According to SBA’s fourth annual small-business procurement scorecard released last week, this amount represents 21.89 percent of all federal spending, which is an improvement from FY 2008. Additionally, performance in each of the government’s socioeconomic subcategories increased for FY2009.

“Small businesses received a record $96.8 billion in federal contracts in 2009,” SBA Administrator Karen Mills said. “There was an increase in both dollars and contracting share for every small business category. This represents real progress, but not enough, we must reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that the 23 percent goal is met and exceeded. Federal contracts awarded to small businesses are a ‘win-win’ – providing small businesses with the opportunity to grow and create jobs, and offering innovative services and essential goods to the government at great value to the taxpayers.”

SBA must report to the president and Congress on achievements by federal agencies and departments against their annual goal to ensure greater accountability. The small business Procurement Scorecard fulfills that requirement by assessing federal achievement in prime contracting and subcontracting to small businesses by the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies. It also measures progress departments are making to ensure small-business opportunities remain an integral part of their acquisition of goods and services to meet mission objectives.

The fourth annual Scorecard gauges how well federal agencies reach their small business and socio-economic prime contracting and subcontracting goals. It also provides accurate and transparent contracting data and reports agency-specific progress. The prime and subcontracting component goals include goals for small businesses, small businesses owned by women, small disadvantaged businesses, service-disabled veteran owned small businesses, and small businesses in located in Historically Underutilized Business Zones.

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Today’s Industry Day revealed how the GSA and DISA are planning on purchasing future commercial satellite end-to-end solutions from industry. There were two draft RFP’s that were introduced this morning. There is one full and open competition RFP for large-scale requirements and one RFP restricted to small businesses.

How are these RFP’s vastly different from anything in the past? They are fair and open for competition. The purpose of having 3 contracts is to give industry the ability to compete against each other. They are flexible; the mission is evolving.

The name that was revealed today for the FCSA ID/IQ is Custom SATCOM Solutions (CS2). Some of the highlights of CS2 are that customers will define the requirements and contractors will engineer customer solutions. There will be full and open for large-scale requirements and small business set-asides.

GSA representatives spoke on a variety of different solution attributes or requirements such as portability, security, and capacity (in terms of location and amount) for the DOD and government customers. They also hit on the variety of solution types such as interactive services, continuity of operations, broadcast satellite services, emergency responder operations, direct warfighter operations, and steady state operations.

Industry Day also revealed the purpose and details of the Sample Task Orders. The three categories of sample task orders are distance learning, blue personnel tracking, and disaster response commercial infrastructure. The difference between the samples is complexity.

The proposals will be evaluated on technical and management evaluation, past performance, and price. The number of contracts that will be awarded was not stated as this depends on the number of contract proposals received as well as the quality of these proposals. While the next Industry Day will focus on submission requirements of the proposal, they mentioned anyone can start today by making sure they can login to the secure portal. The FCSA Hosting Center requires a digital certificate and each proposal needs both a hard and soft copy submission.

The final ID/IQ RFP will be launched this summer after feedback has been taken into account. Awards will be given out in 2011. Feedback and recommendations for the RFP’s are due by April 21^st no later than 3 pm to futurecomsatcom@gsa.gov. The RFP’s are posted on www.fbo.gov.

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According to a note published in the Federal Register, General Services is looking for comments and feedback on the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information Systems (FAPIIS) – the new database aiming to keep government contractors honest.

GSA faces some problems in the early stages of the project, such as how to make the system as agile and easy to use as possible.

Without direction, the crush of information on the site could become overwhelming and make the tool difficult to use.  And there would be a lengthy list of info:  according to the 2009 Defense Authorization Act, which tasked the GSA with the creation of FAPIIS, any firm with more than $10 million in federal grants or task orders must submit information to the site – and any time a federal agency is awarding a deal worth more that $500,000, they have to conduct research on the firm based on the FAPIIS.

The comment call lasts until the end of March, ahead of FAPIIS yet to be scheduled launch.

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The now-final rule adds new policy to address certain requirements and expands existing DFARS definitions – effective March 15, 2010.

According to the Defense Acquisitions Regulations System:“Section 854 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005 prescribes policy for the acquisition of supplies and services through the use of contracts or orders issued by non-DoD agencies. Section 801(b)(1), at paragraphs (A) and (C), of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (Pub. L. 110-181) authorizes a DoD acquisition official to procure property and services in excess of the simplified acquisition threshold through civilian agencies only if–

(1) The civilian agencies agree to adhere to defense procurement requirements; or

(2) The Under Secretary of Defense (AT&L) certifies that the procurement is in the best interest of the Department.”

Some other notes about the rule – “The statute also requires DoD to issue guidance on interagency contracting consistent with the Act that addresses the circumstances in which it is appropriate for DoD acquisition officials to procure goods or services through a contract entered into by an agency outside the DoD.

DoD published an interim rule at 74 FR 34270 on July 15, 2009, to address the new statutory requirements. Statutory limitations in section 817 of Public Law 109-364, the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, and section 811 of Public Law 109-163, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, were previously implemented and do not impact this change.”

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An objective directed from President Obama, agencies are to cut $40 billion from contracting budgets by 2011.  The administration hopes that by cutting non-competitive contracts and in sourcing some jobs the demand for government contractors will subside.  Most agencies as a result will see an increase is staffing.

The government, a major worldwide buyer, has permitted agencies to act as separate customers for too long, contributing, in part, to wasteful spending, said Jeffrey D. Zients, OMB deputy director for management.

Zients also went on to say that the practices and abuses of the agencies operations towards government-contracting  would not be present in the private sector and further they are unacceptable and will be fixed.

Currently, the government is the world’s largest buyer of goods and spending on contracts has doubled since 2002.  President Obama will be making comments today on the OMB progress report.

This fall however, lawmakers have acted with trepidation concerning Obama’s contracting reforms.

The one major item missing from OMB’s report is the definition of “inherently governmental functions” which would determine services contractors should no longer conduct.

Zients thinks that in the end “all of us want to save money here, and the progress we’ve made in identifying the $19 billion gets us off to a very fast start.”

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There is $5 billion in the bill alone to bring prior outsourced functions to contractors to the Department of Defense. According to the bill, this will save $44,000 a year for each position moved to the Department of Defense instead of an outside defense contractor.

Another $288 million of the bill goes to increase oversight of the department’s acquisition and contracting actions. Then $104 billion goes to procurement, $80.5 goes towards research and development, and the rest will go towards the funding of electronic warfare and a new Future Combat Systems program.

The bill also stated that 212,000 contractors had been issued Common Access Cards (CSCs) by mistake. The bill requires the Department of Defense to have more in house security in the checking and issuing of the CACs.

To see the bill in its entirety visit: http://www.rules.house.gov/111/RuleRpt/111_dodapprops_rpt.pdf

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The program is in place to avoid conflicts between contractors that have a contract for support services as well as development on the same program. According to a recent ManTech press release, ManTech President and COO Larry Prior stated, “This certification reaffirms our commitment to providing non-conflicted services to the NRO and its DoD, Civil and Intelligence Community customers and demonstrates our leadership as a premier provider of systems engineering and technical services throughout the federal government. It also represents a great opportunity for ManTech to create alliances with high-quality business partners who share our commitment to provided non-conflicted systems engineering services to customers worldwide.”

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