Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Introducing the Insider
The Industry Defined
HUBZones: Anyone Can Play
Beyond Reproach: The Incumbent's Bind
Breaking Wave: Human Resources BPO
Cooperative Personnel Services: Differentiating Not a Problem
Adventures in Marketing
Policy & Regs: Can We Satisfy the Appetite for Cleared Personnel?
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In mid-December, GSA's Office of the Inspector General issued a compendium of audits of the Federal Technology Service's service centers' performance in processing task orders. GSA's problems in this area had dribbled out over a full year through reviews, agency ruminations, and Congressional probing. The audits put an informative cap on the nature of the problem and the beginnings of remedial measures. They also revealed which companies appeared to benefit from GSA's shortcomings.
This article contains a convenient summary of which companies benefited by GSA's mistakes in the National Capital Region (NCR) and details what the government's shortcomings were in the sample audited. There's plenty of cues on what to tell your pricing, business, and contract managers to guard against problems as GSA attempts to clean up its act in the NCR and nationwide.
You can hear the anxiety in the voices of industry executives as they ruminate on the subject of succession planning. That is, how will they replace their top executives and other high-value managers when the time comes?
To obtain expert thinking and best practices on how successions are planned successfully, the Insider talked with David Berke at the Center for Creative Leadership, a not-for-profit executive training and development organization of national renown.
Tired of those cute In/Out lists and forecasts for the new year? The Insider pulsed its network and experts and ferrets to spot near-term trends that affect the government services industry, as well as present some informed prognostications for leading firms.
The Insider summarizes some top-level numbers recently released by Grant Thornton from its latest industry survey. There are some interesting figures on companies' view of the success of their acquisitions and mergers.
The article also relates the strategic underpinnings of CSC's announced sale of parts of DynCorp, acquired only two years ago. In addition, there's insight into the pending sale of Resource Consultants, Inc., a $300 million firm courted by lots of larger companies. A foreign firm is walking off with the prize.
Columnist (and PSC lobbyist) Alan Chvotkin explains what some firms are missing by not being very active in this important corporate function. Based on the experience of successful companies, he presents a simple test to determine whether you should be lobbying Congress.
Can you identify any law passed by Congress that the executive branch simply chose not to implement? Well, more than four years ago President Clinton signed the SBA reauthorization, which contained a provision to establish a true procurement preference, in the manner of Section 8(a), for businesses majority owned by women. Right now there's just an "objective" for women-owned enterprises that agencies tend to undershoot. Notwithstanding that there are nearly 10 million women small-business owners in the country, the SBA seems to have slow-rolled implementation, according to interested parties like the U.S. Womens Chamber of Commerce. The Insider brings you up to date on what's being done to motivate SBA.
The OMB-sponsored "Quicksilver" projects are critical to demonstrating the promise and progress of eGov initiatives. Their evaluation is pivotal to this process. OMB has picked a little-known nonprofit organization, the Altarum Institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to do the job. This article informs you about Altarum's pedigree and what may have attracted OMB's attention.
The corporate tax relief legislation last fall brought with it the second try by the IRS to harness commercial collection agencies to wring funds from those who owe it to the taxman. The IRS is looking for up to ten firms to go after $13 billion of accounts for up to 25 percent of the take.