GSA Chief Fights “Complacent” Bureaucracy, Damaging News Leaks and Her Own Missteps It sounds like civil war inside the General Services Administration, with a series of news leaks embarrassing to the hard-charging administrator Lurita Doan. In eight months since she took the job, Doan has moved aggressively to win back customers that had deserted GSA after reports of procurement irregularities. But she has evidently raised hackles among some of her subordinates. Several top executives have quit and other agency insiders have fought back by orchestrating leaks to the Washington Post. Defending her tenure, Doan told an audience of contractors that she inherited “a culture of complacence” at GSA. Citing GSA documents it had obtained, the Post reported Jan. 19 that Doan tried to award a $20,000 sole-source contract to a friend until the agency’s counsel convinced her it was improper. “I made a mistake,” Doan told the Post. She added, “No money exchanged hands, no contract exchanged hands.” GSA said in a statement: “Administrator Doan takes seriously the GSA’s leadership role as the premier contracting and service provider. As the long-time career attorney who reviewed this matter explained to the Washington Post, this incident has already been reviewed and no improprieties have been found.” The newspaper also reported that Doan had attempted to intervene in debarment proceedings against five large contractors that had admitted withholding airline and hotel rebates that should have been paid to the government. Doan said she was within her rights as head of the agency. “I don’t want to be a rubber-stamp kind of figurehead administrator of this agency,” she told the Post. “I do no want to participate in the old go-along-to-get-along kind of Washington two-step-type activity. This is not what I’m here for. So, yes, I am going to be involved.” The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, California Rep. Henry Waxman, has asked for documents related to that matter as well as the proposed sole-source contract. Based on another leaked internal memo, the Post said Doan had asked the GSA inspector general to notify her of all active criminal investigations of agency employees. The IG, which is an independent office, balked, saying that could jeopardize investigations. In December the Post reported that Doan had proposed cutting the IG’s budget for contract audits. That story led to questions from several members of Congress. (SAA, 12/8/06) Doan founded a Virginia information technology company with a $5 investment in business cards and letterhead stationery, according to a 2002 interview with Set-Aside Alert. In 15 years the company built up a $200 million backlog of federal contracts by the time she sold it in 2005. Within days after she took office at GSA last May, she told an audience of contractors, “This administrator intends to be your champion.” (SAA, 6/16/06) She took over an agency that was reeling from investigators’ reports showing procurement irregularities, turnover among top officials and buyouts of rank-and-file employees and a decline in IT sales through its multiple-award schedules and governmentwide acquisition contracts. Speaking to an industry conference in Washington Jan. 23, Doan said GSA’s revenue had dropped by $4 billion in the year before she took over. She described the agency as “a quintessential turnaround” when she moved in. She said she is working to turn the “culture of complacence” into “a culture of action” and to “replace a culture of smugness with a culture of service.” She said she had personally visited many large customer agencies and did some “groveling” in an effort to regain their business. She moved to mend fences with the GSA’s biggest customer, the Defense Department, signing an agreement to clarify rules for DOD’s use of GSA contract vehicles. She induced the Treasury Department to drop its plans for a telecommunications contract that would have competed with GSA’s Networx contract. She began campaigning to have GSA take over governmentwide acquisition contracts operated by other agencies, but the Office of Management and Budget overruled her when it authorized NASA to continue its Scientific Engineering Workstation (SEWP) GWAC. But some of her initiatives evidently generated opposition within the agency. Besides the damaging news leaks, GSA’s general counsel, chief acquisition officer and the deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service have left the agency since Doan arrived. In her Jan. 23 remarks, Doan said, “The jury is kind of out on how things are going at GSA…It ain’t over till it’s over.”