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Monday, June 5, 2017

No emergency, just a desire to act quickly, like business

The procurement issues here raise issues of noncompetitive acquisitions, the requirement to obtain a fair and reasonable price before acquiring anything, even by sole source, and the contrast between government acquisition and private business. Government contracting requires market research to have independent knowledge of source alternatives in the market, prices and costs, as part of the acquisition process before a selection process is even chosen.

The governance policies of government acquisition are intended to assure transparency and the pursuit of effective competition within the free enterprise system. It is meant to avoid the secretive and arbitrary selection of colleagues and strong-arm "horse trading" linked to matters far afield from the instant acquisition that is the norm in private business ("you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours").

Government procurement is concerned with public confidence, fair and equitable treatment of market participants, maximization of public funds, and safeguards to establish and maintain a contracting system of integrity with accountability to the public. It's not meant to trade products or services for votes or favors or other "godfather offers".

In these respects, government procurement is intentionally designed to be the antithesis of private business, especially private business whose only concern is the welfare of the business owner. Not that there is anything wrong with that in the context of people betting their own money in their own smoke-filled rooms or out on the golf course or the box seat of some entertainment venue. 

But, private business has no concern about other people's money, whereas government must be concerned with other people's money or face a fractious public, as well as a mutinous supply of vendors. 
 
Again, I advise readers of articles I present to read the articles themselves, at the link provided. I omit, rearrange, slice, dice, paraphrase, editorialize and generally use the general fact situation of articles to provide teachable moments concerning procurement practice and principle. My version may or may not reflect the article's author's intent, and likely do not to my re-working of the following story, so read the original; click the link at the title.


No competition, no cost estimate as Kansas City firm picked for coveted VA contract McClatchy Washington Bureau
The federal government typically awards contracts to private companies after a competitive bidding process in order to keep costs low and avoid conflicts of interest. “When you have competitive bidding it prevents government officials from throwing contracts to their friends or keeping them from people they don’t like,” said Richard Painter, chairman of the board of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

But, the Trump administration picked Kansas City-based Cerner Corp. for a coveted contract to modernize veterans health records, and there will be no competition for the taxpayer-funded project. Cerner partnered with defense technology contractor Leidos, Accenture Federal Services and Intermountain Healthcare in its bid for the $4.3 billion, 10-year defense contract. Other health IT companies didn’t have a chance.

VA Secretary David Shulkin told reporters his decision to waive competition and acquire Cerner’s software directly was motivated by President Donald Trump’s desire to act quickly. “From the outset that when the president selected me to be secretary, he made clear to me that he expected us to act with faster decisions, to act like business, and to really make sure that we are really doing the right thing to change veterans’ health care. And that's exactly what we’re trying to do today,” Shulkin said.

Shulkin said there was a “public interest exception” to allow awarding the Cerner contract without a “full and open competition.” The VA still must draw up a justification for waiving open and public competition, and Tester’s office will be following up with VA for those documents, said his spokesman, Dave Kuntz.

Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, the top Democrat on Senate’s Veterans Affairs Committee, was supportive of Shulkin’s announcement but his spokesman said he has some questions and concerns about timing and costs that the secretary did not answer. Neither Cerner nor the Department of Veterans Affairs could say how much the contract will cost, however.

“The challenge here is that by giving up competition, the VA has given up all control to the company” when it comes to price, said Phillip Carter, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who teaches government contracts law at Georgetown University Law Center. “At the end of the day ... they’re probably going to pay whatever Cerner asks,” Carter said.

The new VA health records system won’t be identical to the Defense Department’s, but its core will be Cerner’s Millennium software, Shulkin said on Monday. He said Cerner’s work on the Pentagon’s system, now known as MHS Genesis, pushed his decision in Cerner’s favor. Adoption of the same system “will ultimately result in all patient data residing in one common system,” the secretary said.
To me, adopting a system that will ultimately result in "all data residing in one common" (but proprietary) software will assure everyone else will become locked out. There are historical precedents, such as Motorola's lock on emergency radio systems, and Microsoft's lock on desktop software systems. See, Sure, Kid, first one's free.


The US government has been trying hard to break free of such locks.  This procurement seems to also go against the US Government's Federal Source Code Policy: Achieving Efficiency, Transparency, and Innovation through Reusable and Open Source Software:
When Federal agencies are unable to identify an existing Federal or commercial software solution that satisfies their specific needs, they may choose to develop a custom software solution on their own or pay for its development. When agencies procure custom-developed source code, however, they do not necessarily make their new code (source code or code) broadly available for Federal Government-wide reuse.

Even when agencies are in a position to make their source code available on a Government-wide basis, they do not make such code available to other agencies in a consistent manner. In some cases, agencies may even have difficulty establishing that the software was produced in the performance of a Federal Government contract.
These challenges may result in duplicative acquisitions for substantially similar code and an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars.

This policy seeks to address these challenges by ensuring that new custom-developed Federal source code be made broadly available for reuse across the Federal Government. This is consistent with the Digital Government Strategy’s “Shared Platform” approach, which enables Federal employees to work together—both within and across agencies—to reduce costs, streamline development, apply uniform standards, and ensure consistency in creating and delivering information. Enhanced reuse of custom-developed code across the Federal Government can have significant benefits for American taxpayers, including decreasing duplicative costs for the same code and reducing Federal vendor lock-in.
Note also the internationally informed Open Source for Government component of the Open Spouse Initiative.

Other article(s) on this topic: VA to dump Vista for DOD's electronic health record system











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