Reform

[FAR-flung 1102]

Sorry I am late to the party. 

1) Allow partial payment on 2-in-1 vendor  invoices for services...This will give Contracting Officer's a better tool to handle non-conforming/partial contractor performance. 

2) Enforce DFARS PGI 204.7103 (d) (ii) which requires line item  quantities on service contracts to match frequency with which performance is reviewed and on fixed price line items, payment made. 

3) Require alignment as much as practicable of  Contracting Officer Representative (COR) periodic surveillance  ratings criteria in requirements documents (which are too often only expressed as a single  Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory standard for items observed by the COR, with those rating criteria already used on an annual basis in the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) which uses five rating criteria: Exceptional, Very Good, Satisfactory, Marginal, and Unsatisfactory). This provides a non-monetary incentive for greater contractor performance where the Government determines it can benefit. 

[REA'n Maker]

On 11/16/2024 at 6:30 AM, Vern Edwards said:

The government calls it the "source selection process", and conducts it like a lawyer enrichment process

At one point during a protest against a $90M Part 16 (OASIS) award, I had four attorneys pouring over every word I wrote in the agency response. For several weeks. This was after GAO had dismissed most of their protest or the protestor dropped several points including an OCI allegation which called out an expired contract that had absolutely zero relevance.

The lawyers did hit paydirt however when they legitimately caught my mistake of using the word "it" in the debrief when I should have said "the offeror's [agency] experience". Serves me right for trying to provide useful feedback by condensing the tech eval comments down into cogent bullet points for the PA debrief. I had literally produced hundreds of pages of documents related to this procurement and that was the best they could do. This began in January and the GAO decision was issued in September. Guess who the incumbent was?

Get rid of perverse incentives in the procurement system and eliminate the CICA stay.

(Postscript: what has two thumbs and won a $90M protest? This guy!)

[REA'n Maker]

On 11/15/2024 at 3:38 PM, formerfed said:

I was at the Patent and Trademarks Office years ago.

Small world. I was there from 2013-2019 as the PM for a consultant team supporting Office of Procurement and a couple of the programs. One thing our team did was to help OP codify and institute the policies that recognized the flexibilities allowed USPTO per 35 U.S.C. 2(b)(4)(A), as a result of their fee-funded model.

 ptag.pdf

(One caveat is that the entire USPTO FY procurement spend is less than one contract under my current cognizance as CO).

[Jamaal Valentine]

On 11/7/2024 at 4:46 AM, Vern Edwards said:

I have been asked for ideas about what can be done to improve and streamline contracting without the need for new legislation.

Any suggestions?

Field a requirements development/definition tool that standardizes the format and structure regarding the description of agency needs. The tool would produce a digital document that feeds into contract writing systems and e-files; or could be printed. This would eliminate non-standard formats and Word documents. Variation often means waste and noncompliance.

With all of the software and systems out there, there is no reason requiring activities can’t have an automated tool that guides them through requirements development (think Turbo Tax). I’m thinking Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software not DAU’s ARRT Roadmap/Tool, which operated in Excel and was too hard for most users.

In my experience, requirements development makes up a lot of the lead time. First, the requiring activity takes months or years to produce a requirement of varying quality. Next, once the requirement is published to industry, the industrial base copious amounts of time and money interpreting it. Often, this results in a back-and-forth with government or misaligned acquisition outcomes.

A mandatory requirements definition tool would increase compliance, efficiency, automation, business intelligence/data reporting, transparency, etc. Together, this streamlines and improves several areas in government contracting formation and administration.

 

 

[Jamaal Valentine]

2 hours ago, Jamaal Valentine said:

This idea doesn’t require any rule-making.

Field a requirements development/definition tool that standardizes the format and structure regarding the description of agency needs. The tool would produce a digital document that feeds into contract writing systems and e-files; or could be printed. This would eliminate non-standard formats and Word documents. Variation often means waste and noncompliance.

With all of the software and systems out there, there is no reason requiring activities can’t have an automated tool that guides them through requirements development (think Turbo Tax). I’m thinking Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software not DAU’s ARRT Roadmap/Tool, which operated in Excel and was too hard for most users.

In my experience, requirements development makes up a lot of the lead time. First, the requiring activity takes months or years to produce a requirement of varying quality. Next, once the requirement is published to industry, the industrial base copious amounts of time and money interpreting it. Often, this results in a back-and-forth with government or misaligned acquisition outcomes.

A mandatory requirements definition tool would increase compliance, efficiency, automation, business intelligence/data reporting, transparency, etc. Together, this streamlines and improves several areas in government contracting formation and administration.

 

 

 

[formerfed]

4 hours ago, Jamaal Valentine said:

In my experience, requirements development makes up a lot of the lead time. First, the requiring activity takes months or years to produce a requirement of varying quality. Next, once the requirement is published to industry, the industrial base copious amounts of time and money interpreting it. Often, this results in a back-and-forth with government or misaligned acquisition outcomes.

A mandatory requirements definition tool would increase compliance, efficiency, automation, business intelligence/data reporting, transparency, etc. Together, this streamlines and improves several areas in government contracting formation and administration.

A long time is spent on requirements development.  So much, program offices are often reluctant to allow more time issuing draft RFPs or RFQs.  Once they finish their part, they want to solicitation issues asap.  We all know what happens next - lots of industry questions and associated government answers, multiple amendments with proposal submission due date extensions, and occassionally just scraping the solicitation and starting over.

Your tool suggestion has merit.  I believe it might work even better with getting industry and even other agencies buying similar items involved early.  A preliminary or initial draft could be issued along with high level statements of what the acquisition is intended to accomplish.  Responses would allow refinements of the documents and alert the government on conflicting or confusing language, requirements that restrict competition or even impossibility of performance, and suggestions for overall improvements.  If this is done early on as part of planning, it shouldn’t produce any delay and might even save overall time.

[Neil Roberts]

On 11/7/2024 at 4:46 AM, Vern Edwards said:

I have been asked for ideas about what can be done to improve and streamline contracting without the need for new legislation.

Any suggestions?

Put AI to work on it.

[Vern Edwards]

Don't need AI. It's not smart enough.

We have received some terrific ideas from other sources, people who really know the business, inside and out𑁋people with both deep knowledge and hands-on practical experience at several organizational levels. A team of experienced writers is working hard on preparing them in presentation form.

I don't know if anything will come of them. Maybe nothing. We'll see over the course of the next year.

[joel hoffman]

On 11/7/2024 at 6:46 AM, Vern Edwards said:

I have been asked for ideas about what can be done to improve and streamline contracting without the need for new legislation.

Any suggestions?

I am wondering what the context of “improve contracting” means here.

Improvements from whose prospective - the taxpayers, Industry, contracting workforce, government users/customers/efficient performance?

Are the suggested “improvements” mutually exclusive or complementary among the various stakeholders?

Just a rhetorical question. I can wait and see a what comes of it.  The last FY budget deficit was running around $1.7 TRILLION dollars… Something drastically needs to be done to reduce the cost of government operations.

[joel hoffman]

…Of course, we could eliminate that deficit by collecting an extra $1.63 million from each of the estimated 1,050 US billionaires without any other cost savings.

[Vern Edwards]

2 hours ago, joel hoffman said:

I am wondering what the context of “improve contracting” means here.

In an ambush there are two kinds of people: those who duck and wonder who the shooters are and those who fire at the noise.

[KeithB18]

It is often noted here that past performance is the best indicator of future performance. Unfortunately, the CPARS database is not very good. A smart group of database designers could improve it quickly and that would allow for more appropriate comparisons. It's often hard to tell if the past performance report you are looking at is for work comparable to your requirement. I'd add on some training requirements to try to improve the quality of the reports themselves. 

I do not think this is currently prohibited, but I have spoken to people who are uncomfortable doing it: We should be using the CPARS database for market research (especially an improved one). Knowing who is good at doing the thing you are buying helps you make some choices about procurement design, e.g., which GSA schedules/GWACs to consider. And even if you aren't using a schedule, getting your solicitation in front of a capable vendor is a decent step.