Just Say No-Bid

Today's Washington Post fronts a story by Robert O'Harrow, its crack investigative reporter who digs deep into the world of government contracting with tales of skirted regulations and uncomfortably cozy connections between the private sector and government.  This story was no exception.

When the Homeland Security Departmen's anti-drug shop needed help developing "a system for measuring the effectiveness of drug-control efforts," a senior official there thought a former colleague of his could help out:

Scott Chronister, a senior official in the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement, reached out to a former colleague at a private consulting firm for advice. The consultant suggested that Chronister's office could avoid competition and get the work done quickly under an arrangement in which the firm "approached the government with a 'unique and innovative concept,' " documents and interviews show.

Wait a second though, didn't the government approach the consultant first?

According to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, it looks like the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement wrongly justified skirting competition since it went to the consultant first.  In other words, the government had to be approached by the contractor with a unique and innovative idea initially to justify bypassing an open competition:

6.302-1  Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

(a) Authority.

(1) Citations: 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1) or 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1).

(2) When the supplies or services required by the agency are available from only one responsible source, or, for DoD, NASA, and the Coast Guard, from only one or a limited number of responsible sources, and no other type of supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements, full and open competition need not be provided for.

(i) Supplies or services may be considered to be available from only one source if the source has submitted an unsolicited research proposal that—

  (A) Demonstrates a unique and innovative concept (see definition at 2.101)

Leaving this aside, it's all okay that contractors run the show, says a DHS flack:

...a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department said it was not unusual for a contractor to tell agency officials how to arrange no-bid contracts because contractors sometimes know federal procurement regulations better than federal program managers. [emphasis added]

Shocking?  Perhaps not anymore and that's the problem.  Contractors now know or purport to know the game's rules better than the umpires.  And the umpires have bought into that system.

-- Nick Schwellenbach

Comments

[Anonymous]

We need to completely change how the government handles outsourcing - the situation has turned into a free for all.

[FacingTheSharks]

What if a contractor approaches the government with a unique idea, and the government hires another contractor (a competitor) to negotiate the contract on behalf of the goverment (unsupervised), then the contractor who represented the government was allowed to modify one of their own existing contracts (no competition) and blocked the company from getting sponsorshiip of the idea that they were hired to negotiate the contract for?

The government didn't appraoch the contractor for the initial idea, but they approached the contractor they hired, and assisted them in modifying a contract so they could benefit from the idea the original contractor brought to the government.

[steve]

There is no such thing as a no-bid contract. The government does not hand out money without paperwork. There ARE numerous situations where there is no COMPETITION. It's perfectly fine to shine a spotlight where it belongs but use the correct terminology so that you are more credible. (Yes, the Washington Post is guilty of this same abuse of terminology.)