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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Posted on January 2
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The advisory panel mandated by Congress and picked by the White House finally served up its complete draft right before Christmas. While the panel says it's no longer interested in substantive feedback, you'll still, be interested in its recommendations. Virtually all problems identified are well known and could have been addressed years ago by executive branch actions; some have been, but ineffectively. We highlight a few of the most important recommendations in the 400+page report.
We say lessons to learn because we don't believe these qualify yet as "lessons learned." Companies and the government keep on making the same errors, now well documented in a stack of audit reports. The fundamental lesson for companies appears to be: you have free will—you don't have to take these risks, trust everything you hear from the government, or accept what the government does unilaterally.
We always look back on our prognostications. We did all right, but as always, need improvement.
We've dusted off the crystal ball and conclude overall: this is going to be an interesting year—almost every facet of the industry is in motion. We look at seven developments and trends.
What's it going to be like for all agencies except DoD and DHS? Alan Chvotkin gives you some important budget-related advice for the balance of Fiscal Year 2007.
We summarize developments that warrant further monitoring because they may affect not just one, but a category of firms, or even the whole industry. In this issue, we look at (1) a just-started DoD review of big services contracts; (2) what BearingPoint's been up to concerning Iraq; (3) the competitive tussle over a big contract to provide translators to the Army; and (4) Air Force consideration of using the Lead Systems Integrator contract approach to indtegrate a big satellite buy in order to compensate for its own shortcomings in acquisition management.