GSA plans to create a platform for online communication between contractors and contracting officers. It would give the two groups a place to exchange ideas at the pre-RFP stage. “It is desperately needed,” said GSA Associate Administrator David McClure, according to Federal Computer Week.

Dan Gordon, head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, has been urging agencies to increase their communication with contractors, especially at the pre-proposal stage while they are developing requirements.

Contractors are bearing the brunt of cutbacks as the U.S. Joint Forces Command shuts down. The Defense Department announced May 2 that plans are complete to reassign personnel to other DOD components when the command is abolished in August.

JFCOM employed about 6,000 people, more than half of them contractors. Its commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, said all federal employees in the Hampton Roads, VA, area would be retained, the Virginian-Pilot newspaper reported.

The Defense Department expects to save $400 million annually by eliminating JFCOM.

The Defense Department has issued a final rule requiring service contractors to identify themselves as such in all communications. An interim rule had been in effect since September.

The rule requires service contractors to say they are contractors in phone calls and informal and formal written correspondence. They must also be introduced as contractors in a conversation. Each agency will decide how to enforce the rule.

The Obama administration has identified more than 12,000 excess federal properties and is proposing a BRAC-like process to get rid of them.

The White House asked Congress to create an independent commission, patterned after the military Base Realignment and Closing Commission, to decide what should be done with the properties. The president and Congress would then accept or reject the entire package, rather than choosing individual properties for disposal.

Jeffrey Zients, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said disposing of unused property could save $15 billion over three years by eliminating the cost of upkeep.

“For too long, the political interests and the red tape have gotten in the way and not enough has gotten done,” he told reporters May 4. He said an agency must satisfy 20 separate legal requirements before it can dispose of real estate.

White House officials acknowledged that most of the excess buildings have no commercial value. Many of them are small storage structures belonging to the Agriculture Department or National Park Service, for example. They would likely be demolished.

Zients said he believes the initial list of 12,000 is only the beginning. “There are thousands of other properties that are underutilized or no longer mission-critical that have not yet been designated as excess,” he said.

The first GSA Adminis-trator’s Award for Mentoring Excellence has been awarded to Catapult Technology, a service-disabled veteran-owned IT company. Catapult, of Bethesda, MD, was recognized for mentoring Dexisive, a woman-owned SDV business in Reston, VA.

GSA chief Martha Johnson praised the agency’s mentor-protégé program, saying, “By linking companies that have established experience with government contracting to businesses that are new to the field or haven’t yet gotten to the next step, GSA is encouraging and motivating small business growth.”

GSA now manages 70 mentor-protégé arrangements.