Procurement Archives

I don't know about the rest of you, but I either start or end my day by having some real fun scrolling through planned federal procurements on the Federal Business Opportunities website.

But, sometimes I miss a day. That included Oct. 22, when the Veterans Affairs Department put out an RFP to buy 600,000 PCs, a solicitation that was amended yesterday, and caught my attention.

This is twice the number of PCs VA ordered under its last big computer contract, a $248.4 million lease deal awarded to Dell in 2007 that expired in August. Based on that pricing, the new contract could be worth $500 million.

The VA said it needs more hardware today than three years ago due to the increase in the number of health clinics it operates and the overall requirement for more PCs to support its mission. The contract will run for eight years, with hardware orders in the first four years and support only in the last four.

The VA said in its performance work statement that it reserves the option to either purchase or lease the 600,000 PCs, but I bet that it will not be the same kind of single-source contract like the deal with Dell.

The VA inspector general said in a June 2008 report that an award "to a single vendor for leased PCs and related services was not necessary to achieve the stated objectives of the acquisition."

The fact that the VA has decided to go ahead with such a massive PC buy takes care of the question of whether or not it had a serious plan to move to thin client architecture. The agency has a planned test of 20,000 thin clients later this year.

It's hard to give up that heavy iron.

I have picked up very strong signals that the Veterans Affairs Department has dropped plans to issue a second contract to develop a system to process claims for veterans suffering from diseases related to the Vietnam-era chemical Agent Orange.

IBM won the original claims processing system contract in July, and evidently did such a poor job that VA Secretary Eric Shinseki personally called IBM chairman Samuel Palmisano to express his dissatisfaction with the lack of progress.

The solicitation for the second contract, I'm told, was an added tool to get IBM's attention, vendors told me, more of a club than a real plan to go ahead with another deal. The VA quietly informed interested bidders it did not plan to issue a second contract over the past week.

So what's the status of the IBM system, which was supposed to go into operation earlier this month? I keep asking the VA that question, and so far have not received a reply.

If anyone out there in VA land has concrete info on the status of the IBM system please send me an e-mail.

As I reported Monday, the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority supports plans by the Defense Department to use the Common Access Card as a Metro card.

But Peter Benjamin, Metro's chairman, told me he wants to go way beyond that, and allow folks to use almost any kind of contactless smart card that complies with an international standard to pay their fares with a wave of the card over a turnstile.

Metro already has installed readers that support the international standard, and Benjamin envisions commuters and tourists using their debit, credit or ATM cards to easily access the system.

Metro's job, Benjamin said, is to move people quickly, and an "open access" system that accommodates all kinds of smart cards will meet that goal.

If everything goes to plan, by the end of September the Coast Guard will award a contract for a spanking new commercial electronic health record system that will replace a network based on an ancient version of the Defense Department's electronic medical system.

The Coast Guard emphasized in its requirements for the new system it wanted a commercial product, and if such a product did not meet all its needs, then the system needed to be enhanced to meet the requirements before delivery.

Such an approach saves the humongous costs that result when federal customers ask vendors to bolt stuff on after they win a contract.

The Coast Guard's strategy might be a good one for the Military Health System to follow as it seeks a commercial replacement for its AHLTA electronic health record system.

But at the glacial pace MHS operates, the Coast Guard will have deployed its new system to its 500 medical personnel while MHS is still buffing and polishing requirements.

The Defense Department forks over about half its annual budget -- about $200 billion -- on acquisition of services such as information technology, transportation and upkeep of bases. It's track record of managing these buys is even worse than its record on the procurement of weapons systems, Ashton Carter, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, told a Pentagon press briefing on Tuesday.

Lack of common terminology in part frustrates efforts to better manage acquisitions and rein in costs, he said.

"We don't even have a standard way to talk about services," Carter told the briefing, during which he and Defense Secretary Robert Gates detailed plans to cut $100 billion from the Defense budget during the next five years. Lack of standard definition for services makes about as much sense as buying ships or tanks without defining what they are, he added.

The lack of a standard language -- a taxonomy -- for services acquisitions means the Pentagon has no way of measuring productivity in more than 50 percent of its contract investment, Carter said in a memo to acquisition professionals issued on Tuesday on how the Pentagon can better manage its spending.

Here's the Carter short services taxonomy -- a must read for anyone acquiring the intangible stuff that oils the Defense machine:

Knowledge-based services

Electronics and communications services

Equipment-related services

Medical services

Facility-related services

Transportation services

Here's a loopy procurement that Defense Secretary Robert Gates should cancel immediately if he's serious about saving money: The General Officer Transition Course hatched last week by the Army Contracting Center of Excellence.

ACE wants to spend some taxpayer bucks to teach the about-to-retire generals such hard to learn stuff as proper civilian senior executive attire.

I'll make that easy (at no charge to ACE and the retiring generals): Take thyself to Brooks Brothers and ask a sale person to outfit you with a suit, matching shirt and tie, (or a fine dress and blouse for the women generals) and you will only need a small second mortgage to buy four complete rigs. Brooks even does underwear, which I find much more comfortable than military skivvies.

ACE also wants a contractor to teach generals how to write resumes, search for a job (including, I kid you not, how to look at job ads) and how to conduct a job interview. (My advice: Leave the Hooahs at home.)

How come there's no PFC Transition Course?

This item was updated at 4:22 pm, Aug. 20, to reflect a reply from Microsoft.

Or, based on this sole-source contract announcement from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Google now owns, at the least, visualization of the planet.

NGA says it needs a secure system that will provide Web-based access to geospatial visualization services and Open Geospatial Consortium compliant Web-service interfaces. It says only Google can do the job.

"Google is the only source that can meet the government's requirement for worldwide access, unlimited processing and Open Geospatial Consortium compliant Web service interfaces," said NGA, which plans to award the company a two-year contract, with two one-year options.

NGA did not detail the value of the Google deal, but I have a hunch it's big bucks.

I've asked Microsoft what its Bing folks think of this, but have not heard back.

Update: Micorosft spokesman Keith Hodson said the company's Bing Maps Server can meet the NGA's requirements.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates made official the elimination of the office of the Assistant Secretary for Networks and Information Integration - also known as the office of the chief information officer. At a Pentagon press briefing today he detailed cuts in the Pentagon budget to save $100 billion over the next five years.

Gates added that the Joint Staff will also shut down its central command, control and communications shop. He added that the work done by NII and the Joint Staff C4 operation will be "assigned to other organizations and most of their acquisition functions will transfer to acquisition, technology and logistics."

Gates also derided what he called the decentralized approach to IT throughout the Defense Department:

"All of our bases, operational headquarters and defense agencies have their own IT infrastructures, processes and application-ware. . . . This decentralized approach results in large cumulative costs, and a patchwork of capabilities that create cyber vulnerabilities and limit our ability to capitalize on the promise of information technology."

Gates told the press briefing he wants to see the use of more common IT systems and applications throughout Defense.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought standards and commonality was a key job of the ASD/NII organization.

David H. Brooks made a lot of money selling body armor to the Defense Department for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan through a company, DHB Industries, that he led until 2006. But now Brooks stands accused of orchestrating a $190 million stock fraud scheme aimed at enriching himself and another top company employee, the New York Times reports.

In the course of Brooks' trial, currently underway on Long Island, New York, it was revealed that DHB Industries covered some $6 million in his personal expenses. Among the items paid for by the company (using, of course, dollars that came from the Defense Department and, ultimately, the taxpayers): "a $100,000 American-flag belt buckle encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds."

The Veterans Affairs Department says it plans to issue a procurement on June 28 for virtual call centers. I think this may be a good idea, if I could understand the tortured language in the FedBizOps notice.

VA said it plans to issue a contract for "the Virtual Call Center (VCC) Prototype system that will be utilized to define enterprise requirements, to develop, explore, select, refine tools and processes, and to create a detailed set of implementation blueprints suitable for Agile Process implementation."

Huh?

If that confused you, the second sentence in the notice will only befuddle you more:

The intent is to define processing workflows, support the simulation of veteran interactions as necessary to identify user interface requirements, data requirements, and potential capabilities of future COTS products (e.g., Customer Relationship Management, Knowledge Management, enterprise content management, advanced search and taxonomy management, integrated user interface tools)."

Does anyone out there comprehend what this string of buzz words means in plain English?