Federal vendor with $50M in contracts leaves portal broken for a month

Federal vendor with $50M in contracts leaves portal broken for a month(propublica.org)

43 points by ams1 2 hours ago | 7 comments

When this administration is gone I think we need to have a new class of systems that do not allow this type of incompetence.

I have been working on this https://opm.dev/programs - its obviously not something that can get funding or will be a huge popular thing but it has been incredibly fun and i have gotten to learn a lot about Gov., agents EVAL's etc..

Note: This is one of 5 portals, same codebase mostly but the others are more developed and a few have some programs that have a 90+ % success rate.

Note: Here https://big-sandy-usp.bop.doj.dev/program/66366-sick-call is a much more developed example program that has been completed 6 times by inmates at Big Sandy. Super proud of this since I was locked up w/ 2 of the guys and dont know the other 4.

cuuupid 14 minutes ago | |

This sort of thing was only worse in the past and IMO this admin has actually made the largest inroads to resolving this issue which tbh lies primarily in procurement (RFO, FR20x, PA, mandates for automation, shift to COTS, etc). With any luck this will get recompeted

Project 20x looks pretty cool, we're in a similar space and there's probably a ~2y horizon to fix things before the bureaucracy falls to consultocracy. FWIW if you or anyone else building in gov need funding to get stuff off the ground there are plenty of DC-based VCs that are phenomenal, mission oriented and take big swings like this all the time.

arionhardison 2 minutes ago | | |

I made a mistake, i assumed that this admin was the crux of the issue and I was wrong. I looked into what you said here and I want to thank you. Moving forward I will not make this mistake.

TY for taking a look, right now I am digitizing all of the federal gov programs and all of the state gov programs, I would really love to connect with anyone just to talk, learn, show them what i'm doing etc...

Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to take a look and comment. It really means a lot. Gov Tech is not "sexy" part of tech where people flock and love to engage.

jimt1234 11 minutes ago | |

President Clinton tried to improve government contracting through various legislation and executive orders. One of the first things President W Bush did when he got into office was to sign an executive order that effectively negated most of the changes, particularly the one regarding "black listing" contractors who have a history of ripping off the government. The administration's response: the "black listed" contractors have improved; they promise not to rip off the government anymore. Then the Iraq War started and government contractors made billions with basically no oversight. And we all know how that went.

TheJoeMan 1 hour ago |

The author was involved and knowledgeable in the FOIA processes that existed, and had an understanding of navigating a quagmire of redundant government employees. A cost-reducing restructuring has been going on that seems to funnel all requests to a single place, the "Federal FOIA Portal". Once they submitted to the portal, their request was confirmed as entered. They also had an issue with the new portal, submitted the error, and it was escalated and fixed.

This article could just as well been written as "New FOIA Portal: Streamlined, but Still a Few Bumps".

TZubiri 1 hour ago |

I don't know how it is in the US, but in Argentina, if anyone thinks they can do better, they can compete in the public tender when this contract renews. And potentially, you can impugn the incumbent's offer alleging they have failed to comply with the contract and therefore they have demonstrated they don't have the capacity to comply with the requirements in the future.

Fwiw, the US public tender process is probably 10 times better and more mature than the Argentina process, so I don't doubt this avenue and many more are available to compete.

ElevenLathe 59 minutes ago | |

I don't know about this particular case, but often the tender process itself is the reason that there's no meaningful competition for these contracts. There are only a handful of companies that can realistically compete for certain types of contracts given the complexity of managing the bidding, certification, etc., and so they get most of the contracts even if they are not something they can actually accomplish, then turn around and rent some bodies from another shop that specializes in providing government-approved contract workers to do the actual work. You can imagine how disconnected the actual bids, deliverables agreements, etc. are when there are two entire private bureaucracies between even the government project manager -- themselves usually detached from the Federal workers who have to use whatever this process creates -- and the people doing the work.

BowBun 1 hour ago | |

Unfortunately tons of US gov contracts a) are lowest bid and b) only have one applicant

TZubiri 58 minutes ago | | |

B) is easy to fix, apply for it, if you don't you have little recourse.

A) Are you sure? In my country I see a lot that are merit based. Where the evaluation takes into account the total value provided. So for example a SaaS solution that costs 10K per month may be ranked lower than a HW based solution that costs 15K per month but provides permanent licenses and hardware.

In any case, if you can argue the lower bid doesn't or cannot comply with ANY of the requirements, you may be able to impugn their bid.