byrsch

I worked for the government for over 30 years and have watched this pendulum swing both ways over the years. I saw many of my friends and coworkers lose jobs because of contracting out and was nervous about my position for a number of years at one agency until I left there and went to another agency. I now see it going the other way and advice people I work with to accept the government position for no other reason then to get the security of health insurance if they retire for the rest of their lives. I am sorry but I do not have much sympathy for you if you paid that large a fee to a recruiting firm and will lose out for lack of fore thought because of what is happening to you. If I was the CO and you submitted that kind of invoice, I would reject it right back at you. I have seen many people hurt over the years by non-competes and think asking an employee to sign one is about as low as an employer can get. It is nothing but using a fear tactic because they do not want to work at providing good benefits, secure positions, or retention policies. I am sure if you had been offered a bonus to increase production and finish a job ahead of schedule, which eliminated that employees position you, won?t have felt guilty about accepting the increase revenue for you and the loss of positions for them. One thing I have learned is that contracting firms view contract employees as commodities not as valued employees as those working at the company offices doing direct company support instead of contract support. I would advise everyone that is asked to sign a non-compete to refuse and find another employer immediately.

We are trying to determine who works for the subcontractors doing analysis in different countries throughout the world. We know the prime has various firms that are different tiers through out the world, is there any clause we can use to make them disclose all the employees of those firms that worked on our projects?

I did a google search using the USC and citizenship, this is what I found: How do you get a security clearance? There are three main phases to receiving a security clearance: The first phase is the application process. This involves verification of U.S. citizenship, fingerprinting and completion of the Personnel Security Questionnaire (SF-86). The second phase involves the actual investigation of your background. Most of the background check is conducted by the Defense Security Service (DSS). The final phase is the adjudication phase. The results from the investigative phase are reviewed. The information that has been gathered is evaluated based on thirteen factors determined by the Department of Defense (DoD). Some examples of areas they consider are; allegiance to the United States, criminal and personal conduct, and substance abuse or mental disorders. Clearance is granted or denied following this evaluation process.

I have written numerous past performance surveys for firms I was the COTR for but never to the firm only to the agency requesting the survey. I would never give anyone a blanket letter of recommendation because I would not know how they intended to use it, i.e. going into a field they had never ventured before and using me as a reference. I won't want to be involved with anything like that.

That is exactly what I am finding in my research statement like these that really do not describe anyway to measure performance to make certain we are receiving what we contracted for. Our current situation is a SOW that contains no way to measure the work performance of the contractor, the COR and PM are complaining of lack of performance but have nothing to hold the contractor to since no performance standards are in the SOW. They want to recompete using a PWS, which I agree is the way to go, my problem is I cannot find anything concrete to use as a performance measure to assure we are getting what we contract for. We may as well stay with what we have if we can't come up with objectives that can be measured. I can't believe that no one has written any standards for translation in all the centuries we have been translating documents from one language to another. However; I am beginning to believe that I will have to write something myself and have legal review it. Should make for an interesting procurement and contract management exercise.

I am dealing with written translations from different languages and into different languages; it can be English to Arabic, English to Spanish, etc.... I have tried the UN, State, Defense Language Institute, plus numerous others, while I find standard with very vague requirements I can not find anything concrete and am beginning to doubt any exist. I was hoping to get lucky here, will try to putting language into the SOW defining the requirements if I can get agreement from the various sections involved. Thanks to all for trying to help.

We have a contract for language translation that we want to put performance metrics in, however; we have not been able to find any industry standards for these. I have suggested putting what are considered the ?best practices? in the industry into the SOW or PWS as the standard but am getting push back that we can?t impose them. I think if we write them into the SOW or PWS as the standard we can enforce them but the legal expert here says no. If we agree and the Contractor agrees and the contract is signed isn?t that legally binding them to the standard imposed in the SOW or PWS?

We have a Contractor employee who is a retired Army Comptroller, are we allowed to pay for him to retain that certification or is that the responsibility of his firm?