The Office of Management and Budget initiative to manage more effectively by using business cases has put more emphasis on acquisition strategies that measure results. In a world with performance-based contracts, we still measure results in the usual areas of cost, quality, delivery and customer satisfaction. It's in customer satisfaction that companies and agencies should be developing new approaches.
The General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service created the Center for Acquisition Excellence, which will provide free online training on several GSA purchasing programs.
The Defense Department wants to change its Pilot Mentor-Protégé program so that the director of small and disadvantaged business utilization at each military department and agency can approve mentor firms and mentor-protégé agreements.
The Small Business Administration has created a program that allows contracting officers to set aside federal contracts for service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses.
Congress this year may force the Defense Department to speed its process for granting security clearances to private contractors and government personnel who need access to classified information on the job.
The Small Business Administration has proposed revising its size standards mainly by moving to a system that determines a company's small-business status based solely on the number of employees.
The Naval Air Systems Command needs mobile aircraft firefighting training devices to provide rescue and live fire training to Navy and Federal Fire Service personnel at its Training Systems Division in Orlando, Fla. It is looking for commercial, non-developmental devices to be used in training for aircraft crash rescue and firefighting.
The Health and Human Services Department seeks a contractor to operate and maintain the biological data processing system for its Developmental Therapeutics Program, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis at the National Cancer Institute. The program is responsible for discovering and developing chemical and biological agents with potential use in the treatment of cancer and AIDS.
The Air Force Materiel Command is looking for a vendor to provide systems-related services for its aeromedical services information management systems at the Population Health Support Division at Brook City Air Force Base in Texas. The contractor will offer programming, system analysis, data analysis, training and senior consulting services among other tasks. The contractor must also maintain and systematically enhance all the systems.
The Defense Department has made extremely limited progress in modernizing its business systems and implementing an enterprise architecture, GAO reported.
After two days of hearings in a Senate committee about diploma mill abuses, questions remained about how the government would treat credentials from unaccredited colleges that offer legitimate degrees.
Investigators uncover more than $150,000 in federal payments to unaccredited schools on behalf of federal employees, and testify the true extent of improper payments likely is much larger.
An organization representing the nation's public safety answering points wants the administration to support a bill that would help state and local governments upgrade their 911 services.
Two of the nation's top IT defense companies are entangled in the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal that has sparked international outrage and caused a diplomatic crisis for the United States.
