A few times I have gotten questions from clients who have felt left out of doing work with the government and want to know more about the bid protest process because they feel the decision of a contracting officer or government agency regarding a contract bid or awarded contract was unfair. To do this, you first must make sure that you qualify as an “interested party”. To be considered an interested party, the FAR 33-1 states that your company must be “an actual or prospective offeror whose direct economic interest would be affected by the award of a contract or by the failure to award a contract”. Once you discern your status, you must follow a very specific procedure, and the government is obligated to respond to them as long as they are procedurally correct. Ideally, the government contracting realm is impartial and fair, but sometimes competitors feel that someone has been or is about to be awarded a contract on bogus or questionable grounds. They feel that in their case, the process for a bid was not designed to allow competitors the opportunity to bid on a fair and even playing field. The company can then open a case through the contracting officer at that agency (the recommended channel) or file their protest directly to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

These days it seems everyone has an opinion on what the Government could do better in order to avoid the disastrous procurement process that ends up costing an agency $10,000 just to acquire a simple hammer. Well now, the Federal Government is ready to listen to what you have to say. The National Academy of the Public Administration and the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council in conjunction with the General Services Administration have rolled out the “Better Buy Project” to find ways to increase efficiency and openness in the procurement process by asking the public for solutions. Better Buy gives you the chance to voice your opinion and suggest ideas that could improve the procurement and acquisition process. The program is asking for suggestions for 3 phases of the acquisition lifecycle: Market Research and Requirements Definition Pre-Solicitation Phase Solicitation Phase.

Through the recent IT management reform effort established by The White House, a totally different type of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell may be coming to an end. This is of course the practice of conducting multi-million/billion dollar projects without sufficient Project Management involvement by the involved Federal Agencies. As Trey Hodgkins said to FCW, “Right now, the way the process works, it is purely coincidental if all the elements in the process are actually talking to each other”, producing a de-facto practice of not asking, and not reporting issues in project progress. It is this practice that the White House’s reform is attempting to address. The reform looks to create a new career path for Government personnel to establish a knowledge base and experience in successful IT Project Management, which will provide a large pool of candidates to provide these services from within Federal Agencies. This will help alleviate the strain on existing Federal Project Managers, who are diverted between an increasing number of projects, and provide more resources to ensure any project over a specific size will have diligent Agency based Project Management.

GSA has taken the first steps towards moving its entire email system to a more efficient and cost effective cloud-based network. The 5 year, $6.7M contract was recently awarded to Unisys Corp. under the Alliant GWAC. To help pioneer this effort, Unisys has partnered with Google, Tempus Nova, and Acumen Solutions to develop the system for GSA – which is the first agency to move its entire agency’s email to a cloud based system. The award also includes collaboration tools that are estimated to reduce inefficiencies and lower costs by 50 percent over the next five years. Google is considered to be one of the biggest and most advanced cloud service providers, so their involvement with this initiative is key and indicates that they most likely had very compelling and innovative ideas to contribute to the winning proposal submitted by Unisys. Tempus Nova’s involvement is also important since they are a leading provider of Google Enterprise solutions and are the sole developer of the tools used to migrate mail and calendar data from Lotus Notes to Google. GSA is one of many agencies that still utilize the antiquated IBM Lotus Notes email and calendar system.

On November 16th, GSA announced a new program called the GreenGov Supply Chain Partnership and Small Business Pilot. This program was designed to create a greener, more efficient supply chain through a voluntary collaboration between the federal government and its suppliers. The announcement was made at a supply chain summit in Chicago hosted by Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Martha Johnson, GSA Administrator.

We’ve received a lot of questions about self certifying as a small business and I wanted to take some time to clear up what is a Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB). During October 2008, the Small Business Administration (SBA) suspended receipts of applications for the SDB program, which was a big surprise for many government contractors. The SBA stated the “SDB certification process is time consuming and costly for small businesses and offers little-to-no benefit.” One of the reasons for the SBA to say it had “little-to-no benefit” was all small businesses that participate in SBA’s 8(a) (business development) program are also small disadvantaged businesses. Furthermore, government agencies seem to have no problem meeting the 5% procurement goal for SDB set-aside requirements. Since there was a bit of overlap with these two SBA certifications, the SBA recommended that all small businesses self-certify themselves as a SDB. But what does it mean to be “disadvantaged”? First, you want to be careful since small business set aside contracts and "self certifying" accuracy is coming under increased pressure from the SBA and OIG. You need to know the “letter of the law” before making this important corporate certification. 13 CFR 124 and the SBA define “disadvantaged” as either socially or economically. Here are a few relevant sections from each: