About half of all public-private job competitions have drawn no competitive bids from contractors, an OMB official said.

Clay Johnson, deputy director for management, told the newspaper Federal Times he is urging agencies to collaborate with contractors in designing competitions and to hold larger competitions that are potentially more lucrative.

He said lack of interest from the private sector is one reason federal employees have won about 90% of the competitions. “If the private sector was winning 90% of the competitions, there’d be rioting in the streets,” he said.

“The more competition, the greater the savings.”

The Defense Department has published its final rule requiring contractors to mark items delivered under Defense contracts with unique identification tags. The interim rule became effective last year.

The final rule permits exceptions to marking requirements for items purchase from small businesses “when it is more cost effective for the government requiring activity to assign, mark, and register the UID after delivery,” DOD said. For details, go to www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/uid.

An alliance of business and labor is urging Congress to make changes in the Javits-Wagner-O’Day program, which steers federal contracts to organizations that employ blind and severely disabled people.

The Independent Office Products and Furniture Dealers Association and the Service Employees International Union are among those urging reform of the program, National Journal reported. But they are attracting little support from lawmakers because, a union official said, no one wants to be accused of taking jobs away from people with disabilities.

JWOD’s nonprofit affiliates supply a variety of services and products to the government under a mandatory source preference first enacted by Congress in 1938. They are permitted to pay disabled employees less than the minimum wage.

JWOD contractors’ sales topped $2 billion last year, the newspaper reported.

GSA’s SmartBuy software licensing program has landed a big fish: Oracle Corp., the second-largest federal software vendor.

The Defense Department announced it has reworked its enterprise software license with Oracle for governmentwide use. The Office of Management and Budget is requiring all agencies to use the license for Oracle products.

Oracle is the largest vendor to sign up for SmartBuy so far. OMB said Oracle will provide substantial discounts.

The Office of Management and Budget has ordered all agencies to begin issuing secure identification cards to employees and contractors in October 2006. OMB says the cards should be issued to any contract worker who qualifies for a permanent ID under current policies.

Details are available at www.omb.gov. Comments are due by May 9.

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy has issued new guidance for training of acquisition personnel.

The guidance calls for defense and civilian acquisition personnel to receive similar training through cooperation between the Defense Acquisition University and the Federal Acquisition Institute.

In line with the Defense Department’s practice, the definition of acquisition personnel in civilian agencies has been broadened to include those such as program managers whose duties are acquisition-related. “This policy will allow civilian agencies to strengthen their whole acquisition workforce through training and career development, rather than focusing just on traditional contracting functions,” said OFPP Administrator David Safavian.

OMB is not adequately monitoring billions of dollars’ worth of troubled federal IT projects, according to the Government Accountability Office.

OMB has placed 621 major federal IT projects on a “Management Watch List” because of deficiencies in performance, management or security. GAO says OMB never actually compiled a governmentwide watch list and has not done enough to monitor troubled IT programs.

In response, Karen Evans, OMB administrator for e-government and information technology, said no comprehensive list is necessary, and individual agencies are responsible for correcting deficiencies in their programs.