If your contract compliance program isn’t up to date, the government could make tater salad – or worse – of your company’s contract profits.  Making sure that you, A.  have a compliance program and, B.  that it is up to date, really are the very best preventative medicines you can buy.  While “pre-existing conditions” are o.k. with the ACA, that’s not so with contract problems.  Call Allen Federal.   We have extensive experience in working with companies to ensure they can comply, and sell, through their Schedule contracts.   Contact Allen Federal today at info@allenfederal.com to see how we can make your company ready for the coming federal buying season.

Is it possible to use commercial e-commerce platforms for commercial item buys of any size and still meet government acquisition rules?  That is the fundamental question facing GSA and OMB as they move forward to try and do just that in response to a Congressional mandate.  The early signs, frankly, are not encouraging, and it may well be up to contractors to maintain integrity in commercial item procurement.

Read more

Federal News Radio recently reported on a GSA plan for the agency to use technology to automate administrative contracting actions to speed up the contract management process.  Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, could ease workflow issues by making “cut and paste” mods easier and faster.   It is also 100% likely to increase errors that already exist from manual cutting and pasting, mistakes that have already cost contractors millions. Cut and paste errors are rife within the Schedules program.  Merely automating the process without providing necessary training or oversight will substantially increase a contractor’s risk of non-compliance.  Think your Basis of Award is state and local government?  Surprise, the “cut and paste” mod changed it to “all customers”.  Didn’t catch that?  Too bad.  The GSA IG and the Department of Justice will insist that your new Basis of Award is “all customers” if you didn’t catch the error.  That’ll be an eight figure settlement, please.  Allen Federal knows of several more instances that have already cost contractors millions in legal fees on cut and paste errors that would make your hair stand on end.  Contractors MUST read ALL modifications BEFORE signing them.  As for GSA, while we’re all for reducing burdens on the  acquisition workforce, automating a process that is already error-prone is not the way to do it.

While most of us would like to have $100 million to spend on upgrading whatever we’d like, the fact is that it’s a small number when applied to the massive need for updating outdated federal Read more