Guardian

He was not cheating, @Don Mansfield, and I'm sure many teachers prefer it to the alternative. As you implied, it all depends on how one uses it. Would anyone say that using Westlaw or LexisNexis and their advanced search engines is "cheating," that lawyers should instead be poring over decrepit bound volumes in the stacks? I feel like ChatGPT is making me smarter, or at the very least, more efficient and knowledgeable. As I’m reading a complex book on technology and thinking about the intricacies of federal contracting in the back of my mind, I can pause and pivot, taking a call from my brother and thoughtfully answering his question about the effectiveness of barometric fans in an attic and their ideal placement. I hang up the phone and go right back to my book. Moreover, how else could someone with a background in law and ethics possibly sit down and inhale 500 technically-dense pages from MIT before interlibrary loan demands its return?” Anything I don’t understand or need explained more clearly, ChatGPT is great at simplifying. In fact, I recently read an article that said ChatGPT excels at breaking down complex tasks and offering real-world analogies. My experience has been that it does. While I don’t grasp every detailed exhibit in this compendium on deep learning, I wake up feeling more confident in my understanding of the concepts and find myself asking uniquely thoughtful questions as I water my parched lawn. As someone who has always considered himself more right-brained, this is the most effective way for me to learn about the science of artificial neural networks. Sometimes, you have to work through something with these chatbots a dozen or more times before you get what you want, but the technology is surprisingly advanced. There are legitimate concerns that these tools are hullicinating their way through the preparation of legal briefs. But for anyone who is censured by a judge or the like, they have only brought it upon themselves. As an academic, you read one book, then another, and another. You then sit down and write. You don’t copy from a single book. That’s plagiarism. Law is extremely nuanced and purposely so. For one, its methods protect a class that has spent a decade investing in their expertise, time and money that could otherwise have been directed toward a passive income-generating instrument with compounding returns. The same holds true in the medical field, at least insofar as its use of Latin and Greek to describe concepts that are otherwise manageable and accessible. Thank you, Vern. I always appreciate you.

I was thinking back to when I joined the Jaycees a couple of decades ago. I have long since aged out. After one meeting, a younger member and I went out to brainstorm some business ideas. He was surprised to see that I had most of my important numbers memorized and was manually punching them into my flip phone instead of storing them as contacts. This was around 2005. Fast forward to now. I keep seeing articles about how conversations worth having are becoming a lost art, something mostly associated with older generations. It got me wondering: Are technology and specifically AI making us dumber? Is our fate already a foregone conclusion? Last night, I was reading Understanding Deep Learning by Simon J.D. Prince (MIT Press, 2023), which I will be reading for many nights to come, and it sparked a thought. While I’m not overly worried about relying less on rote memorization, what does concern me is the potential erosion of creative and critical thinking in an AI-driven world. Deep learning itself is built on neural networks, systems about which there is still far more we don’t know than we truly understand. But here’s the flip side. Maybe the very concepts behind how deep learning models are designed could actually help revive a golden age of thinking, bringing us back to a sharper, more thoughtful way of solving problems. Maybe studying how neural networks process information could remind us how to think more like the great minds of the past, e.g., Antisthenes, Galileo, Jefferson, who were masters of careful, iterative reasoning. Here’s a specific question for the forum that’s been rattling around in my head: What can the concept of backpropagation in deep learning teach us about how we process information and make decisions, especially when drafting or negotiating something as complex as legal contracts? I am curious what others think.

I agree. I am not aware of any requirement that mandates an offeror have the specific NAICS code associated with a solicitation listed in their SAM.gov registration. According to FAR 52.204-7, the only requirement is that the offeror be actively registered in SAM at the time they submit their offer and remain registered through award. The clause states: "An Offeror is required to be registered in SAM when submitting an offer or quotation and at the time of award (see FAR 52.204-13 for the requirement to maintain SAM registration during performance and through final payment)." The Government's focus should be on verifying that the offeror fully understands the scope of work and can clearly demonstrate their ability to perform it. As a best practice, I would recommend the offeror update their SAM.gov registration to include the relevant NAICS code as soon as possible, provided they are capable and interested in performing work under that classification. Additionally, under FAR 52.212-3 (Reps and Certs) in SAM, there is an expandable section, indicated by a plus sign, that will reveal additional NAICS codes if you click on it. It’s worth checking whether the applicable code is already listed there as part of that collapsible content.

People would remain the starting and end points for all such decisions. OpenAI might be helpful in cross-checking instructions to offerors and evaluation criteria against a company's response to an RFP. How about the simple act of using control-F as a function to search a .pdf or text-based document? What if I wanted to find all occurences of the term "best value" in the FAR. The "find" function would allow me to do this much more quickly than thumbing through the entire compendium. Still, I would need to read through the regulation and identify the specific paragraphs before and after each mention of the term to gain a more comprehensive understanding. Internet search engines are another example. I was raised on library card catalogs, the Dewey Decimal System, and microfilm—tools that were invaluable in shaping me into the researcher I am today. However, I wouldn't argue against the convenience of simply 'Googling' certain topics for market research or preparing for an upcoming presentation. All this has me thinking about a couple books I recently read, from which I will quote: "Teenagers today have to get greasy by working on old cars whose engines are simple enough for an amateur tinkerer to understand. Even professional mechanics have been heard to complain that they don't fix cars anymore; they just replace the modules that their computer tells them to replace" (The Knowledge Illusion: Why We never Think Alone; Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach; p.27) "Modern airplanes are so complicated that no one person completely understands them. Rather, different people understand different aspects of them. Some are experts on flight dynamics, others on navigation systems; several are required to understand jet engines; and some understand the ergonomics of seating well enough that companies are able to pack people into economy class with the same efficiency that Pringles are packed into a can." (Id., p.28) "...computers do a much better job than judges at making bail decisions. The computer can't see the defendant. Judges can, and it seems logical that that extra bit of information ought to make them better decision-makers. Solomon, the New York State judge, could search the face of the person standing in front of him for evidence of mental illness—a glassy-eyed look, a troubled affect, aversion of the eyes. The defendant stands no farther than ten feet in front of him and Solomon has the chance to get a sense of the person he is evaluating. But all that extra information isn't actually useful. Surprised people don't necessarily look surprised. People who have emotional problems don't always look like they have emotional problems." (Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About The People We Don't Know; Malcolm Gladwell; p.163-4) That's a good question, @Don Mansfield.

Or maybe tech evaluation panels and the individuals that compose them remain the starting point for all evaluations. I see AI as a tool that can check work efficiently given its ability to sort through data and draw comparisons at phenomenal speeds. The current benefit of LLMs is predicated on the specificity of what is inputed. Thinking back to my earliest computer science education in the 1980s on DOS and Mac and with low level programming languages, my instructor use to remind us that the errors were always traceable back to the humans that programmed the machines, their firmware and software. Certainly, this is more nuance in today’s day and age with narrow and generative AI, but the concept of “garbage in, garbage out, “ remains unabated. AI is a tool intended to supplement and assist. A thousand years ago, I might have plowed a field with a wooden crook, a hundred years back maybe I ran a mule to furrow hard tamped soil. Today, I turn a key and drive. In five years or less I will apply my creative skills away from the field as the machine drives itself making decisions based on a mix of optical sensors and complex layered algorithms. Consider the following: a hundred years ago, the average person worked 70 hours a week. They scrubbed clothes with arthritic hands along a corrugated metal board. They hung clothes to dry; they contended with high infant mortality rates. Today we work 40 hours a week. In Iceland, they have cut a good ten hours from that and noticed sustained, if not improved production rates. What’s the old adage? If you have something you need done quickly, give it to the busiest person. Never underestimate the capacity of human beings to procrastinate and create the appearance of work at the expense of real accomplishment.

How about exercising personal initiative and sound business judgement (FAR 1.202(d))? Will the training for the 1102 workforce continue to be characterized by the approach of "Complete a step, earn a reward, proceed to the next step"? Whatever happened to reading simply for the love of it and maintaining an insatiable curiosity about the world? Often, what takes place beyond the contracting officer's office after hours is just as important, if not more so. I revert to one of my favorite @Vern Edwards quotes, which is: "The FAR was not written to be read like a narrative or topical exposition. It was not written as a guidebook or handbook. Rather, it was written to be consulted from time to time, as necessary. When reading the FAR you must do so slowly, word-by-word, and carefully consider what you have read. Seemingly ordinary words might be 'terms of art' that have a special meaning in the acquisition world. Sometimes a passage will seem perfectly clear, but that apparent clarity might actually obscure a much deeper and more complex meaning. Sometimes, in order to understand a particular passage, you must already be familiar with two or more other passages or with other government regulations."

We sit here, surrounded by our many degrees and all our accumulated knowledge, yet feeling more like children. It's become clear to us that what our grandparents, some with barely a high school education, knew was right, and we couldn't have been more ignorant. If we're fortunate enough to live long enough, we’ll see the world change before our eyes, often faster than we can process. I remember my grandmother, who passed away at 95 in Sykesville, MD. She spent her final days in a wheelchair, asking Alexa to play her favorite songs and Bible sermons. This was the same woman who, in the 1920s, lived above a grocery store in poverty, watching horse-drawn carts deliver goods to restock the general store beneath her quarters on Main Street. Someone asked for my stab in the dark prediction: I think SEWP and NITAAC will fold and be absorbed by GSA GWACs. GSA will move to transfer existing 13-15 level COs to process under a pilot for roughly four large agencies for which it will assume procurement. The three-year plan will be to monitor the pilot in hopes that it is successful to bring more agencies under GSA for full cradle to grave procurements. This is good and bad. While GSA is known to be somewhat indifferent and unresponsive in the limited role they now play, the boon is that by making individual agencies go through another agency, it will reign in some of the egregious politics and influence of SESs that seem to dangle acquisition offices like marionets daring anyone to question them. Understand that CIOs began a migration off legacy in 1996 with a 5-year project plan. It is now 29 years later. The PALT keeps extending out and the project remains incomplete. Unfathomable amounts of money have been spent.

I woke up at 4:30am to check the snow accumulation and closing announcements. Despite my somnologist's best advice, I proceeded to check my feed. In doing so, I found the following article, which resonated with me as one of the best I've read this year. It also underscores the rapid progression of data sorting as a modern function, tailor fitting to me as a consumer of information. I sent the article out to my team with the following remark, "If anyone wants a another lens into my theoretical framework as a CO, I would suggest you read this article when you have time." ‘We’re not doing the thing we’re built to do’: Agnes Callard, the philosopher living life according to Socrates | Philosophy books | The Guardian I am also currently reading Sean Carroll's, Something Deeply Hidden. Carroll brings up a thought provoking point, which is to say that roughly 45 years after Einstein's publication of his theory of general relativity in 1915 in the journal Annalen der Physik, physicists found themselves grappling with the EPR Paradox, seeking to explain how two electrons could simuteously interact with one another through a state of entanglement regardless of their positions, in violation of the principal of local realism, which establishes that physical bodies cannot communicate with one another faster than the speed of light. Carroll cites that preoccupation with such questions in the 1960s were regarded within the larger scientific community as ignoble and trivial. Fast forward to today when we know that the quantum technology that will predictably turn our entire understanding of the world upside down, revolutionizing everything from medicine to computers to the very condition of our existence, was fundamentally based on these questions, which a select few scientists devoted lifetimes to pondering and adding to the incompleteness of theory. In the 1980s, when I was in secondary school, the occupational pursuits that were seen as guaranteeing one a life of stability and comfort, will soon be overcome and replaced by the products of the quantum science once considered by many a waste of time. To quote Agnes Callard, “It is true that you can view life as a comedy or a tragedy, but I really think that Socrates thought there’s a third possibility. That is, you can refute things. You can investigate them, never settle on an answer. There’s an inquisitive mode of living, in which you’re living your life at the same time as not assuming you know how to live it.”

As an update to the subject post, the following language was included in a memorandum sent today, February 5, 2025, to heads and acting heads of departments and agencies from the acting director of OPM, entitled, "Further Guidance Regarding Ending DEIA Offices, Programs and Initiatives": "Accessibility and Reasonable Accommodation: The Biden-Harris Administration conflated longstanding, legally-required obligations related to disability accessibility and accommodation with DEI initiatives. President Trump’s executive orders require the elimination of discriminatory practices. Agencies should thus rescind policies and practices that are contrary to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. But agencies should not terminate or prohibit accessibility or disability-related accommodations, assistance, or other programs that are required by those or related laws. In executing reduction-in-force actions regarding employees in DEIA offices, agencies should therefore retain the minimum number of employees necessary to ensure agency compliance with applicable disability and accessibility laws, including those requiring the collection, maintenance, and reporting of disability information." Our agency provides sign language and captioning services to employees who are deaf and hard of hearing via disability-related accommodations prescribed under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. To date, I have heard nothing from our agency head or attorneys concerning our parent agency's request to cancel this contract. The contract (task order) remains active and in effect. @Jamaal Valentine, your earlier assessment was spot on.

@Jamaal Valentine I too wondered what impact addng "accessibility" as a component might have to the applicability and interpretation of the EO. Per my research, a DEIA initiative could be construed to be illegal if evidence supports that it leads to any of the following: 1) Affirmative Action with Strict Quotas 2) Programs that are Exclusionary of Certain Groups of People 3) Discriminatory Hiring and Promotional Practices 4) DEIA Trainings Encouraging Harrassment or Coercion, for instance those that might run afoul of one's right to free speech, e.g., seeking to silence or coerce in defiance of one's inherent rights to their own religious and political beliefs and affiliations 5) Retaliation Against Employees for Non-participation 6) Violation of Privacy Rights in Data Collection 7) Accessibility Programs that Discriminated against Non-disabled individuals 8)) Excessive focus on Identity Categories in Decision Making, and 9) Inconsistent Application of Policies I cannot see how our agency's translation and interpreting services bring about any of these. James Madison, sometimes called the Father of the Constitution, said that, "Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires." But just as fire is a life-sustaining chemical reaction, which controlled can facilitate to feed the masses, unchecked, it becomes an apocalyptic force. Of factions, Madison insisted that we needed more. Competing interests would ultimately counteract one another, preventing any one from achieving unchecked dominance. A diverse pluralistic republic would prove the most effective sentinel of the rights of all.

@Vern Edwards This is how the request came over to our acquisitions policy director, in writing, in the text of an email from a procurement analyst at our parent agency: "Could you please terminate and deob [task order number] for Sign Language Interpreting Services? Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns." I read this as a request, not a directive. Thanks for prompting me to consider the difference between the two.

@Retreadfed you have summed up so many of my concerns. I spoke to one of our attorneys with my supervisor on the line. From our parent agency's email, she got the impression that the GSA MAS contract might soon be terminated. Her first thought was, that does not necessarily preclude us from continuing performance under our agency's order for these services, which by most accounts are statutorily required. Her other thought was that if we decided to terminate our task order off the MAS, we would most likely have to turn right back around and order these same services another way, be it on the open market or off another vehicle. I have some additional updates to my original posting to provide. My specialist had reached out to GSA, which fortunately responded quickly. Their representative provided us the two emails GSA sent to our parent agency's OPE and acquisition policy office after the executive order was released. One of them stated we should be aware that we have a few orders (the same email then clearly identified those several orders) that were awarded off MAS contracts, which GSA recently determined "may have" schedules containing DEI-related items. This then somehow got twisted around by our parent agency's procurement analyst to where it fatalistically became, "Unfortunately, this is not OPE’s call. GSA reviewed its Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) and determined that this order fell under a DEI MAS." So far, it seems their OPE does not even have a copy of our order for deaf captioning and interpretation. It seems none of their attorneys reviewed the order or this apparent directive before it was sent to our policy office and then my supervisor. My agency's attorney indicated that none of our attorneys had been asked to review the matter. After I made my colleague aware of these things, they instructed me to hit pause on this request until our senior attorneys and leadership are able to review the matter and make an informed decision.

I am a contracting officer who received a request today from my direct supervisor to immediately terminate our agency's contract for captioning and interpreting services, as it may be contrary to the current executive order, Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing – The White House. Our agency uses this contract to stay compliant with the requirements of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, primarly to accomodate employees who are deaf or hard of hearing and who may function under a reasonable accomodation in the course of their employment. After questioning the request, I was told that our counsel had not yet provided a legal opinion. When I asked my leadership for the basis of the request, I was forwarded an email from our parent agency authored by a procurement analyst, who wrote, "Unfortunately, this is not OPE’s call. GSA reviewed its Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) and determined that this order fell under a DEI MAS." Firstly, I have done research and can find no such thing as a GSA DEI MAS. Such a category or flavor of contracts does not exist. The SIN for this GSA contract is 541930, Translation and Interpreting Services, which per GSA, includes translating written material, interpreting speech from one language to another, and services to facilitate communication with and by persons who are visually or hearing impaired. Services provided must include communication from a source language to a target language. My specialist wrote GSA, but so far we have neither confirmed that the contract off which our interpreting services order is placed is slated to be terminated, nor that it is categorized by GSA as DEI in any form or fashion. Secondly, this contract provides reasonable accommodations under the Rehabilitation Act, which is statutory authority outside the ambit of the executive order. I asked my office if they felt we were seeking to cancel executive order-authorized work, or work that is independently authorized by statute. I believe it to be the latter. We contracted for these services well before any DEI advocacy initiatives installed by the previous administration. Lastly, I question whether we are perhaps purposefully politicizing our interpretation of the EO in a hyperbolic or overreaching way so as to vilify the new administration. Regardless of anyone's political opinions or leanings, I simply do not feel that the intent of the order was to take captioning and sign language services away from deaf federal employees otherwise protected under a long-standing statute. The spirit of the EO seems to promote a merit system within federal government not disproportionately influenced by considerations of race, gender, and identity.

Yes, our agency has an enforceable contract. In the case of this acquisition, either would have sufficed. We have the latter, which is to say that the Government sent the software publisher's reseller (on GSA FSS) the task order, i.e., the Government's offer, and the schedule contract holder began performance on 10/01, thereby constituting its acceptance of the terms stated within its GSA contract and the specific order. Our legal consideration was the Government's promise to pay. It is a contract for the acquisition of commercial items. It may be changed by the mutual assent of the parties. The primary consideration in this case seems to be that this was awarded as a sole source bridge contract. The Government is buying itself time in hopes of awarding a longer term contract following the bridge. One concern the Government may have is that it seeks to resolve the 508 compliance issue before we enter into a longer contract with the software publisher's authorized reseller. This might be seen as a show of good will on the part of the Government, seeking to resolve a contentious matter here and now rather than later. I reviewed the quote submitted and there is no mention of the software publisher's 508 compliance standards. It seems that their proposed language is more so concerned with representing the methodololgy they use to measure compliance with the federal accessibility standards, Moreover, I have reviewed the contractor's GSA FSS contract for 508 language and found the following: If applicable, indicate that Section 508 compliance information is available on Electronic and Information Technology (EIT) supplies and services and show where full details can be found (e.g. contractor’s website or other location.) The EIT standards can be found at: www.Section508.gov/. This GSA contract language seems to revert to the larger section 508 compliance standards. I understand the concern about a possible future claim for an equitable adjustment. I am not sure the weighted risk is of any substantiality considering that the Government sent the contractor an order with 508 compliance requirements therein stated and the contractor accepted the order via its start of performance on the first day of the period of performance. Perhaps @Neil Roberts could provide some precendent that would be helpful in this area. From years of reading, I don't see the CFC finding that the parties had somehow agreed to the incorporation and governance of these corporate 508 standards within the four corners of this task order, particularly when the standards were neither submitted with the quote, nor included in the reseller's GSA contract. It is possible that I am missing something.

The more I investigate this, the more I realize that one of the larger points of contention seems to be that the agency clause we insert every time, states that "[t]he Section 508 accessibility standards applicable to this solicitation are identified in the Statement of Work/Performance Work Statement." Recently, the agency provided us boilerplate language for our SOWs/PWSs that includes the 508 requirements in their totality as if everything was applicable. There is a simplified tool in the following link (Accessibility Requirements Tool (ART) (section508.gov), which will generate the solicitation text for use based on whether we select one of two or both options, ICT products and ICT services. I spoke to our business unit this morning and they indicated that our policy office would like to include in our requirements statements every available functionality listed in the ART and let the offeror decide what is applicable. The main issue I have with this approach is that our agency's clause plainly states that the Government will identify the applicable standards in the SOW/PWS. Moreover, doesn't the law require the vendor to meet accessiblity standards if their product is a certain kind of item, barring documented exemptions? I got to thinking, if we have a results based requirements statement, i.e., get us to this exact outcome, then wouldn't it be appropriate for the offeror to tell us what ICT might best help us reach that end, for instances, a web-based portal, cloud-based solution, certain hardware installed on-prem, specific support? Obviously, the law was revised in 2018 to align with the WCAG because the former was not so clear. I used to work with Robert Baker, but he is retired from Government and with his departure we lost a consummate 508 expert. It's been my experience that even when you seek assistance from fundamental agencies such as GSA, it's difficult to find a good resource who can guide you through the process and exhibits a real understanding for the law's many complexities (and ambiguities). I agree with Carl that for a large software developer with many Government contracts and a devoted 508 accessibility office, they well could understand more about it than the agency. I think it's safe to say that they would understand more about it technically. Unfortunately, my agency has no 508 compliance expert. I drew attention to it because we were merely going through the motions. Before, they had thrown it on the desks of our records management office who were not requesting VPATs or doing any testing. All the 508 forms were coming over the same, which was, stating that the solution was expected to fully conform. I asked an old colleague if his agency still had a knowledgeable 508 person as they did when I worked there. He questioned why I even care about this in the first place. I think I care so much because it is a law and I have always been an advocate for the disabled community. One of the reasons it has taken me a few days to follow up with a response is because I have been travelling between states taking care of disabled parents and in-laws.