Project management Archives

While perhaps not critical to the protection of life and property, the economic stimulus-tracking website Recovery.gov is exempt from the government shutdown. The site, which will be updated later this month, is funded through 2009 Recovery Act appropriations -- not the annual agency appropriations that Congress is debating today. A media release from the site's overseer, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Oversight Board, states:

In the event of a government shutdown, the Recovery Board will continue its regular operations because the agency is funded from an appropriation that continues to remain available until September 30, 2011. The government shutdown will not affect the ongoing recipient reporting for the first quarter of 2011, which is scheduled to continue until April 14. Data from those recipient reports will be posted on Recovery.gov on April 30.

The White House is releasing the software code for a website it uses to track the performance of big computing projects, as a way to fix program glitches and share the tool with other government bodies, according to the federal chief information officer.

The so-called IT Dashboard monitors the budget, schedule and functionality of systems under development that cost the federal government about $80 billion annually. But critics and federal auditors say ratings on the site do not always accurately represent the current status of projects.

Still, federal CIO Vivek Kundra says the dashboard has helped reduce IT costs by more than $3 billion and he wants "to tap into the collective talents and ingenuity of the American people, to enhance functionality, improve the code and address existing challenges," according to a post on the White House blog. "Software developers will be able to collaborate, identify errors, develop enhancements and recommend improvements to the dashboard, and find new uses for it that we have not even imagined."

CIOs throughout the nation and the world, such as Maarten Hillenaar of the Netherlands, Kyle Schafer in West Virginia and Jason DeHaan in the City of Chicago, are interested in deploying the accountability software in their respective governments, he writes.

The code underpinning the dashboard is freely available, through a format referred to as open source.

In addition, the Obama administration is publishing instructions on how to conduct "TechStat" sessions, which are in-person meetings Kundra typically holds with agency CIOs to decide what to do with systems at risk of failing.

He writes, "The TechStat toolkit provides a comprehensive guide for organizations to establish their own TechStats to improve line-of-sight between project teams and senior executives, increase the precision of ongoing measurement of IT program health, and boost the quality and timing of interventions to keep projects on track."

White House officials on Wednesday circulated a memo, obtained by Nextgov, that encourages procurement officers to communicate with contractors before finalizing solicitations, in an effort to dispel misperceptions about conflicts of interest.

The idea is that companies know the costs and features of current technology better than the government so potential bidders should be consulted early in the process of drawing up system requirements for contracts.

"Although industry may have had their best technical representatives engaged with the program manager, the contracting officer should communicate to vendors as much information as possible about the government's needs as early as possible," states a copy of the guidance, signed by Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Daniel Gordon. "As a result of early communication, the contracting officer may learn some things that suggest that an approach somewhat different than planned may cause increased competition, more small business participation, lower prices, or even a better definition of the government's technical requirements."

Fears of contract protests or signing unauthorized deals have prevented some acquisition officers from talking to vendors, according to the memo. At the same time, industry may stay away -- out of concern that stepping over boundaries may bar them from future government business.

The document requires agencies by June 30 to develop plans for communicating with contractors. After the plans are reviewed by the White House, they must be made publicly available within a month.

Wednesday's memo takes pains to stress that nothing within the guidelines should be interpreted to "alter, or authorize violations of, applicable ethics rules, procurement integrity requirements, or other statutes or regulations that govern communication and information sharing."

After discussions with company representatives and agency staff, the White House identified the 10 most frequently-mentioned misconceptions about contractor-government fraternization:

1. "We can't meet one-on-one with a potential offeror." Fact: Government officials can generally meet one-on-one with potential offerors as long as no vendor receives preferential treatment.
2. "Since communication with contractors is like communication with registered lobbyists, and since contact with lobbyists must be disclosed, additional communication with contractors will involve a substantial additional disclosure burden, so we should avoid these meetings." Fact: Disclosure is required only in certain circumstances, such as for meetings with registered lobbyists. Many contractors do not fall into this category, and even when disclosure is required, it is normally a minimal burden that should not prevent a useful meeting from taking place.
3. "A protest is something to be avoided at all costs -- even if it means the government limits conversations with industry." Fact: Restricting communication won't prevent a protest, and limiting communication might actually increase the chance of a protest, in addition to depriving the government of potentially useful information.
4. "Conducting discussions or negotiations after receipt of proposals will add too much time to the schedule." Fact: Whether discussions should be conducted is a key decision for contracting officers to make. Avoiding discussions solely because of schedule concerns may be counter-productive, and may cause delays and other problems during contract performance.
5. "If the government meets with vendors, that may cause them to submit an unsolicited proposal and that will delay the procurement process." Fact: Submission of an unsolicited proposal should not affect the schedule. Generally, the unsolicited proposal process is separate from the process for a known agency requirement that can be acquired using competitive methods.
6. "When the government awards a task or delivery order using the Federal Supply Schedules, debriefing the offerors isn't required so it shouldn't be done." Fact: Providing feedback is important, both for offerors and the government, so agencies should generally provide feedback whenever possible.
7. "Industry days and similar events attended by multiple vendors are of low value to industry and the government because industry won't provide useful information in front of competitors, and the government doesn't release new information." Fact: Well-organized industry days, as well as pre-solicitation and pre-proposal conferences, are valuable opportunities for the government and for potential vendors -- both prime contractors and subcontractors, many of whom are small businesses.
8. "The program manager already talked to industry to develop the technical requirements, so the contracting officer doesn't need to do anything else before issuing the RFP." Fact: The technical requirements are only part of the acquisition; getting feedback on terms and conditions, pricing structure, performance metrics, evaluation criteria, and contract administration matters will improve the award and implementation process.
9. "Giving industry only a few days to respond to an RFP is OK since the government has been talking to industry about this procurement for over a year." Fact: Providing only short response times may result in the government receiving fewer proposals and the ones received may not be as well-developed -- which can lead to a flawed contract. This approach signals that the government isn't really interested in competition.
10. "Getting broad participation by many different vendors is too difficult; we're better off dealing with the established companies we know." Fact: The government loses when we limit ourselves to the companies we already work with. Instead, we need to look for opportunities to increase competition and ensure that all vendors, including small businesses, get fair consideration.

Boeing, General Dynamics and the Navy fought over billion-dollar claims involving a failed 1991 stealth fighter aircraft contract on Jan. 18. The contractors claimed that the government withheld information from them, and by invoking the state secrets privilege, prevented them from delivering a satisfactory product. The question is, does throwing around the word "state secrets" unnecessarily politicize a dispute that can be resolved by contract law?

The facts of the case: In 1991, the Defense Department pulled the plug on the inauspicious project to build a stealth fighter, the A-12 Avenger, when it ended up too heavy for aircraft carriers to handle. The plane never took off from blueprint into production. The 20-year-long dispute is a bitter blame game following a disastrous $4.8 billion deal that in truth, just amounted to expensive aircraft blueprints.

The government demanded a refund of $1.35 billion after it cancelled the contract and declared General Dynamics and Boeing in default. The contractors sued, countering that they were owed an additional $1.25 billion for work done that had not yet been billed.

Boeing and General Dynamics said it wasn't their fault that they hadn't delivered what the Navy wanted; the real problem was the abuse of the state secrets privilege. The government withheld sensitive information that would have allowed them to deliver satisfactory results, the contractors claimed. The government countered that this was done to protect national security.

The information that came was "too little and too late to effectively allow the contract to proceed as planned," said attorney Carter Phillips. "The weight specifics that we were being asked to provide or to supply were literally impossible to comply with based on what the government already knew," he said.

His argument sounded almost convincing until he dropped this:

The problem is we don't know precisely what information we didn't have and were never entitled to. So it's very difficult to say how strong is our defense under these circumstances.

That admission reveals that this case is going to be a difficult one to argue. The politically-charged rhetoric around "state secrets" masks what is at the heart of the debate: "All we're asking for is the actual amount of money that we expended," said Phillips, "maybe to some extent you could say we're sort of being a little greedy." But a contract is a contract, he added.

Framing the case as a constitutional precedent centered around "state secrets" unnecessarily politicizes more fundamental problems, namely mutual distrust and insufficient planning.

The insistence of General Dynamics and Boeing that the government provide more specifications could hint at a lack of enterprise, Justice Stephen Breyer seemed to suggest. "Sophisticated contractors are perfectly capable of negotiating their own contract," he said. If the government fed too much information to contractors, "we are not just throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of government contracting; we're throwing the whole monkey."

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia seemed in favor of tossing the case out of the court, arguing that the dispute could be better resolved by contract law rather than constitutional law. If it is indeed settled behind closed doors, we'll never know who put the monkey wrench in the gears of this contract. But really, in a case involving two the top five government contractors, billions of dollars, and the U.S. Navy, are we surprised?

Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner, who has probed contractor waste at the department since its inception, announced on Thursday that he will step down March 1.

Prior to his July 2005 Senate confirmation as IG, Skinner -- a four-decade veteran of the federal government -- had held the position of deputy IG at DHS since its March 2003 creation.

"After serving more than 42 years in the federal government, under nine presidents, I believe the time has come for me to give my full time attention to my family and personal endeavors," Skinner wrote to President Obama in a Jan. 13 letter of resignation. "Because of [the IG office staff's] commitment, professionalism and hard work, the OIG has been extremely successful in working with the department to promote the efficacy of its programs and operations, and to combat fraud, waste, and abuse within its ranks. Looking back over the past 9 years since the tragic events on September 11, 2001, we, as a nation, are now beginning to witness the positive effects of the creation of the department of Homeland Security."

It's not surprising that a department quickly cobbled together from 22 existing agencies would endure a fair degree of mismanagement. Most recently, in a report released Jan. 3, Skinner found that DHS had not tried to recover about $643 million in overpayments to 160,000 people who claimed they were victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Last summer, he revealed that department officials funding a new financial management system worth potentially $1 billion did not have suitable plans, cost estimates or staffing projection for the undertaking.

Skinner started his career at the Agriculture Department in 1969, and later moved on to managerial positions in the investigative arms of the departments of Justice, Commerce and State, as well as the Arms Controls and Disarmament Agency. He was honored with the President's Meritorious Executive Rank Award for serving FEMA, where he worked as acting IG, deputy IG and assistant IG for audits.

Hewlett Packard has nabbed a 10-year NASA megadeal potentially worth $2.5 billion to manage employees' personal computers and peripheral technology, space agency officials announced on Monday.

The job entails providing, securing and servicing most staff computers, agency software, mobile technology services, printers and other supporting infrastructure. Herndon, Va.-based HP Enterprise Services, formerly EDS, will be responsible for outsourcing some of the tasks to other commercial vendors under the contract known as "ACES," for Agency Consolidated End-user Services.

The fixed-price pact covers four base years of work, with two three-year option periods. Program managers will be based at NASA's shared services center in Mississippi.

ACES is part of a larger NASA effort, the IT Infrastructure Integration Program, intended to save money by consolidating procurements and centralizing information technology services. The new HP deal will replace an older long-term contract currently held by Lockheed Martin Corp. called the Outsourced Desktop Initiative (ODIN).

In February, Lockheed, one of the most established NASA business partners, announced the space agency had awarded the company a $230 contract extension for ODIN that ends in Oct. 2011.

The Mississippi facility where ACES will be managed -- operated by NASA, Computer Sciences Corp. and the states of Mississippi and Louisiana -- supports operations at all 10 NASA space centers.

The National Archives and Records Administration just opened a door to what the agency expects will become a sort of time capsule containing U.S. historical materials that future generations will be able to access irrespective of innovations in technology.

A prototype of Online Public Access, which launched Monday, lets average citizens, as well as scholars, gain more comprehensive information on holdings that already are online, including card catalogs, digital representations of some records and multimedia from the agency's homepage, Archives.gov. Results for keyword searches play up the article images to appeal to eyes more familiar with social media layouts, like Facebook pages.

Each query retrieves a list of relevant records, archival data about the records identified, the source of the data and the physical or Internet location where the records are viewable. Next year, the site will offer a tool that allows users to zoom in and pan across the online materials, say NARA officials. In the future, people will have the ability to tag records with context based on personal knowledge -- as well as access audio, visuals and personal papers from presidential library collections, agency officials add.

The Archives does not have the resources to post all of America's artifacts. NARA's holdings include papers that would encircle the Earth more than 57 times; about 93,000 movies; more than 5.5 million maps, charts and architectural drawings; roughly 207,000 sound and video recordings; about 18 million aerial photographs; nearly 35 million still pictures and posters; and more than 3.5 billion electronic records.

But the agency is working on a project -- dubbed the Electronic Records Archives -- aimed at digitizing all records in a way that will make them accessible to the public even if the Internet no longer exists.

White House officials earlier this month announced a plan to accelerate the $994.9 million ERA program. The government has spent $425.2 million on the concept since 2002, but hardly any agencies are using the system, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said.

As of this month, 16 agencies are depositing electronic records at the Archives via ERA software, according to the latest status report. Under the expedited schedule, ERA will be the default conduit for transferring records by July 2011 and mandatory for agencies in 2012, the Archives says.

White House officials on Thursday morning released a 25-point implementation plan to execute one of the biggest information technology contracting overhauls since the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act.

The problem the plan aims to tackle: Productivity gains in the private sector have outpaced government performance even though federal agencies spent about $600 billion during the past decade on technology to boost efficiency. The Obama administration's policy roadmap aims to dismantle the old way of installing new technology - which has been to design overly-ambitious systems that fall years behind in development - and create new procedures for quickly and cheaply upgrading machinery.

Here are some of the standouts on the to-do list:

• Reshape or terminate at least one-third of underperforming projects in the government's $80 billion IT portfolio within the next 18 months.
• Shift to a "cloud first" policy, where agencies consider moving to Web-based software and hardware before spending money on new systems. Each agency will identify three must-move services within three months, shift one of those services to the cloud within 12 months and then transition the remaining two within 18 months.
• Within 12 months, establish a tech fellows program modeled after the Presidential Management Fellows program to recruit graduate students with in-demand talents into IT program management.
• By mid-June, launch a website where industry and agency contracting officials can collaborate prior to the issuance of requests for proposals.

The White House this morning announced much-anticipated contracting reforms that propose changing the budget cycle for information technology projects and developing a path to promotion for IT program managers.

The details of the plan -- announced by Office of Management and Budget Chief Performance Officer Jeff Zients -- are explained in a Nextgov column by Pratap Chatterjee, who is a visiting fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank with close ties to the Obama administration.

We'll have more information and perspective on Nextgov later today.

Some information technology contractors welcomed an announcement by President Obama on Wednesday that he proposes investing in infrastructure, such as advanced air traffic tech, as a way of stimulating the economy -- but expresses nervousness about how he intends to compensate for the cost.

In Ohio, Obama said, "We want to put more Americans back to work rebuilding America -- our roads, our railways, our runways." The fleshed-out plan involves focusing more money on NextGen, a sweeping effort to update air traffic control by replacing radar-based guidance with satellite-based navigation by 2018.

Industry groups and Republicans reportedly care more about extending Bush administration tax-cuts for the wealthy that are set to expire at the end of 2010.

The president did not mince words in saying he is against a continuation of the Bush-era income-tax rates.

"With all the other budgetary pressures we have -- with all the Republicans' talk about wanting to shrink the deficit -- they would have us borrow $700 billion over the next 10 years to give a tax cut of about $100,000 each to folks who are already millionaires," Obama said.

Recently, the White House also has taken great care to warn businesses that the administration is not afraid to freeze or dismantle IT projects that are burning through taxpayer dollars without any indication of success. The Veterans Affairs Department killed 12 underperforming systems and, this summer, the White House put 30 major financial management systems on hold and put 26 mission-critical IT systems on a watchlist.

Trade group TechAmerica has told the Office of Management and Budget it wants to work with federal officials on fixing failing projects and reengineering the IT purchasing process -- but has opposed a wholesale halt on systems development. The association extended qualified support for Obama's new plan to spend more money on NextGen.

Industry members "applaud investments in 21st century infrastructure such as the modernization of America's air traffic control system," TechAmerica President and CEO Phil Bond said on Wednesday. "Still, many leaders in the private sector will remain uncertain until they understand the revenue raisers the president alluded to so briefly today. We would be disappointed to see any offsets that would constrain the very growth the president wants to promote."