The House fell one vote short of cutting funds for base realignment and closing. Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) cast a rare deciding vote May 26 to kill the amendment to a military appropriations bill, 214-213.

When it appeared the amendment would pass, House leaders persuaded four Republicans to switch their votes during the roll call, Congress Daily reported.

The Base Realignment and Closure Commission has begun considering the Pentagon’s list of changes and must send its own list to President Bush by Sept. 8.

The Army will begin its own commodity buying plan for computer hardware next year, after seeing how the Air Force saved money using the strategy, Federal Computer Week reported.

The Army Desktop & Mobile Computing 2 contracts will serve as the primary vehicle for commodity buying. The contracts for desktop, notebook and server computers, scheduled to be awarded in November, will be worth $5 billion over 10 years, according to officials at the annual Army Information Technology Conference in Las Vegas.

The Federal Acquisition Regulation councils have proposed a rule allowing large prime contractors to count subcontracts awarded to Alaska Native Corporations toward their small business and small disadvantaged business goals, regardless of whether the ANC is a small business.

The proposed rule would implement laws enacted in 2002. The law also provides that subcontracts awarded to Indian tribes may be counted towards a prime contractor’s goal for subcontracting with small businesses.

The rule is FAR case 2004-017 in the June 3 Federal Register. Comments are due by Aug. 2.

IT contractors should refuse contracts with ill-defined goals, a top OMB official said.

Speaking at a conference of IT executives in Washington, OMB’s deputy director for management, Clay Johnson, declared, “If we haven’t defined [an IT program] to the ultimate degree, then you need to just stop taking our money.” Government Executive magazine reported Johnson cited the FBI’s failed Virtual Case File system as an example of a technology program that was not well defined. The FBI abandoned the system after spending $170 million.

The Interior Department plans to merge its two fee-for-service procurement shops, GovWorks and the National Business Center, govexec.com reported.

GovWorks, operated by Interior’s Minerals Management Service, is by far the larger of the two. It will be folded into the National Business Center, which is managed by the department’s headquarters, Nina Hatfield, deputy assistant secretary for business management and wildland fire, told the magazine.

Both units provide procurement and business services to other agencies.

The Government Accountability Office has sustained a protest over a modification to an Air Force contract. GAO ruled that the modification changed the contract so drastically that a new competition should be held.

In 2002 the Air Force at Robins AFB, GA, awarded a contract to U.S. Technology Corp. to supply a plastic abrasive material and to recycle the used material. GAO found that the Air Force eliminated the recycling requirement in 2003 after it learned that the Environmental Protection Agency was investigating the contractor for improperly dumping used plastic material. The modification allowed UST to dispose of the waste instead of recycling it.

Poly-Pacific Technologies Inc., a small business in Ontario, CA, filed a protest alleging that the change was so substantial that the work should have been re-competed. Although GAO rarely entertains protests over modifications, in this instance, it said, “the modification resulted in a material and fundamental change to the nature of the work that changed the field of competition and that work, therefore, should have been competed on a full and open basis.”

The Air Force said it is reviewing the decision.

The case is File B-296029.

SBA has established the Office of Federal Contract Assistance for Veteran Business Owners, following President Bush’s Executive Order to provide more contract opportunities for service-disabled veteran business owners. The office will be a single point of contact to answer questions and provide information on procurement opportunities designated for them. For more information, go to www.sba.gov/gc/indexprograms-vets.html.