The Air Force Materiel Command is initiating a new acquisition strategy to become more efficient.

The command is launching a new AFMC Enterprise Services Web portal to standardize its acquisitions of professional services and engineering, according to an FBO.gov notice.

The command has about $136 billion in active opportunities.

More information:
http://goo.gl/V2e2q

The Defense Department is urging all prime contractors to accelerate their payments to small subcontractors, under a one-year temporary policy that started July 11.

Department officials provided a public notice of the policy in the Federal Register.

“The Defense Acquisition Regulations System is providing notice that the Department of Defense has taken steps to accelerate federal payments to prime contractors, so that prime contractors can expedite payments to their small business subcontractors,” the notice stated.

DOD is aiming to pay its contractors within 15 days, and is “strongly encouraging all prime contractors to accelerate payments to small business subcontractors under existing contracts to the maximum extent practicable.”

A new clause to that effect has been inserted into DOD contracts.

More information:
DOD notice: http://goo.gl/WwdCl

TechAmerica Foundation downgraded its forecast of annual federal information technology spending to $73.5 billion this fiscal year, rising to $77.2 billion by fiscal 2018.

Those figures are significantly lower than the $85.7 billion the industry group previously projected for fiscal 2017.

A federal contractor from Virginia was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison for his role in an Army Corps of Engineers long-running scheme that involved up to $30 million in kickbacks and bribes, the Washington Post reported.

Harold F. Babb, the former director of contracts at Eyak Technology, also known as EyakTek, pleaded guilty to bribery and unlawful kickbacks. He and 12 others, including two Army Corps employees, admitted to steering contracts in exchange for illegal payments.

More information:
http://goo.gl/ngW0P

Federal acquisition specialists are hesitant about the recent proposal to overhaul federal information technology purchases advanced by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to a report by Nextgov.com.

Issa said his goal is to make IT purchasing more efficient by giving agency chief information officers more authority and by consolidating some purchases through multi-agency centers.

But specialists in a recent panel discussion at George Washington University Law School said the proposal could lead to more bureaucracy and paperwork without efficiency,NextGov said.

The industry members were skeptical about how the new structure would affect software developers and whether the proposed center would duplicate what GSA does.

White House officials are planning to release a governmentwide open data policy on Nov. 23, according to a report by FierceGovernmentIT.com.

Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel made the announcement at the World Government Summit on Open Source in Washington.

“The policy will require agencies to start buying in different ways, to start building in different ways,” VanRoekel said at the event, according to FierceGovernmentIT. “That doesn’t mean we’re choosing a specific vendor or solution...the evolution and the maturity of the standards process in the area of open data is leading the way on that.”

Under the new policy, Data.gov will become the central repository to access live data at agencies. It will become a catalog for management of metadata and application programming interfaces.

OK Republican Sen. Tom Coburn has released his annual “Wastebook” detailing billions of dollars in alleged government waste.

At the top of his list of unproductive spending is the current US Congress, which “does nothing while America struggles” and spends $132 million a year to operate, mostly for salaries.

The book highlights 100 cases of questionable projects including production of the U.S. penny, which costs 2.4 cents to manufacture, along with food stamp fraud and NASA food menus for Mars.

He also hits the GSA for maintaining contracts for products like typewriters that have few or no sales, and the Postal Service for unpopular commemorative stamps.

More information:
http://goo.gl/UNjqx