This year’s fourth-quarter federal buying surge is very unusual due to concerns about sequestration, according to a new report from Deltek.

Deltek previously predicted that federal agencies could spend $45 billion to $50 billion on information technology in the final three months of the fiscal year, ending Sept. 30. The annual federal IT spend is about $121 billion.

However, contractors are seeing reduced procurement activity in anticipation of sequestration.

“Some companies are experiencing delayed or cancelled procurements, schedule changes and reduced orders,” John Slye, advisory research analyst for Deltek, wrote in a Sept. 9 report in the Washington Post. “These kinds of changes could take a toll on the traditional increased buying pattern of the fourth quarter.”

House lawmakers have released the text of a stop-gap spending bill to keep the government running for six months after the new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.

Both the House and Senate are expected to approve the legislation within days.

The bill sets discretionary spending based on the $1.047 trillion cap determined by the debt ceiling agreement between Congress and the White House last year.

Homeland Security Department spending through strategic sourcing has increased from $1.8 billion in fiscal 2008 to $3 billion in fiscal 2011, representing about 20% of the total, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

Under current policies, component agencies must consider, but are not required, to use strategic sourcing.

The GAO also found that while DHS’ Office of the Chief Procurement Officer continues to improve oversight, it has not sufficiently updated its guidance.

GAO cited a “lack of clarity among components regarding what the oversight efforts entail” and inconsistencies between guidance documents.

While DHS revised its procurement guidance in response to the draft report, GAO said those changes did not go far enough.

For more information:
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-947

Randal Pinkett, season four winner of “The Apprentice” and chairman of BCT Partners consulting firm, announced that his company has won two contracts with the Health and Human Services Department.

HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s contract has a ceiling of $900 million over five years, while the National Institutes of Health’s CIO-SP3 contract has a ceiling of $20 billion over 10 years.

Both are indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity multiple-award contracts in which BCT will compete for task orders against other contract winners.

A Senate committee is looking into whether a General Services Administration investigator was too aggressive in pursuing a late-evening hotel interview with a GSA official about conference spending.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has asked the GSA’s Office of Inspector General to explain a report that an OIG staffer knocked “violently” on a GSA executive’s hotel room door at around 11:30 pm while at the agency’s SmartPay conference in Nashville last month, according to Federal News Radio.

In the minutes following, the OIG staffer reportedly was asked to leave, a threat was made to call the police, and the OIG staffer voluntarily left.

House and Senate panels, as well as agency inspectors general, have been looking into federal travel and conference spending at the GSA, VA, DOD and other agencies in recent weeks. The scrutiny increased after a public uproar about a $823,000 GSA event in Las Vegas in 2010.

For more information:
http://www.federalnewsradio.com/935/3025219/Senate-committee-questions-GSA-IG-about-investigation-tactics

Federal acquisition councils are recommending extension of a requirement for federal contractor employees to notify their firms of any criminal drug convictions in the workplace. The contractors must notify the agency contracting officer as well. About 700 such notices are filed annually by federal contractors.

Comments will be accepted until October 29.

For more information:
https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/08/30/2012-21366/federal-acquisition-regulation-information-collection-drug-free-workplace-far-52223-6

The Defense Contract Audit Agency issued new guidance intended to help auditors obtain access to contractors’ internal documents.

The guidance, issued Aug. 14, calls upon DCAA field offices to set up a process to monitor and obtain contractor internal audits and working papers when necessary.

However, industry advocates say contractors will be reluctant to share more internal documents.