Agencies slow to respond to requests for contractor data
Some federal procurement officers are refusing to publicly release contractor ratings data that may show agencies are not properly evaluating the performance of vendors who receive billion-dollar...
View ArticlePublishing contracts online? Not so fast
Transparency, apparently, has its limits. The Obama administration announced on Thursday it was withdrawing a proposal that would have required federal agencies to post copies of contracts and...
View ArticleWhite House inaction stalls FOIA recommendations
Recommendations for improving how agencies handle governmentwide Freedom of Information Act requests have been awaiting approval at the Office of Management and Budget for more than nine months, the...
View ArticlePublic release of contractor data delayed
Contractors can still challenge information tjat goes into the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity System, but they have just a two-week window before the information becomes public. The new...
View ArticleVendor settles in case over Chinese-made supplies
When contractor Malcolm Wilson lost out in a competition to outfit four federal buildings in Illinois with lamps, he suspected the winning vendor of supplying products made in China, a violation of the...
View ArticleWhat went wrong with GSA’s Networx transition?
A pair of internal analyses by the General Services Administration finds much to criticize in the structure of federal telecommunications contract Networx, portraying it as too complex, inflexible and...
View ArticlePentagon may be forced to release aircraft manufacturer’s contract data
A little-known unit at the Defense Department may have to release data considered proprietary by a major contractor under a Nov. 23 district court ruling favoring a small business advocacy group. The...
View ArticleVA failed to vet dubious contractors
An internal VA study has found that an east coast office that handles about $4 billion in business each year didn’t do enough checks to vet the backgrounds of companies to which it awarded contracts....
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Agencies could face govermentwide change in FOIA response policy
Federal agencies could soon face a new governmentwide guidance on how they respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, following a meeting in September. The Justice Department Office of Information...
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POGO: Contracts need to be posted online
The third week of March was Sunshine Week, the one week out of the year when there is a coordinated effort by experts to highlight topics related to federal and state open records laws, the public’s...
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Defense contracting fraud: A persistent problem
During the five year period from 2013-2017, there were 1,059 criminal cases of defense contracting fraud resulting in the conviction of 1,087 defendants, including 409 businesses, according to a newly...
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DOJ issues new guidance for treatment of confidential information under...
Last month, the Department of Justice Office of Information Policy issued new guidance on the definition of confidential information under Exemption 4 of the Freedom of Information Act. This new...
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Pandemic oversight committee launches contract spending tracker
The committee stated in its first report that financial management could be a top challenge for agencies. Click on image above to see contract spending compiled by the Pandemic Response Accountability...
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