miss this powerful one day conference featuring procurement and marketing workshops, an opportunity for you to meet and network with GSA program managers, building managers, leasing specialists, senior procurement associates, as well as small business advocates from DOD and other Federal agencies. Attendees will also be exposed to prime contractors seeking to partner with experienced small businesses to help meet and exceed their company's Subcontracting Plan goals.

Date:
October 6, 2011
Registration opens at 8:00 a.m.
Location:
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004

Don't miss the afternoon Prime Introduction and Networking Session!

Access to Success will close out the day by giving small businesses the chance to hear directly from large prime companies looking for small business subcontractors. These large businesses currently have contracts for major projects with the GSA and other Federal agencies. Prime representatives will introduce their firms in the open forum before they break out into individual meeting rooms. Learn about subcontracting opportunities and their vetting process for selecting small business subcontractors. The Prime participants will include: Clark Construction, Verizon, Level 3, General Dynamics and more. Plan to stay all day; great things don't just happen before lunch! Learn more.

The General Services Administration is considering splitting a small-business contract that brought in $250 million so far but they are trying to figure out what the follow-on contracts should look like, according to a new announcement.

The first GSA IT Infrastructure Technology Global Operations (GITGO) contract was awarded to Catapult Technology in 2007, and the contract ends in April 2012. With that deadline, GSA anticipates awarding the follow-on task orders during the second quarter of fiscal 2012, according to a request for information released June 24. Read the notice.

The GITGO contract has netted $250 million in revenue for Catapult, according to data from Deltek Input.

The scope of the coming requests for proposal would establish efficient managed support of GSA’s IT infrastructure services. At this point though, GSA wants ideas from industry on how to set up orders to match those needs.

GSA plans two separate acquisitions. The task order to get the necessary capability is called GSA Technical Operations, and the order to help manage the global effort is the GSA Independent Program Oversight and Assistance task order.  Read full article

The General Services Administration wants to give agencies three choices to move commodity technology to providers of cloud computing services.

GSA issued a request for quotation late Monday for e-mail, office automation and electronic records management under a five-year blanket purchase agreement contract. GSA and the Defense Department are working together on the BPA through the SmartBuy and Enterprise Software initiatives.

The cloud computing contract has a ceiling of $2.5 billion over five years. Vendors must submit their bids by June 19 through the EBuy system. Questions about the RFQ should be submitted by May 20.

"The objective of this RFQ is to offer five key service offerings through Email-as-a-service (EaaS) providers for ordering activities," GSA states in the RFQ.

GSA is asking vendors to provide three mandatory services and two optional ones. Under the mandatory categories, vendors must provide e-mail-as-a-service, migration services and integration services. Contractors also can submit a bid to provide office automation-as-a-service, which includes word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, and records management-as-a-service, which includes records collection, organization, categorization, storage, metadata capture, physical record tracking, retrieval, use and disposition. Reference Article.

A database housing performance reviews of federal contractors is available to the public, beginning 15 April 2011.  But the public won't find much there, at least initially.

Last year, the GSA Centralized Household Goods Traffic Management Program (CHAMP) created a committee consisting of Federal agencies to conduct an annual review of the GSA01 Domestic Tariff and the International provisions of the Household Goods Tender of Service (HTOS). The purpose of this review
is to identify any domestic and/or international provisions that may need modification and/or clarification.

The next committee meeting will take place the first week of May, 2010. At this time, GSA CHAMP is requesting comments from both Federal agencies and household good transportation service providers in regards to any Tariff and/or HTOS provisions that may need clarification or updating. When commenting, please provide a detailed description as to the issue and please include the proper tariff item or HTOS reference number.

Please sumbit your comments to Brian Kellhofer at brian.kellhofer@gsa.gov no later than April 23, 2010. Comments will be reconciled and a response will be provided prior to the release of the 2010-2011 Household Goods Request for Offers, scheduled for release the latter part of August, 2010.

Joanne Woytek, the head of the NASA Scientific and Engineering Workstation Products governmentwide acquisition contract, wrote on my Facebook wall – wow, what a way to communicate this message! -- that an official from the General Services Administration (not Administrator Martha Johnson) plans to meet next week with Dan Gordon, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, to request that Gordon deauthorize the governmentwide Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners contract run by the National Institutes of Health.

Woytek believes that if CIOSP is put out of business, GSA’s next step will be to put SEWP out of business as well.

I am a big fan of GSA and its own governmentwide vehicles, including the schedules, but I strongly believe GSA’s effort to put competing governmentwide contracts out of business is seriously mistaken.

The basic reason is simple: Competition among contract vehicles (including the default alternative of using one’s own contract shop) promotes customer service and innovation, just like competition in other markets. When GSA last monopolized governmentwide vehicles, up through the early 1990s, it provided poor customer service, poor pricing and little innovation. GSA’s loss of its monopoly during the Clinton administration was actually the best thing that ever happened to the agency – they came up with new contract vehicles, much faster service, and other innovations and in the process ended up doing much more business than before.  Read Full Article.

GSA Administrator Martha Johnson announced yesterday that her agency will experiment with using wikis to help develop the requests for proposals (RFPs) on two new acquisitions.

The idea for this actually emerged from the dialogue on procurement innovations GSA has conducted (in cooperation with the National Academy of Public Administration) on the Web at a site called BetterBuy. At the BetterBuy website, there is now a link presenting information on two acquisitions that are in the development stage -- one for hosting the Data.gov website and the other (unexplained and as yet not up at the site) for an acquisition called Clearpath. GSA is asking members of the public to provide advice for features and performance requirements for these applications, as well as other elements of the RFPs. Specifically, GSA is asking for members of the public to point out mistakes and engage in "meaningful technical debate."

Given the endemic problems government has developing good requirements for IT acquisitions, the idea of drawing on the public for suggestions is in principle a great one. Reference Article.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) submitted its annual "Report
to the Congress" on the "Status of Telework in the Federal Government" on
September 16. In February 2009, seventy-eight Executive Branch agencies submitted data on their
telework programs to the Office of Personnel Management. These data represent
telework participation and related activities between January 1 and December 31, 2008.
Agencies have been submitting these reports to OPM since 2001, tracking the progress
of telework implementation as the agencies have created and refined their programs
and policies. Trends have remained relatively stable over time, with incremental
increases and occasional decreases showing overall slow but steady growth.

For 2008, agencies reported that:
• 102,900 employees were teleworking
• 64% of these employees were teleworking relatively frequently (either 1-2
days a week, or 3 or more days per week)
• Almost half of the agencies had not fully integrated telework into their
Continuity of Operations (COOP) planning
• Office coverage and management resistance were considered the largest
barriers to implementation

Data are reported for each of the agencies, and the large Cabinet-level agencies also
report data at the sub-agency level. A closer look at the agency and sub-agency data
allows us to break down the overall numbers to identify organizations that have
experienced relatively large increases or decreases, either in actual participation or
possibly in their capabilities to effectively track participation.

OPM continues to use these results and other information to support agency staff with
their telework programs by convening regular meetings of telework coordinators,
meeting one-on-one to provide consultation and support, maintaining the
comprehensive www.telework.gov website, and connecting agency staff so they can
learn from each other’s challenges and successes.
The Big Picture: Telework in 2008
• 78 agencies reported a total of 102,900 out of 1,962,975 employees teleworking
- 5.24% of the total population reported as teleworkers
- 8.64% of the eligible population reported as teleworkers
• 48 agencies (61%) reported an increase in their overall telework numbers
• 78% of agencies provide formal notice of eligibility to their employees
• 35% track the number of telework requests that are denied; 33 cases were due
to performance or conduct issues, 160 were due to type of work
• 38% track the number of agreements that are terminated; 108 of these
terminations were based on the employee’s decision, 31 were based on the
supervisor’s decision due to a performance/conduct issue, and 78 were based on
a supervisor’s decision due to a change in work assignments
• 23% of agencies use electronic tracking to count teleworkers, 83% use telework
agreements, 53% use time and attendance (NOTE: agencies may select more
than one category due to difference in tracking mechanisms at the sub-agency
level, so the total exceeds 100%)
• 44 agencies have fully integrated telework into COOP (56.41%)
• 27 agencies reported cost savings/benefits as a result of telework; of these, the
greatest benefit was to morale (24 agencies), then productivity/performance and
transportation (22 each), then human capital (21) (note: agencies could select all
that apply). See tr.im/zwQ7

Register for the Telework Exchange Town Hall Meeting in Washington, DC, on
September 24, at   http://www.teleworkexchange.com/townhallmeeting/ to hear
John Berry, OPM Director, deliver keynote remarks along with Aneesh
Chopra, Assistant to the President and Chief Technology Officer.
Government employees may attend this program at no cost. But, private
sector employees are also welcome to attend. The U.S. General Services
Administration is a sponsor of this telework education program.
 

The General Services Administration’s SmartBuy program has awarded five contracts for agencies to use to purchase cybersecurity software.

Four of the awards are to resell BigFix’s Platform 7 software. The companies winning those awards were Autonomic Resources, Intelligent Decisions Inc., Merlin International and Patriot Technologies.

The fifth award went to Winvale Group to resell Gideon’s Secure Fusion software.

GSA said a sixth award may be made. The contracts are worth more than $20 million and can be used by federal and state and local government agencies, GSA said in a statement. The Homeland Security Department worked with GSA to make the awards.

The awards are blanket purchase agreements and are for cybersecurity services such as baseline configuration management, network mapping/path discovery and vulnerability management.

“GSA’s new suite of security solutions is aimed at protecting our IT infrastructure from cyber security incidents and other vulnerabilities, while providing maximum value for taxpayer dollars” Jim Williams, GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service commissioner, said in a statement. Read entire article  tr.im/sBRy

The era of governmentwide acquisition contracts might be coming to a close at the General Services Administration.

Speaking at the Washington Technology Top 100 conference today, Ed O’Hare, assistant commissioner of the Office of Integrated Technology Services at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said the only GWACs GSA will continue supporting are Alliant and Alliant Small Business or vehicles targeted to companies in specific socioeconomic categories, such as minority-owned businesses.

For the long term, GSA will likely merge the GWAC program with the schedules. “But that will take years, not months,” he added.

O’Hare said the merger of the procurement programs became a possibility after GSA combined the Federal Supply Service, which managed the schedules, and the Federal Technology Service, which managed GSA’s stable of GWAC contracts.

The era of governmentwide acquisition contracts might be coming to a close at the General Services Administration.

Speaking at the Washington Technology Top 100 conference today, Ed O’Hare, assistant commissioner of the Office of Integrated Technology Services at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said the only GWACs GSA will continue supporting are Alliant and Alliant Small Business or vehicles targeted to companies in specific socioeconomic categories, such as minority-owned businesses.

For the long term, GSA will likely merge the GWAC program with the schedules. “But that will take years, not months,” he added.

O’Hare said the merger of the procurement programs became a possibility after GSA combined the Federal Supply Service, which managed the schedules, and the Federal Technology Service, which managed GSA’s stable of GWAC contracts.

Phasing out GWACs was partly a response to criticism and a growing sense that there were too many GWACs, he said.

“We know that each GWAC is time-consuming and expensive to respond to,” he said.

GWACs that are expiring, such as Millennia Lite, will not be renewed. Instead, Alliant and Alliant Small Business will fill the void, O’Hare said. Those contracts have a $50 billion ceiling over 10 years, meaning they will still be in use through 2018.

O’Hare was part of a panel at the annual Top 100 conference. Moderated by Bill Gormley, president and chief executive officer of the Washington Management Group, the panel focused on whether the Obama administration is creating a new federal market.

Mike Fox, senior vice president of corporate strategic development at SRA International, voiced support for agency-specific multiple-award contracts.

“Those have real value because they are designed to meet specific agency needs,” he said. “But we don’t need GWACs with 50 or 60 winners. Then it looks just like a schedule.”' Click here original news release  http://tr.im/pSjs