A top GSA official says IT contractors must “meet the government halfway” in a period of tight budgets. Writing in the Washington Business Journal, Mary Davie said, “This means stripping all the unnecessary bells and whistles from IT, and delivering platforms and systems that give us more flexibility, agility, and scalability in the long run.”

Davie, who is president of the American Council for Technology as well as assistant commissioner of GSA’s Office of Integrated Technology Services, said agencies and contractors must get used to “doing less with less.” She wrote, “Industry will also need to warm up to the idea of selling IT as a commodity or consider an incremental approach to IT procurement.”

Several thousand HUBZone companies have been decertified as a result of the 2010 census, and Congress shows no sign of restoring their eligibility. The new census figures disqualified many HUBZones, which are generally areas of low income or high unemployment. Companies with headquarters in those areas were dropped from the program.

After the 2000 census, Congress grandfathered such companies into the program. But the HUBZone Contractors National Council says grandfathering legislation is “dormant” in the House.

California Rep. Bob Filner has introduced legislation requiring the Defense Department to achieve the 3% goal for contracting with service-disabled veteran-owned businesses. DOD has never reached the goal.

“It is unthinkable that an agency like the Department of Defense would not always fill its quota of hiring businesses owned and controlled by disabled veterans,” Filner, a Republican, said in a statement. ”This bill will ensure that disabled veterans’ businesses are not an afterthought in the government contracting process.” 

However, the bill, H.R. 3438, contains no enforcement mechanism.

A New York congressman is proposing to cut agencies’ budgets if they fail to meet small business contracting goals. Democratic Rep. William Owens said his bill would subtract 10% from an agency’s budget in the year after it fell short of its goal.

Small business advocates have long pushed for measures to enforce the goals, but Owens’ proposal appears to have little chance of passage.

Former GTSI Corp. CEO Scott Friedlander, who was ousted as a result of a contracting scandal, is the new chief executive of Paragon Technology Group, a Vienna, VA, IT contractor.

LLR Partners, a private equity firm, announced Frieldander’s appointment along with its acquisition of a majority interest in Paragon.

Friedlander resigned from GTSI in 2010 after the company was suspended from federal contracting for using small businesses as fronts to obtain set-aside work.