PSC Members Honored as 2010 Government Contractor Award Finalists

The brightest lights of the government contracting world shined Tuesday night at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner during the second most anticipated event of the year: the announcement of the finalists for the 8th Annual Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards (aka the GovCon Awards)! PSC member companies are in the running for six of the seven awards, thanks to some pretty smart contracting. The full list of finalists can be found here. The winners will be announced at the most anticipated event of the year: the Nov. 3 GovCon gala dinner!

While we all await the big event to hear who the industry winners are, we can applaud three honorees already named. They are the two public-sector partners honorees—Charlie Williams, the director of the Defense Contract Management Agency, and Soraya Correa, the director of the Office of Procurement Operations at the Homeland Security Department—and this year’s Greater Washington Government Contractor Hall of Fame inductee—Clifford Kendall, founder of Computer Data Systems, Inc.

Guest Blog: Washington Post’s "Political Bookworm" argument about development assistance is full of holes

By Lawrence J. Halloran

Director of PSC's International Development Initiative

The Washington Post’s "Political Bookworm," Steven Levingston, should have burrowed a bit deeper before he published the Sept. 2 commentary by Rachel McCleary, a senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

In her guest blog, McCleary claims U.S. humanitarian aid should be “reclaimed” from the pernicious influences of for-profit development firms. She argues that non-profit private voluntary organizations should deliver the bulk of U.S. development assistance because they are apolitical, impartial and transnational, “that is, not identified with national ideologies or driven by short-term policy agendas.” But she offers no proof to suggest for-profit firms are the opposite.

Nor does she address the more pertinent issue of performance. Nowhere in her piece does she argue that non-profits are more effective or cheaper at completing development projects than tax-paying U.S. development firms. In effect, McCleary demands a needless, ultimately counterproductive, choice between aid delivery actors based on a misreading of the facts and a misunderstanding of how indispensible both U.S. companies and non-profits are to achieving humanitarian and development goals under the most difficult conditions on earth. Her post is replete with inaccuracies and irrelevancies, like where an organization is headquartered and its headquarter's proximity to Congress, rather than where it does the work and what the work achieves.

Top Secret Contractor (and Other Government Contractor) Compensation Facts EXPOSED!

Holders of “top secret” clearances draw top salaries as demands for their credentials grow in the government contract marketplace. That’s one of the findings PSC’s Executive Vice President Alan Chvotkin presented today at the unveiling of the Human Resources Association of the National Capital Area 2010 Compensation Survey, which included a section on government contractor compensation.

Powerful Turnout for the Power IT Down Turn Off

By all accounts Power IT Down Day 2010 was a powerful success.

At close of business on Friday, Aug. 27, 17,639 people working for civilian agencies, defense agencies and industry pledged to turn off all of their electronic equipment before heading home for the weekend. That is more than three times the 5,600 people who participated in Power IT Down Day 2009!

The savings from this record turn off turnout generated a $60,000 donation to the Wounded Warrior Project from the event’s sponsors Citrix, GTSI, HP and Intel.

PSC was proud to be a partner in the event, alongside Boscobel, FedScoop, GovLoop and Knox County, Tenn. We’re looking forward to setting a new record in 2011.

We’ve Got the Power to Save Power

We like smart stuff here at the old PSC SmartContracting blog. That’s why, for the second year in a row, PSC is proud to be a partner in one of the most intelligent activities of the year: Power IT Down Day!

Power IT Down Day encourages civilian agencies, defense agencies and industry to turn off all computers, printers and other IT equipment at the end of the work day on Aug. 27 to reduce energy consumption.

This effort to encourage green habits can also save a lot of green. To demonstrate the power of the monetary savings generated by powering down electronics, the event’s smart sponsors– Citrix, Intel, GTSI and HP (a PSC member)—will once again make a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project.

Last year the event saved 73,000 kilowatt hours of power and raised $45,000 for the charity. (Now that’s what I call smart savings!) And this year, Power IT Down is poised to top that. As of 2 p.m. on Aug. 24 more than 5,200 people working for smart contractors and agencies have already pledged to save more than 288,500 kilowatt hours of power.

However, these pledges are still short of sponsors’ goal of having 6,100 participants saving 335,000 kilowatt hours of power this Friday. So be smart and take part in the third annual Power IT Down Day! Sign up today at http://www.poweritdown.org/.

Senate Insourcing Provision Could Accelerate Job Losses, Weaken State and Local Economies

At a time when our country’s unemployment rate hovers near 10 percent and Congress has to pass legislation to keep cops, firefighters and teachers employed, the Senate Appropriations Committee has penned a bill that includes language that could put thousands of people out of work and weaken local tax bases.

Section 741 of the Senate’s version of the 2011 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act (S. 3677) would require all government agencies to arbitrarily insource work currently being performed by contractors, even though current law and recent OMB guidance says the work is perfectly suitable for private-sector performance. In a letter to senators, PSC President and CEO Stan Soloway outlined the impact of such arbitrary insourcing actions have already had at the Defense Department:

“A number of DoD insourcing actions have already put contractor employees out of work because their jobs were physically moved to different locations, closed off by federal hiring requirements that prevent incumbent employees from continuing to perform the work, or both. It is illogical to implement this misguided policy, which only serves to set back economic recovery.”

Insourcing Not Smart Contracting, Gates Acknowledges

Defense Sec. Robert Gates’ Aug. 9 admission that “we weren’t seeing the savings we had hoped from insourcing” should come as no surprise to those who follow PSC’s advocacy on this issue.

For more than a year, we’ve warned that the Gates’ plan to insource critical management functions was devolving into a quota-driven, arbitrary budget exercise that would cost the government more than it would save. In letter after letter, we asked the department to show how it would achieve the 40 percent savings it claimed insourcing would bring, but PSC never received a response.

Now we know why. As we suspected, the “savings” were illusory. A budgetary sleight of hand.