PSC’s set-aside advice

The Professional Services Council released a report with 42 recommendations for improving federal acquisitions--including adjusting small business goals to account for different categories of acquisitions.

“Socio-economic considerations within the federal acquisition arena, while laudable, frequently come into conflict with agencies achieving their mission needs, and often undermine the health of the federal marketplace as a whole,” the council’s report states.

Creating set-aside goals by acquisition category--such as for major weapons systems--would help solve that problem, the report said.

“Current practice is to ‘jam’ set-asides into services contracts, regardless of mission effect, as a means of making up for low small business participation in major weapons systems/platforms,” the PSC report said.

“This inhibits competition and inappropriately interferes with healthy market dynamics. By rationalizing the goals, departments will be better able to tie their socio-economic strategies to mission outcomes,” the report said.

More information: PSC report http://goo.gl/kySJNf

Schedules vendors cut

The General Services Administration has cut about 1,000 under-performing vendors from Schedule 70 contracts in the last year, according to FederalNewsRadio.

Kay Ely, GSA's director of IT schedule programs in the Federal Acquisition Service, told the news service that the vendors whose contracts were canceled did not meet the minimum sales requirement of $25,000 a year.

By removing those vendors, the GSA expects to save $3.2 million a year in administrative costs. “It's $3,200 a year to keep a contract, even with no sales," Ely said.

In 2013, GSA schedules sales totaled about $35 billion.

Deltek hack suspect

Justice Department officials announced an indictment against Lauri Love, 29, of the UK in connection with the hacking of Deltek Inc. research company’s computers beginning in October 2012.

Love is to be charged with conspiracy, causing damage to a protected computer, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.

He and his co-conspirators also are alleged to have gained unauthorized access to computers of the Energy and Health & Human Services departments, U.S. Sentencing Commission, FBI’s Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory and Forte Interactive Inc.

$10.10 not enough?

About 100 people protested in downtown Washington DC claiming that a minimum wage of $10.10 per hour for federal contract workers is “not enough” and should be raised further, GovExec reported.

President Obama in February raised the minimum wage of federal contractor employees to $10.10 an hour.

More information: GovExec article http://goo.gl/JuHj1b

Vendors must disclose labor law violations

NDAA to limit reverse auctions for small biz

Simplified acquisition bill

Small Business Administration: Fiscal 2013 Small Business Procurement Scorecard