Is Your Privacy Worth 50 Foiled Terror Plots?
Postal Service Eyes Cuba
Tangherlini As GSA's Mr. Fix-It?
Lew Cleans Up Signature for the Nation's Currency
The Plan to Open More Military Jobs to Women
Should Leaders Ever Lie?
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Making It Count
November 1, 2006 The Census Bureau ramps up to tally each and every U.S. resident in 2010. The Census Bureau is preparing for its biggest event of the decade. To get ready, the bureau is compiling a massive address list, signing contracts with the best available vendors and planning a dress rehearsal of ...
Guilt by Association
November 1, 2006 David Safavian, former head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, pays a heavy price for his poor choice of friends. Monday, Sept. 19, 2005, started out as a typical morning for David Safavian, then head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget. ...
Cargo-scanning subcontract spurs ‘Buy American’ dispute
October 19, 2006 Last year, Congress gave the U.S. Agency for International Development $50 million to provide security systems to scan commercial cargo leaving and entering the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The prime contractor recently eliminated two firms as potential subcontractors, leaving a partnership of Chinese and American companies that the ...
Slow Start
October 15, 2006 Three years after their creation, chief acquisition officers are hard to find. Don't ask an agency to name its chief acquisition officer and expect a straight answer. While 15 of the biggest federal agencies are required by law to have a political appointee whose primary duty is acquisition, only two-the ...
Justice settles procurement case, launches anti-fraud effort
October 11, 2006 The Justice Department announced Tuesday that Oracle Corp. agreed to pay $98.5 million to settle allegations that PeopleSoft, which Oracle has since acquired, did not share accurate pricing information with the General Services Administration when it was negotiating for a listing on a multiple-award schedule in 1997. Rod J. Rosenstein, ...
TSA begins virtual training for contracting officers
October 2, 2006 The Transportation Security Administration launched a new acquisition training program Monday that enables aspiring contracting officers to practice their trade virtually before taking on real responsibilities. The program, which TSA has dubbed acquisition "boot camp," is the first to provide newcomers with months of practice before they put their skills ...
Countdown
October 1, 2006 How the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched the biggest program in its history. In late 2003, Mary Jane Jones got a call from the Health and Human Services Department asking if she would appear onstage next to President Bush as he signed the Medicare Modernization Act on Dec. ...
Free Speech and AIDS
October 1, 2006 Groups that receive government funding to fight HIV/AIDS refuse to sign an anti-prostitution pledge. Buried within the legislation that created a massive $15 billion program to fight HIV and AIDS in 2003 is one small paragraph that has launched a firestorm among U.S. Agency for International Development contractors. It states ...
Convicted ex-procurement chief granted sentencing delay
September 28, 2006 David Safavian, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget's procurement policy shop convicted in June of obstructing justice and making false statements, has been granted a delay in his sentencing. The sentencing was originally scheduled for Oct. 12, but will be moved to Oct. 27. Safavian was ...
Ups and Downs
September 15, 2006 VA Secretary R. James Nicholson bends priorities to new customer needs and business risks. R. James Nicholson, secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department, is intimately familiar with the highs and lows of leadership. After a computer with the personal information of 26.5 million veterans was stolen from an employee's home ...
