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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Pay to play "not a good look"

After reading the article below, I was reminded of a litmus test for doing something that you feel, or should feel, perhaps you ought not do: How would you like it if your action was front page news tomorrow?

Sky's the limit for political gifts (Australia)
The Herald today publishes an Australian first, a database that captures federal politicians' disclosures over the past two years, revealing the free trips and gifts they receive from powerful vested interests. The information is not released publicly except in the form of unsearchable handwritten documents.

The Israel lobby, Qantas and mining companies are leading the charge in lavishing federal politicians with all-expenses paid junkets and other gifts, a Herald investigation has found. Billionaires including Gina Rinehart, big drug companies, controversial Chinese technology company Huawei and multinational defence contractors are behind many of the "free" flights and high-level entertainment handed to politicians.

Richard Mulgan, an emeritus professor at the Australian National University who has written extensively on accountability, said there should be a "brick wall" to gifts and hospitality from major defence contractors given the large sums of money at stake.

More generally, he questioned whether politicians accepting gifts from companies had fully considered why companies were paying to take them on trips.
"Obviously people can accept gifts and so on but if there's any suggestion that it can influence a particular decision it's not a good look," he said.
"You would have to ask yourself: why would the company do it? If the company's motives are less than pure you have to ask yourself whether you're contaminating yourself."

Professor John Uhr, the director of the centre for the study of Australian politics at the Australian National University, said there was little policing of politicians' behaviour in accepting gifts and trips. "You really need to lay down certain standards you can honestly expect your representatives to have," he says. "At the moment there is just nothing."

Professor Mulgan said the current handwritten disclosures by politicians compromised transparency as a method of holding politicians accountable. "Transparency means that the public can readily get hold of that information," he says.

Read more at the article link.

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray Proposes End to Pay-to-Play Politics
Today, Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray is proposing a set of campaign finance and ethics reforms specifically targeting pay-to-play corruption, the all-too-common practice of a business entity making campaign contributions to candidates and public officials with the hope of gaining a lucrative government contract.

Washington, D.C., is embroiled in a series of government contracting scandals that have caused immense harm to the image and credibility of the District government. It is important that District officials make reasonable efforts to assure the public and the business community that campaign contributions are not the gateway to District contracts.

If adopted, the mayor’s pay-to-play reforms would be among the strongest in the nation. Government contractors would be prohibited from making campaign contributions to, or expenditures on behalf of, any District candidate or official who is or could be involved in awarding the contract. Similarly, they cannot give to or spend on behalf of any political committee associated with an individual or nonprofit group controlled by the candidate or official. “Government contractor” is broadly defined to include all senior executives of the company seeking a contract. Even the spouses and dependent children of the executives would be limited to contributions of no more than $300 per election.

By taking the simple step of divorcing campaign contributions from government contracts, this critical pay-to-play reform proposal will help rebuild public confidence in the integrity of the District’s government contracting process. The measures will also provide useful guidance for public officials on how to avoid the political minefield of the appearance of corruption, whether justified or not, that accompanies pay-to-play practices.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Giving credit where credit is dubious

City school credit, procurement cards show culture of spending
Baltimore school administrators spent roughly $500,000 during the past year and a half on expenses such as a $7,300 office retreat at a downtown hotel, $300-per-night stays at hotels, and a $1,000 dinner at an exclusive members-only club, credit card statements show.

City school officials defend the majority of the credit card expenditures — outlined in statements and receipts obtained by The Baltimore Sun through a Maryland Public Information Act request — as "the cost of doing business," saying only a handful of "outliers" show questionable judgment or disregard for taxpayer money.

A review of credit card transactions and receipts by The Sun found that the bulk of the expenditures — about $300,000, generated by 16 central office employees — were made under a new procurement-card program that has operated with virtually no controls or oversight since it began in January 2011.

Card statements show that many of the expenditures violated the school system's own protocols and restrictions for use of the cards, such as a prohibition on using them for travel or to buy gifts for employees.

Amid Sun inquiries, city school officials have acknowledged that they took a series of corrective actions. The schools chief, CEO AndrĂ©s Alonso — whose card, sometimes used by his assistant, incurred a $66.77 charge to Victoria's Secret on Valentine's Day that was later removed after the system reported it as fraudulent — defended the program.

"Overall, people use the program in exactly the way we thought they were going to," Alonso said in an interview. "There's always going to be a margin where you give people flexibility, and they're not always going to use it in the way that you want [them to]."

Before last year, most school officials who needed to make work-related purchases had to either use their own money and seek a reimbursement or borrow one of several Bank of America credit cards used by the schools and registered in Alonso's name.

Asking people to pay their own travel expenses and seek reimbursement later would pose a financial burden for many employees, Edwards said.

Among those questioned transactions were a $450-per-person office retreat at the downtown Hilton, during which the 16 employees of the Information Technology Department were also treated to a $500 dinner at Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chao; and a $264 lunch for students at Hooter's.

The $67,000 in travel to conferences for a handful of office administrators, including an $8,000 trip to Las Vegas for a bullying conference, reflects the system's "overinvestment in professional development," she said.

And Edwards said that when a school administrator took a group of high school students to Hooter's during a student leadership conference in Atlanta, they didn't eat in the main dining room, where waitresses were wearing their trademark skimpy uniforms, but rather in a separate area served by a fully clothed manager.
Yes there will always be problems, but government is best served when it monitors and discloses the problems itself rather than have them brought to light in headlines.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Canada procurement Ombudsman issues report card

Government-appointed watchdog highlights major problems with federal procurement
A federal watchdog’s new report highlights a series of problems in how Ottawa procures some of its $20 billion in annual goods and services, including complaints about sole-sourced contracts, government ignoring its own rules, and departments doing business with firms known for producing “inferior” work.

The ombudsman’s office is responsible for reviewing complaints on the awarding of federal contracts for goods below $25,000 and for services less than $100,000 (which amounts to 90 per cent of all federal contracts). However, the office can review any complaint on the administration of a federal contract for goods and services, regardless of dollar value, as well as examine the purchasing practices of federal departments and agencies to assess fairness, openness and transparency.

The document highlights two “unexpected areas of concern” with federal procurement, including vendor performance and “the disparate nature” of procurement documents. But it also identifies problems with lack of training among procurement officials, questionable sole-sourcing of contracts among more than 100 federal departments and agencies, and concerns that government favours certain suppliers with its purchasing.

Six years after an optional certification program was introduced, only 26 of the approximately 3,200 procurement specialists working in the federal government have been certified at the program’s first of three levels, and none have been completely certified.

Some small and medium-sized businesses complained the patchwork system of procurement rules throughout the federal government is a barrier to doing business, the report says, while government officials highlighted the inefficiencies of preparing different procurement documents for similar services.

“This fragmented approach within the federal government is allowing suppliers identified as underperforming by one department to successfully bid and be awarded contracts from other departments,” the report says.

NDP deputy finance critic Guy Caron said the report highlights a troubling trend in government sole-sourcing contracts, when more competition should be promoted to ensure government receives good value for the goods and services it purchases. “The fact that we have to have competition means that we should rely less and less on those advance contracts, and we do more and more, which to me signifies a problem,” Caron said.

“What this underlies is the need for more transparency and the need to actually lower the costs of those various goods and services towards competition. I really don’t understand why government is actually going toward more of those (ACAN) contracts.”

Similar:
Major flaws in Ottawa's contract bidding process

Monday, August 20, 2012

Protests at State and local levels

State bid protests: new incentives and traps for the unwary by James C. Cox and Damien Specht of US law firm Jenner & Block
Largely because they provide for a more neutral evaluation of award decisions, protests have emerged as a staple of federal government contracting. In 2011, 2,353 cases were filed in the Government Accountability Office alone, an increase of more than 100% from ten years earlier. For most experienced contractors, an adverse award decision in a significant procurement almost always results at least in a conversation about whether to protest.

When competing for state contracts, however, considering a possible protest is not yet second nature for most contractors. Even among established firms, some might not know that states even have their own bid protest processes. Just as at the federal level, there is little reason to pass up the opportunity for a second opinion on the propriety of a procurement without due consideration.

In response to an increase in interest and the public’s desire for transparency, state protest processes have become more sophisticated. Consequently, in many states, the agencies designated to hear bid protests appear to be getting at least a little closer to what the GAO and the Court of Federal Claims do for federal contracts — providing a real check on flawed or anti-competitive awards.

At the same time, the states remain laboratories of democracy and have developed a wide variety of protest procedures. The most important thing to realize about state level protests is that no two systems are exactly the same. As a result, it is impossible to provide a one size fits all guide to state protests. There are, however, a number of areas where state protest practice in general diverges from, for example, protests before the GAO that may constitute traps for the unwary.

Read their tips and traps at the link above.

Procurement ethics for private contractors?

Government should adopt standards for private contractors
The federal government issues more than $260 billion in government contracts each year, with few restrictions on the employees of those contractors.

Government ethics expert Kathleen Clark, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, has written extensively about this issue in the last year with three papers: “Ethics, Employees and Contractors: Financial Conflicts In and Out of Government”; “Fiduciary Standards for Bailout Contractors: What Treasury Got Right and Wrong in TARP”; and “Ethics for an Outsourced Government”.

The federal government hasn’t yet outsourced the job of Cabinet secretary, but almost all tasks that government employees perform are also performed by contractor personnel. Contractors perform jobs that are mundane or menial, such as hauling trash, but also tasks that are sophisticated and require discretion, such as providing advice about how to respond to climate change.

Over the course of 25 years, the federal government increased its spending on service contracting by 85 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. While the government has increased its spending on service contracting, it has actually decreased the number of government employees who supervise that contract spending.

So much so that now the government actually outsources to contractors the function of supervising and evaluating the work of other contractors. That is of the areas where the government is at highest risk for ethical misconduct by contractors: where contractors can influence how the government spends money but are not subject to rigorous government ethics standards. Last year, the government adopted a new regulation to impose some ethics standards on some of these individuals, but it is not yet clear how the government and contractors are implementing that regulation.

Back in 2008, the Department of the Treasury used a contractor as the point person for its bailout of AIG. That contractor was a former employee of Goldman Sachs and owned a substantial amount of Goldman stock. He advised the government to handle the AIG bailout in a way that benefited Goldman Sachs — and himself, as a Goldman shareholder. If he had been a government employee, he could have gone to prison for this conflict of interest. But as a contractor, the conflict of interest law didn’t apply to him.

The ABA Model Procurement Code, substantially adopted on Guam, contains a code of ethics for private as well as public procurement participants. Unfortunately, the enforcement mechanism for each of them is rather ineffective, as implemented on Guam.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Get procurement out of the way of government business

Jamaica: When the law is a shackle
"I am personally convinced that the rules and the fear of just being off the line .... have driven inaction for the simplest thing," adviser to the prime minister and head of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) steering committee Dr Carlton Davis told a Gleaner Editors' Forum last week.

"We have to recognise that this is a business world, this is not a world in which people have time to sit down and solve a thing." Davis asserted.

Like Davis, former chairman of the LNG steering committee and president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica Christopher Zacca is convinced Jamaica will not be able to make significant advancement unless the procurement rules are revamped. He argued that the energy sector requires special treatment and should be subject to different rules as it relates to procurement.

"This energy thing is of such moment that it cannot be a slave so completely to methodology and rules that you get straight As for methodology and rules and straight Bs for effectiveness and economics," said Davis.

Davis and Zacca's call for changes to the procurement guidelines has the full support of Minister of Transport, Works and Housing Dr Omar Davies.

"The whole procurement process, it is lengthy, and does not necessarily guarantee the equity and the transparency," Davies told The Sunday Gleaner.

The procurement guidelines are at the heart of a dispute involving Minister of Transport, Works and Housing Dr Omar Davies and the OCG.

In April, Davies announced in Parliament that the Cabinet had established the IOP to advise it on the implementation of three megaprojects, two of which had not received the blessing of Christie.

At that time, Davies said the administration, "will not allow the OCG to be a stumbling block in the engagement of private entities as the State moves to take advantage of investment opportunities".

Christie immediately responded, arguing that the establishment of the IOP was an attempt to usurp the OCG.

"The OCG takes strong offence and exception to any suggestion that is made that by virtue of the discharge of its lawful mandates, under the Contractor General Act, as is prescribed by the Parliament of Jamaica, and which it is sworn to do, that it is impeding economic growth and development in Jamaica," said Christie.

The projects are the north-south Highway 2000 link, Gordon Cay container transhipment hub, and the Fort Augusta container terminal.

According to Davies, were it not for the intervention of the OCG last year, the Chinese investors would have long advanced work on the north-south link of Highway 2000.

"I have just reviewed the files which reported on former Minister Audley Shaw's visit to Beijing, and a year ago, they were at a stage where had we proceeded, the Mount Rosser bypass would now be complete," Davies said last month.

That did not phase Christie, who has consistently argued that the OCG was set up to ensure that government contracts and licences are void of irregularity, impropriety and corruption.

"The OCG is of the view that economic development must be pursued in a sustainable and responsible manner, and within an appropriate system of institutionalised and independent checks and balances which will ensure that the Jamaican taxpayer can be guaranteed value for money and that all government commercial transactions will withstand the highest levels of scrutiny and probity."

The parties are now before the courts for a determination on whether the OCG can dictate members of the IOP to report to it.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Evidence that it's not about the rules (in Singapore and elsewhere)

Following on from the last post from Singapore, It's not about the rules:

More procurement lapses uncovered
Many of the procurement lapses by Government agencies were not because of a lack of knowledge of procedures. They were due "more to administrative expediency or preference for certain suppliers taking precedence over financial prudence", according to Auditor-General Lim Soo Ping.

He cited waiving competition on weak grounds, allowing price alterations by certain bidders and not evaluating bids in accordance with specified criteria as examples of such behaviour.

Taking issue with how the agencies treated the role of the approving authorities, Mr Lim observed "quite a number of instances" where the requisite approval of an approving authority was sought after contractual commitment had been made.

"An approving authority is a gatekeeper responsible for ensuring that the principles of open and fair competition, transparency and value for money are upheld. This is not a perfunctory role and must not be treated as such," he said. "On its part, the approving authority, when considering a recommendation ... should seek to be fully satisfied that those principles are upheld and ... should exercise a measure of scepticism in its scrutiny."

The AGO's report said that a number of Government departments had been grossly overcharged for projects, primarily as a result of the inappropriate use of term contracts.

The Singapore Prison Service's enhancement work to the prison cells was one such contract. The term contractor charged SPS 1.6 times the market price for stainless steel perforated sheets and 2.2 times the market price for polycarbonate sheets. This meant that the service could have been overcharged by about S$960,000, said the AGO.

The Health Ministry overpaid a contractor S$830,000 for the foundation work and basement construction of Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. The ministry informed the AGO that it would recover the overpayment from the contractor and would engage an external auditor to check for any similar overpayments.

The Singapore Police Force was overcharged by about S$73,000 as a term contractor overstated work quantities, charged based on incorrect rates, and had submitted invoices for work not carried out. It has implemented measures, such as improving its contract management practices, to prevent the recurrence of such lapses.

High rates of non-compliance with the specifications of street cleansing contracts, valued at S$166.37 million, managed by the National Environment Agency. AGO observed "substandard work" at 15 locations, while cleansing workers did not show up at 190 locations.

In September last year, following the previous Auditor-General's report, the MHA issued a circular to all its departments setting out the principles for the use of the term contracts.

"The circular also reminded Home Team departments that while departments may engage external project managers to manage projects carried out by contractors, responsibility and accountability cannot be outsourced. The final accountability still remains with the project officer in the department," the MHA said.

In its report, the AGO recommended that the Finance Ministry introduce procurement rules to prevent the inappropriate use of term contracts and to ensure that agencies are charged at fair market prices for items not priced in the term contract.

Mr Lim reiterated that procurement officers "should be well imbued with the principles of fairness, transparency, competition and value for money".

Said Mr Lim: "It is, therefore, important that training in procurement also incorporates the imparting of values expected of public officers as custodians and stewards of public moneys. This should be reinforced by the senior management of public sector agencies setting the right tone at the top on governance and financial control matters."

Sunday, August 12, 2012

It's not about the rules -- Singapore Deputy PM

Government not satisfied, will improve procurement in public sector
The government is not satisfied with the current state of procurement, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said.

Mr Tharman said the government is looking at how the process can be improved.

The deputy prime minister, who is also the Minister for Finance, said this means a constant review of the rules and guidelines but most important is compliance with the rules.

The rules by and large are there.

Mr Tharman said: "It's compliance with the rules (that is the issue). This is partly a matter of competence -- we've got to build up the competence of procurement officers. That means not just the way we handle large-value tenders, where the checks are very stringent, but also the other smaller value quotations. The small transactions have to be on the radar screen as well."

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Careful what you wish for

All the time you hear the antagonism: why can't government spending be conducted like private business? Who needs all that protest and red tape? Government has buying muscle; use it, and let the devil take the hindmost.

Well, Ukraine has evidently bought into that mantra. We might wonder how that will work out for them.


State spending moves further into shadows with new law
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Aug. 1 signed a controversial public procurement law that will shield from public oversight tens of billions of dollars in government spending each year.

Pro-presidential lawmaker Oleksandr Yefremov of the Party of Regions defended the law. Yefremov told the Kyiv Post that the procurement bill will allow state-owned companies to compete with the private sector on equal footing since the private sector is not required to conduct competitive bids.

The bill exempts state-owned companies and taxpayer-financed enterprises from holding competitive bids. It furthermore excuses them from having to publish the dollar amounts of their orders or the winning bidder.

Pro-presidential lawmakers say the legislation will make government-owned companies more competitive. “Privately-owned companies don’t have to conduct tenders, so this bill levels the playing field for government enterprises. This will help improve the performance of our (government-owned) companies,” said Yefremov in a phone conversation.

The law was adopted in parliament on July 4, the same day a controversial language law elevating the status of the Russian language was passed. The ensuing protests and international attention over the language law meant the procurement law’s passage went almost unnoticed, fueling criticism that the language law was a smokescreen to divert public attention.

In fact the procurement bill was signed by Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn so quietly that journalists didn't notice it until a week later.

According to z.texty.org.ua, which evaluates state procurement spending, the share of such expenditures as a proportion of gross domestic product is much higher in Ukraine than in any European country.

Watchdogs say bribery and kickbacks eat away at the state’s budget. in which insider rackets exist for government contracts. Nearly three-quarters of Ukraine’s budget spending goes toward public procurement, according to official data.

Nevertheless, such companies as gas monopoly Naftogaz Ukrainy, rail monopoly Ukrzaliznytsia and road builder Ukravtodor, to name a few – state-owned, money-losing enterprises that are heavily reliant on billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to stay financially afloat – can now choose with which companies they want to do business on a no-bid basis and not disclose their financial transactions.

In December 2010, a Naftogaz subsidiary overpaid $150 million for an offshore oil rig, according to investigative news reports, a charge denied by government officials.

Taxpayers also now won’t know that a Naftogaz subsidiary pays some $2 million a year to fly, rent and service a helicopter for Ukraine’s president, according to a Nashi Hroshi investigation.

The same company also recently purchased three housing booths for construction workers worth Hr 934,000 ($116,750) each. This implies a price per square meter of $5,600, a figure close to the average square-meter price for an apartment in Moscow, one of the world’s most expensive capitals.

In June, the State Affairs Department bought imported raspberries worth $84 per kilogram at more than twice the market value.

Nashi Hroshi stated that last year companies owned by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest billionaire and a Party of Regions lawmaker, received 11 percent of all state procurement orders.

According to Nashi Hroshi, other politicians and businesses that make money on providing goods and services to public entities include: Yuriy Ivaniushchenko, a Party of Regions lawmaker; companies affiliated with the family of Yanukovych; Oleksandr Yefremov, head of the Regions’ party faction in parliament; Dmytro Firtash, the billionaire co-owner of RosUkrEnergo; Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of Ex-President Leonid Kuchma; Petro Poroshenko, economy minister, and Serhiy Tigipko, deputy prime minister and minister for social affairs.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Procurement education necessary

Editorial from the Marianas Business Journal, Vol. 10 No.6. Note the link to the article requires subscription to access online.

Procurement education necessary
Kudos to those responsible for the Summer 2012 Guam Procurement Conference at the Hyatt Regency Guam held July 23 and 24. We are encouraged by reports that the conference was well attended and that participants demonstrated both their own knowledge and an eagerness to learn and improve their performance.

As well, it appears that Guam Community College is planning to boost its procurement education program from its current two-week course to, potentially, a procurement institute.

Danielle Conway, professor at the University of Hawaii's School of Law, the main conference presenter, is quite right when she says that government procurement regulations are for the protection of the taxpayers' dollar and the protection of those involved in the process. Unfortunately, though for whatever reason, the failure to comply with those regulations, or allegations of failure to comply get in the way of getting the government's business done.

The myriad of procurement problems that affect services at our schools, our hospital, our port and elsewhere reinforce our perceptions about the inefficiencies inherent in government. Government services are too often held up because seeming obvious solutions cannot be implemented while contracting irregularities are rectified.

Of course, we understand the consequences of inadequate regulation. Money that is not properly overseen is money that will be wasted - stolen outright at worst, inefficiently spent at best. The money that came from everybody is too easily treated as though it belongs to nobody.

So we're happy to see an effort to develop competent procurement professionals, capable of administering the government's procurement regulations fairly, efficiently - and correctly. We are also of the belief that simplified regulations would assist the process.

We don't doubt that she is correct, but we're not encouraged by Conway's reassurance that Guam's procurement problems are no different than anyone else's. One conclusion to be drawn is that the process cannot be improved - surely the problems would not be ubiquitous otherwise.

A more hopeful conclusion, advanced by Conway and by local procurement-education advocate John Thos. Brown, is that no one has yet launched a procurement institute such as is envisioned - potentially making Guam an example for the rest of the procurement world.

Guam Summer Procurement Conference 2012

From the Marianas Business Journal, Vol. 10 No.6. Note the link to the article requires subscription to access online.

Conference success highlights need, desire for procurement education By Frank Whitman Journal Staff
Those attending the Summer 2012 Guam Procurement Conference were "hungry for more information - hungry," said Danielle M. Conway, Michael J. Marks distinguished professor of business law and director of the University of Hawaii Procurement Institute at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii, and main presenter at the conference.
"That means you have good people that have just not had access to good training and educational opportunities."
The conference was presented by the Guam Chamber of Commerce in cooperation with the Judiciary of Guam, the U.S. District Court of Guam, the Guam Bar Association and the Guam Procurement Advisory Council at the Hyatt Regency Guam on July 23 and 24.
John Thos. Brown, general counsel for Jones & Guerrero Co. Inc., a member of the Guam Procurement Advisory Council, and a conference organizer said that he was delighted with the number and caliber of attendees.
"We had people from a lot of different agencies, from desk clerks to directors," he said. "They showed that we have a strong core of people that know what they're talking about and have a desire to learn more."
Sen. Benjamin J.F. "BJ" Cruz of the 31st Guam Legislature attended the entire conference, and Sen. Shirley A. "Sam" Mabini attended parts of it.
Conway's message to the procurement professionals was to do their work properly from the beginning, she said. "Those of us who are procurement professionals are the stewards of the taxpayers' dollar," she said. "We work for the taxpayer; we have to protect and enforce that obligation. To do that means doing our job properly.
Part of doing the job properly is doing the planning it takes to do a good purchase. ... Do the homework up front instead of waiting for a problem to arise on the back end." Following the correct procedures also protects those who are involved in the process, she noted.
While Conway acknowledged problems with procurement implementation, Guam's problems are no different than those of other jurisdictions, she told the Journal. "If you step back, you realize that you're having the same or similar issues as all of the procurement professionals in the 50 states and the other territories."
Though procurement protests are often viewed as problematic, they are a valuable part of the process, Conway said. "I would hope we have challenges when agencies make mistakes," she said. "Most times industry is in a better position to understand when something has gone wrong."
During her visit, Conway was also a guest speaker at a procurement course at Guam Community College on July 24 and met with college officials afterward. The discussions included the establishment of a procurement institute, which Brown said he has been promoting.
"It's hopeful that we will have a program up within the next six months at GCC," Brown said. "So we can get the people educated who are doing all the paperwork and who are making the decisions, so they understand the rules that are there to protect them and are there to protect the taxpayer."
While no definite plans have been made for Conway's continued involvement with Guam procurement, "We have her number," Brown said.