This column was originally published on Roger Waldron’s blog at The Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement and was republished here with permission from the author.

On Nov. 3, Jeff Koses, the General Services Administration’s senior procurement executive, posted an article on LinkedIn announcing that the “RFO is in play.” The article highlighted that GSA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Homeland Security had issued all the deviations with Nov. 3 as the effective date for the changes. A new era begins for the Federal Acquisition Regulation as agencies and departments continue to work towards implementing the RFO deviations and updating their supplemental acquisition regulations. The procurement policy teams responsible for drafting the deviations, the Practitioner’s Albums, and the FAR Companion deserve praise for the thoughtful, integrated, and comprehensive effort. The streamlined RFO is an improvement on the FAR, providing a clear, concise, and coherent acquisition framework for government and industry.

As we know, the next phase of the process, the public rulemaking, is critical to the long-term success of the RFO. The rule making process provides the public, including key stakeholders across the procurement community, with the formal opportunity, consistent with law, to comment on the deviations in the form of proposed or interim rules. A robust, transparent process will ensure that the deviations become final rules, cementing the RFO. The Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement’s members look forward to the start of the public rule making phase and the opportunity to formally comment on the revised FAR.

The RFO is central to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement system. The FAR establishes the ground rules for government and industry transacting business in support of agency missions. The RFO streamlines and clarifies the ground rules thereby increasing competition and access to the commercial market.

Leveraging the RFO to deliver best value mission support for customer agencies and the American people centers on three critical elements: (1) requirements development (2) the acquisition workforce; and (3) operational commercial best practices. 

1. Developing Sound Requirements

Clear, concise, and well communicated requirements are foundational to successful procurement outcomes that deliver best value mission support. Program offices must play a central role in developing requirements. In this regard, coordination between senior program managers and contracting officers drives effective requirements development for complex requirements. Part and parcel of requirements development is market research. Understanding the capabilities and technologies in the commercial market will inform sound requirements. Too often, government requirements reflect a “Hail Mary” approach that seeks a capability well beyond what is currently commercially available rather acquiring the 80 percent commercial solution that can meet mission needs. As with most “Hail Marys” these requirements often end unfulfilled and undelivered.

Finally, today’s outcome-based contracts are yesterday’s performance-based contracts. The administration rightly has identified outcome-based requirements as a strategy that can increase competition, improve performance and achieve greater savings. The long-standing challenge of outcome-based contracting is the articulation and implementation of clear outcomes and associated measures to support contractor performance and government contract administration. It all starts with the statement of objectives. Management focus on and investment in outcome-based requirements development is a commercial best practice. The government should look to emulate this commercial best practice to unlock the positive potential of outcome-based contracting. Perhaps leveraging technology (e.g. artificial intelligence) for data analysis and analytics can support the government’s requirements development process.

2. Embracing The Acquisition Workforce

The RFO vests greater discretion to the contracting officer. Some of the commentary around the RFO has raised the potential of increased inconsistency in contracting operations due to greater discretion. The Practitioner’s Albums, FAR Companion, and Category Management Buying Guides are the starting point for the acquisition workforce. As the implementation of the RFO moves forward, translating real life experience with the revised ground rules into a set of operational best practices will be important in fostering consistency. Further, consistent, strategic investments in acquisition training and professional development will enhance sound decision making. Finally, management support and corresponding lines of authority in contracting operations will foster consistency and accountability in the process.

3. Adopting Commercial Best Practices in Procurement Operations  

The hallmark of the RFO is its leveraging of the commercial market. The RFO reduces the number of clauses applicable to commercial contracts, strengthens the preference for commercial products and services, and streamlines the overall procurement process. As a policy statement, the RFO recognizes that access to, and competition from the commercial market drives innovation, efficiency, and increases value for the government mission.

Adopting commercial best practices in procurement operations is the third key element in leveraging the RFO to deliver best value mission support for the American people. For example, as mentioned above, it is a commercial best practice to invest significant time and resources in requirements development. Sound outcome-based requirements are the blueprint for success. Vigorous competition for sound requirements is the single most effective way to drive value for the taxpayer. Avoiding government-unique, noncommercial practices is the other side of the coin. Operational practices that overregulate or reregulate the procurement process will limit competition, reduce access to the commercial market, and undermine mission support. It will be incumbent at the operational level to embrace commercial best practices while avoiding/eliminating noncommercial practices that undermine the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement process.

The post Leveraging the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Technology Modernization Fund is running out of time. In 10 days, the reauthorization will expire for the 8-year-old governmentwide account to help agencies update IT systems.

If Congress doesn’t act before Dec. 12, the TMF will not be able to make any new investments, freezing more than $150 million.

“The Technology Modernization Fund remains one of the federal government’s most effective tools for rapidly strengthening cybersecurity and improving high-impact systems. Reauthorizing the TMF is essential to ensuring stable, flexible funding that helps agencies deliver secure, modern services for the American people,” said a GSA spokesperson in an email to Federal News Network. “We look forward to working with Congress on the reauthorization effort.”

There is support in the House for reauthorizing the TMF. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and former Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) introduced the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Reform Act in April that included an extension of the fund to Dec. 31, 2031.

The bill hasn’t moved out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and there is no Senate companion.

The House did pass a version of this bill in May 2024, but, again, the Senate never moved on the bill.

The Senate, however, did allocate $5 million for the TMF in its version of the fiscal 2026 Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill, released last week. This comes after Congress zeroed out new funding for the program over the last three years. The House version of the FSGG bill didn’t include any new money for the TMF.

Mace tried to include her TMF bill as a provision in the House’s version of the National Defense Authorization bill, but language didn’t make it in the version passed by the lower chamber. The Senate version of the NDAA also didn’t include the TMF extension, but there is still hope to get it in during the upcoming conference committee negotiations.

“Extending and reauthorizing the Technology Modernization Fund, which expires on Dec. 12, is a high priority for the committee and we have requested in a bipartisan manner that it be included in the final Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act,” said an Oversight and Government Reform Committee spokesperson. “This is a shared policy priority with the administration and the Office of Management and Budget. Extending the fund also has broad industry support, specifically the Committee has support letters from the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), the Center for Procurement Advocacy (CPA), the Professional Services Council (PSC) and the Alliance for Digital Innovation (ADI).”

TMF: 69 investments, $1 billion

ADI wrote lawmakers a letter on Nov. 24 advocating for the TMF extension.

“To date, the TMF has catalyzed transformation across government, from strengthening cybersecurity defenses to improving citizen-facing digital services. By providing flexible capital through a merit-based process overseen by federal technology leaders, the Fund enables agencies to undertake complex modernization initiatives that would otherwise remain trapped in multi-year budget cycles. This structure ensures accountability while giving agencies the agility to respond to rapidly evolving technology landscapes and emerging threats,” the industry association said in its letter to House and Senate leadership. “The MGT Reform Act provides the right framework for the TMF’s next chapter. By extending authorization for seven years, Congress would provide agencies the long-term certainty needed to plan and execute substantial and transformational modernization programs. The legislation’s transparency provisions, including the establishment of a federal legacy IT inventory, will give policymakers greater visibility into modernization progress and priorities. These reforms strengthen oversight while preserving the operational flexibility that makes the TMF effective.”

GSA says in its fiscal 2026 budget justification that the TMF currently manages more than $1.07 billion worth of systems upgrades and modernization projects totaling 69 investments across 34 federal agencies. The TMF board has received and reviewed more than 290 proposals totaling about $4.5 billion in funding demand.

The TMF board made only one new investment in calendar year 2025. It awarded $14.6 million to the Federal Trade Commission in June to develop a cloud-based analytics platform that uses artificial intelligence tools and to train staff to handle data analysis in-house.

GSA says it had more than $231 million in available funding for 2025 and it expected to have more than $158 million for the TMF in 2026.

“The government needs updated technology, and those updates need to be done efficiently. I’m proud to co-sponsor the bipartisan Modernizing Government Technology Reform Act introduced by Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairwoman Mace,” said Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), ranking member of the Cybersecurity, IT and Government Innovation subcommittee, in an email to Federal News Network. “The best course of action would be the Oversight Committee and Congress advancing this legislation before the authorization ends.”

Technical debt would increase faster

Former federal technology executives say letting the TMF expire would set back agency modernization efforts.

Larry Bafundo, the former executive director of the TMF program office, said without the TMF, agencies will have a more difficult time finding funding to modern legacy systems.

“We spend a vast majority of our funding on maintaining existing and outdated systems instead of adapting systems to meet changing needs. I think something is broken in the way we fund modernization of IT systems. Congress is incentivized to think in terms of projects instead of services that evolve over time. There is a huge disconnect between how the government works and how IT projects are funded,” said Bafuno, who is now president of Mo Studio, a digital services company. “There isn’t a clear, governmentwide IT modernization strategy, with a clear inventory of systems, to align programs like TMF against. As a result, we approach the problem piece-meal, rather than as part of a deliberate, or coordinated, plan. Similarly, agencies can sometimes lack incentives to modernize effectively. In many cases, they not only lack performance baselines to measure change against, but there are also very few senior executives in govt today who are evaluated based on the value of the services they provide the public. Instead, they are incentivized to preserve the status quo. All of this makes showing ‘return on investment’ difficult, along with the fact that Congress is not united in its understanding of what the return on investment looks like — is it cheaper, more secure, faster, etc.? We don’t have a common definition for success when it comes to programs like TMF.”

Bafundo said the TMF works because it provides agencies with guardrails or characteristics for the types of projects the board would invest in.

“We relied on good ideas or good proposals and someone who could defend their ideas, as opposed to a set of focal areas and show us what you can with seed funding. You can use that experience to unlock further funding,” he said. “That is how it should work instead of a 3-to-5 year plan that many programs have. In some ways the TMF because it relies on lengthy proposals instead of working software is more like a grant program than a seed fund.”

Gundeep Ahluwalia, a former Labor Department chief information officer, helped the agency win TMF funding for six different projects between 2018 and 2024.

Ahluwalia, who is now an executive vice president and chief innovation officer for NuAxis Innovations, said the TMF helped Labor pay down its technical debt.

“Whether it’s improving services to Americans or protecting against foreign adversaries, the cost of not doing anything here is just too large, especially considering the investment is paltry,” he said. “The TMF used an approach very similar to the private sector where you would make your business case, tell the board how much the company would get back from the investment. This business case is a no-brainer. For $500 million or even $250 million, it could give agencies the opportunity to improve services, reduce risks and become cyber strong.”

OMB seeks change to TMF

It’s unclear why support on Capitol Hill has been tepid a best for the TMF.

Ahluwalia said lawmakers still have trouble understanding why something like the TMF is needed and there isn’t an outspoken supporter like Connolly, who passed away in May, was for IT modernization funding.

“If you don’t understand something and there is a significant resistance to spending this becomes yet another government program. But this isn’t just another one, the TMF is a way out of our technical debt conundrums. It’s modeled after the private sector and I don’t think people may not understand that,” he said.

OMB, which didn’t respond to two requests for comments on the TMF expiring, proposed through GSA’s 2026 budget request a new funding model for the program. The White House wants to make it a revolving or working capital fund of sorts that would be authorized to collect up to $100 million a year in otherwise expired funding.

The legislative proposal would let “GSA, with the approval of OMB, to collect funding from other agencies and bring that funding into the TMF,” GSA wrote in its budget justification document. “This would allow agencies to transfer resources to the TMF using funds that are otherwise no longer available to them for obligation. This provision is essential to providing the TMF with the necessary funds to help the federal government address critical technology challenges by modernizing high-priority systems, improving AI adoption and supporting cross-government collaboration and scalable services.”

If the TMF authority expires, GSA would still be able to support existing investments with already approved funding and other program support services.

The post House lawmakers to try again to extend TMF through NDAA first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Trump administration’s deviation from some norms as it transitioned into the White House earlier this year is now raising questions about the future of presidential transition planning.

Reflecting on the most recent White House transition, the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition argued in a new report that there is a need for bigger reforms in the transition process, particularly when it comes to transparency and security.

In its report, the Partnership, a non-profit organization that advocates for non-partisan improvements to the federal government, recommended adding more safeguards into the transition process — such as strengthening security protocols, further clarifying the transition rules, and streamlining paperwork to speed up transition planning. It also suggested amending the overarching Presidential Transition Act to incentivize transition teams to comply with standard practices.

Because transitions only occur once every four or eight years, the level of expertise around transition planning is already thin. But the Partnership said the losses to the federal workforce this year put the success of future presidential transitions at further risk.

“Such guardrails will be particularly essential to ensure a smooth transition in 2028 because of the vast amounts of expertise being lost from government as a result of this administration’s reductions of the federal workforce,” the Partnership wrote.

During the most recent presidential transition period, Trump’s approach was unlike any prior incoming administration — including his own transition into his first term in 2016.

Leading into his second term, Trump’s transition team skirted longstanding norms by refusing to sign a standard agreement with the General Services Administration, which outlines support services such as access to office space, IT equipment and federal staff. The GSA agreement also triggers reporting requirements and limits how much money transition teams can fundraise.

By subverting standard transition procedures and timelines, the Partnership said Trump’s team created security risks and caused significant planning delays.

“This inhibited the team’s ability to prepare essential staff and enabled them to avoid disclosing transition donors, agency review team members and the use of their transition funding,” the Partnership wrote in its report.

Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership, said the Trump transition team’s divergence from the norms signals a larger shift for the future of presidential transition planning.

“The assumption had been that the candidate would want to follow these guidelines around security clearance, find their nominees for positions, bring in transition teams — but we didn’t see that as much during this transition,” Mattingley said in a recent interview with Federal News Network. “And during the course of the last 10 or 11 months, we’ve also seen some of the things that we thought were norms, and the ways of doing business, not play out.”

During the transition process, Trump’s team also delayed signing standard agreements to define how the incoming administration would access agencies after the election, and another agreement on security clearance requests for transition team members who needed to access classified information.

Mattingley said while the transparency in transition planning is critical, teams may want to use their own IT systems and office space, rather than accepting the government’s options. But because the GSA agreement is tied to other financial and reporting requirements, the public loses out on information about the transition process when it’s not signed, she explained.

“By not accepting those services, all of a sudden, those transparency mechanisms don’t happen,” Mattingley said. “We’re certainly seeing a changeover in those particular types of processes.”

A solution, according to the Partnership’s report, may involve changing the structure of the agency agreements, and adding updates to the Presidential Transition Act — the law that sets most standards for presidential transition planning.

Specifically, the Partnership recommended separating the agreements on office space, equipment and IT systems, splitting those from agreements on financial and ethical reporting requirements. The change would compel teams to provide transparency on their transition planning while not requiring their use of government resources or office space.

Technology modernization and the changing nature of the workplace are creating further questions around what types of resources transition teams truly need from agencies.

“Transition officials still say a physical location supports important collaboration, as well as communication with agency and congressional officials,” the Partnership wrote. “But as demonstrated by the significant transition work done virtually in 2020 and 2024, widespread embrace of hybrid work means that physical space matters less than it once did.”

The Partnership suggested eliminating the requirement for GSA-provided office space — which is funded by taxpayers, even if unused — and instead offering some level of funding for transition teams to use their preferred office space.

“Many things that we do in government were built up around norms, just ways of doing business that weren’t actually statutory,” Mattingley said. “But once norms are broken, my biggest concern is that it’s really hard to go back to adhering to a norm, unless we put a new statute, rule or some sort of guardrail in place.”

“I do think we’re going to have to watch out for how campaigns and candidates think about approaching the transition going forward,” she added.

The post Trump’s departure from presidential transition norms highlights need for reform first appeared on Federal News Network.

Democratic lawmakers say agencies aren’t reinstating as many federal employees as they should be, as part of a recent spending deal that ended the longest government shutdown.

Employees who received reduction in force (RIF) notices before the government shutdown, but were on track to be officially separated from their agencies during the shutdown, say layoff protections included in the Nov. 12 continuing resolution mean they should get their jobs back.

Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct 1 and Nov. 12. Agencies told a federal court last week that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees.

The continuing resolution Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an Executive Agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is leading the push for more RIF rescissions, along with several of his Democratic colleagues.

Kaine was one of eight Democratic senators who broke ranks to pass the stopgap spending bill, only after Republicans agreed to include language that would protect federal employees from layoffs at least through Jan. 30, 2026. Kaine and his colleagues backed standalone legislation during the shutdown that would have also barred the Trump administration from moving ahead with its most recent wave of mass layoffs.

Kaine, along with Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), told Small Business Agency Administrator Kelly Loeffler that the agency is “unlawfully pursuing reductions in force,” and that dozens of recently laid-off employees the agency hasn’t reinstated “have a right to continue their employment.”

Federal News Network first reported last week that SBA told 77 recently laid-off employees this week that they could get their jobs back, but rescinded that offer a day later. An SBA spokesperson said in a statement that the agency “has determined that the most recent continuing resolution signed into law does not apply to any RIFs executed by the SBA.”

The senators said the continuing resolution — particularly Section 120 of the stopgap bill — placed a moratorium on RIFs involving federal employees, and that the “moratorium is broad, clear and unequivocal.”

“Consequently, SBA is without authority to maintain any RIFs that occurred during the lapse in appropriations or to initiate or otherwise carry out any new or previously noticed RIFs,” the senators wrote in a Nov. 20 letter.

The senators are directing SBA to reinstate the SBA employees and “return them to working status with full back pay.” The letter gives SBA until this Friday to comply with their request and provide an update to their offices.

House Small Business Committee Ranking Member Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) also sent a letter to SBA, expressing “serious concern” over the agency’s back-and-forth announcements about RIF rescissions.

Velázquez told Loeffler that “there was no justification for the change,” and that “you have deliberately sought to harm federal employees, who have dedicated their careers to helping entrepreneurs launch and grow their small businesses.”

“The erratic, cruel, and callous manner in which you handled this matter is unacceptable,” she wrote. “The law is clear, and SBA must restore these employees to their positions with back pay, effective immediately.”

Recently laid-off employees at the General Services Administration are calling on the agency to rescind their RIF notices, citing language in the recently passed continuing resolution. The American Foreign Service Association is urging the State Department to reverse RIF notices that went out this summer and took effect during the shutdown.

Recently RIF-ed Justice Department employees are also seeking reinstatement.

A former DOJ employee said about 30 recently laid-off staff from the agency’s Community Relations Service, Office for Access to Justice and the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces are also seeking reinstatement. These are all offices DOJ is seeking to eliminate or consolidate, as part of its agency reorganization plans.

The recently separated employee, who worked for the Community Relations Service, said it’s clear lawmakers meant to cover as many federal employees as possible in the layoff protections.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The former DOJ employee said several individuals seeking reinstatement have appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The former employee, however, said some have not pursued an MSPB appeal because of the cost and the long wait to receive a ruling from the board.

Others are hopeful that a federal lawsuit in Boston challenging the DOJ’s reorganization plans could eventually lead to reinstatement. The lawsuit is challenging the department’s plans to eliminate the Community Relations Service.

On Monday, members of the Congressional Equality Caucus wrote that, without CRS, DOJ would be too understaffed to handle a rise in reported hate crimes in the U.S.

“With these changes, CRS would be unable to perform its statutorily required functions with just one staff member. The dismantling of CRS is not only unlawful, it is also particularly concerning given the rise in community unrest, where CRS’s peacebuilding and mediation services would play a vital role.”

The post Lawmakers say agencies aren’t reinstating enough laid-off employees under shutdown-ending deal first appeared on Federal News Network.

More federal employees who received layoff notices just before the government shutdown are looking to get their jobs back, on the grounds that Congress intended to reinstate them.

Recently laid-off employees at the General Services Administration are calling on the agency to rescind their reduction in force (RIF) notices, citing language in the recently passed continuing resolution that directed agencies to rescind the RIFs.

Attorneys at Gilbert Employment Law, in a letter sent to GSA’s leadership on Wednesday, said their clients, 35 GSA employees who were formally separated from the agency on Oct. 6, should be reinstated.

The GSA employees received their RIF notices on Sept. 24.

The continuing resolution gave agencies until Nov. 18 to notify eligible employees that their RIF notices were being rescinded.

According to the letter, GSA has not sent any RIF rescission notices to the 35 GSA employees, “and has instead taken the position that they will not be reinstated.”

“This is a violation of the statute,” the attorneys wrote.

Guidance from the Office of Personnel Management directed agencies to reinstate employees “affected by a RIF notice issued between October 1, 2025 and November 12, 2025.”

“The clear intent of the Act was to reverse all RIF actions — including separations — taken during the shutdown, not just the issuance of RIF notices,” the attorneys wrote.

Federal News Network has reached out to GSA for comment.

Soon after Congress passed a spending bill last week to end the government shutdown, agencies and unions took a closer look at language ordering agencies to put some layoff notices on hold until the end of January 2026.

The spending deal that Congress passed on Nov. 12 to end the government shutdown states that, “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an executive agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.”

The Small Business Administration told dozens of recently laid-off employees this week that they could get their jobs back, but rescinded that offer a day later.

SBA sent RIF notices to 77 employees on Sept. 29, just before the government shutdown.

An SBA spokesperson told Federal News Network on Tuesday that the agency “has determined that the most recent continuing resolution signed into law does not apply to any RIFs executed by the SBA.”

“Therefore, the RIF in question, affecting 77 positions, remains,” the spokesperson said.

Federal News Network spoke with three SBA employees whose RIFs were briefly rescinded.

The employees said attorneys with the American Federation of Government Employees argued that SBA’s RIF notices were covered by the continuing resolution and should be rescinded, because the separation date for employees falls between Oct. 1 and Jan. 30.

One employee said they were told by their supervisor to still come into work on Wednesday, even though SBA’s most recent message told them the RIF notices were still in effect.

“There still seemed to be confusion,” the employee said.

Other unions are also making the case for reinstatement.

The American Foreign Service Association said last week that its interpretation of the spending deal passed by Congress would block the State Department from moving forward with layoff notices it sent to more than 1,300 employees this summer.

“The shutdown just ended for now, but there were a ton of RIFs that happened during the shutdown,” AFGE General Counsel Thomas Dargon told AFSA members in a virtual meeting Thursday. “AFGE filed a lawsuit over that, and we’ve just been hard at work trying to fight back where we can in the courts.”

The spending package passed by Congress states that between the date of enactment and Jan. 30, 2026, “no federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department, agency or office of the federal government.”

“We understand that Congress intended for this language to apply to as many federal employees as possible, including those who received layoff notices from the State Department on July 11,” AFSA wrote.

AFSA wrote in a follow-up post that it is awaiting details “on how the continuing resolution will be implemented and what it means for Foreign Service members affected by the July layoffs at State.”

The post Laid-off GSA employees push for reinstatement, citing RIF protections in shutdown-ending deal first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript:

 

Terry Gerton A lot has happened over the last few weeks and as people in the contracting world get back to their desks and start things back up again, they’ve got a lot to touch base on. Just before the shutdown we had the publishing of the FAR overhaul and defense has come out with a lot of new priorities. How can people start to put all these pieces together and make sure they’re working with the whole picture?

Emily Murphy It’s a really complicated picture right now. I want to go back and say — GSA, DoD, NASA, OFPP did an incredible job in getting that FAR overhaul done and published. And they even got the updated FAR companion out during the shutdown, which I know has to have been a struggle. So they did a wonderful job with it. USDA, Department of Homeland Security, and GSA have all adopted the entire new set of standard deviations. That means, however, that no other agency has. So if you’re a contracting officer right now or you’re a contractor, there’s not a standard set of rules you can go to. You have to be looking at which deviations did this agency adopt? How does that interface with what contract vehicle I’m using? And what about this other policy that’s happening over at the Department of War? There’s not a clear one-size-fits-all answer to the problem anymore. If you think of GSA, for example, assisted acquisition has always said that they follow the rules of the funding agency. So, money and requirements coming into GSA’s assisted acquisition service, they’re going to follow that agency’s money and the rules that come with it. Well, that might mean that they’re adopting, if it’s coming in from Department of Energy, one set of rules; Department of War, another set of rules. If it’s coming in from the SBA, it might be a third set of rules. So I keep thinking that if I’m an 1102 right now, a contracting officer, I want more monitors. Because I’m going to have to have so many different versions of rules and guidance up until we can make it through this. I think the standardization is going to come, but I think it’s going to be a really tough few months — as the new rulemaking takes effect  as more and more agencies adopt those standard deviations, and as we get more clarity on what the Department of War’s new announcement from the 7th of December actually means in the application, so that we know what to expect with those contracts.

Terry Gerton How much more complicated does the continuing resolution make it? Because now some agencies have full-year appropriations. We have a CR in place for others through the 30th of January. And on top of that, we have all these new rules that you’re talking about.

Emily Murphy So if one thing contracting officers are used to dealing with and contractors are very used to dealing with, it’s CRs. I don’t think that that’s going to be the hard thing. It does slow down new starts for the agencies that have a continuing resolution. For the agencies that actually have their appropriations, it means that they can get started. It actually may help balance the workload out a little bit, because you can start the new starts for agencies that have the authority while you’re still working on the continuing resolution and continuing the existing contracts for all the other agencies. But the sort of mosaic of rules and regulations out there is going to make things tougher … it’s one more complication thrown into the mix. And the irony is that this is all really intended to make things simpler, faster, cheaper, better. And I think ultimately it will, but it’s going to be a little bit painful for the next couple months.

Terry Gerton Well, speaking of simpler, faster, better, cheaper, what’s the perspective of contractors? We’re talking first about the contracting workforce, but contractors and especially small business organizations who might not have a big contracting shop to help them navigate all of this. What should they be looking at and thinking about in this new, sort of interim period?

Emily Murphy So they need to be really carefully looking at not just their contracts, but the agencies they’re doing business with and seeing where the changes are coming. For example, if you’re an 8(a) firm, you need to be looking at the new competition rules that are in part 19. If you’re a service-disabled veteran or a woman-owned small business or hub zone company, it’s opening up the realm of what you can compete for, because things that were previously in the 8(a) program are now available if an agency chooses to take them and compete them amongst those other socioeconomic categories, they can. That’s just looking at the small business programs. They also need to be looking at the clauses. Right now, their contracts probably have the old clause matrix in them. Part 12 reduced for commercial type contracting, reduced the number of clauses by about 30%. Which clauses are changing? Which ones can they get, and what does that transition look like for them? What can they stop doing? And what do they have to change how they’ve been approaching? And it’s going to be a sort of a contract-by-contract answer. Someone’s going to deal with their flow-downs. And then we’re also hearing — I think Jason Miller, your colleague, reported on it — that there’s going to be maybe some changes to how IT value-added resellers are being treated. So that’s not even in the current regulations, but it’s something that’s sort of looming out there over the community that they that they’re going to need to be paying a lot of attention to, because limitation on subcontracting is becoming more important. Compliance with contracting terms, frankly even the move towards OTAs and CSOs and all sorts of alternative contracting, they’re going to have to become masters at a whole other set of contracting options — or award options, I should say, not even contracting options at that point.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Emily Murphy. She’s former administrator of the General Services Administration and senior fellow at the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University. Emily, along with all of these changes, you’ve been a strong advocate for training of 1102s. But with all of this happening, and we have Secretary Hegseth announcing a complete shift in focus for DAU, now the Warfighting Acquisition University, what do you see as key to keeping 1102s current and keeping their mindset focused on these new ways of doing business?

Emily Murphy So we’re giving the 1102s, the contracting community, a lot of new tools. I mean, you’re seeing GSAI, the Department of War is rolling out new tools as well. Everyone’s got new tools. We’ve got new regulations, we’ve got new authorities. What I haven’t seen is anyone budgeting for the time to train the workforce on how to use these and how to use them properly. There are some very powerful tools out there and very powerful changes in the regulations themselves that give that workforce a lot more authority. But you’ve got a realignment of who the your contracting officers are going to be reporting to within the Department of War, so that they’re going to be reporting instead of up into a contracting organization, they’re going to be aligned with the program instead. At least that’s what’s been stated. We haven’t seen the reassignments happen yet. So how is that going to change day-to-day business? Who’s taking the time to sit down and explain you can now do a simplified acquisition procedure for commercial items up to $9 million? What does that look like? How do I do it? How do I do it well? If I still have to get a senior-level approval for an award above — and choose your threshold because it varies from agency to agency — $100,000, $50,000, $250,000, $1 million, what advantage is there to these new simplified tools that I’ve got if everything’s still going to go through an enhanced level of review that’s imposed at the agency level? How does that play itself out? And where should I be spending my time and prioritizing to get that best deal? There’s so much more data. How do I use it? How do I make sure that it doesn’t create a conflict of interest, also? If I’m educating an AI model, how do I make sure I’m educating it appropriately and then using it in a way that it doesn’t create its own organizational conflict of interest or its own problems with inherently governmental? How do I make sure it’s not hallucinating?

Terry Gerton Who should be thinking about that training and who should be funding it since so many of these changes are centrally driven?

Emily Murphy  I know that GSA has been thinking about this. Clearly the Department of War, with the rebranding and renaming of the BAU to WAU, is thinking about training. The problem is time. You’ve got a workforce that has been under enormous pressure to get things out the door. And training isn’t something that happens … they lost over 40 days, they lost over six weeks of opportunity that they couldn’t go and take that training. And there is a backlog of work. Training, unfortunately, gets frequently put on the back burner at that point when it needs to be prioritized first so that you’ve got the ability to actually execute better on what’s waiting on your desk. But that’s easy to say. It’s a lot harder to do when your desk is overflowing with work.

Terry Gerton Contracting shops are a lot leaner after all the DRPs and downsizing. We’ve got lots of new confusing rules. Do you anticipate that this is going to pose a problem in terms of oversight and then potentially protests as this plays out?

Emily Murphy I think it is. I think it’s interesting. I heard the other day that it’s about 25% of the acquisition workforce that’s gone. I couldn’t point to the source of that statistic, but that’s a substantial reduction at a time when we’re not seeing a reduction in contracting actions or in spending. And when you’ve got different rules and different interpretations of those rules and guidance that can be changed regularly, that doesn’t have the same effect as a actual regulation, it leaves open the possibility that contracting officers or program offices or others can be interpreting things in different ways. And a difference of interpretation is ripe for oversight. And I don’t mean that in a in a negative way; that oversight can actually help highlight where you’ve got discrepancies if it’s done appropriately. It can also, though, turn into a game of “gotcha.” And for a workforce that’s already stretched pretty thin, playing “gotcha” with them just doesn’t seem very fair right now.

The post Now that the shutdown is over, contracting officers have a lot to catch up on first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript: 

Eric White Let’s start from the FAR overhaul perspective. They were able to get that out right before the shutdown occurred. I wanted to see what your initial thoughts were and what you’re hearing from industry folks who are going to have to comply with these new rules.

Emily Murphy So it’s really interesting, very last minute, obviously they got everything out, they wanted to meet that deadline. And I’ve got to commend the folks at OFPP, GSA, NASA, DoD, who all got that out and they worked really hard to get that out so that it would be out there before, frankly, many of them ended up getting furloughed. They got Part 15 out, Part 16 out, so they’ve got a lot of stuff out at the very last minute, and there’s a lot there to still digest. Part 16, which is type of contracts, was really interesting because it created BPAs against GWACs, which was something we haven’t seen before. Lots of sections came out with even just PDFs, and they’ve now been updated to include the actual downloadable, the actual text. But there was a lot there. One thing that contractors should be paying attention to right now is that even though these have all gone out, if you go to the Revolutionary Far Overhaul site, you’ll see that not all of them have been adopted at every agency. And so that’s something that you should be very, very aware of, depending on where they’re contracting. So, some of the deviations have only been adopted by two, three agencies. Others have more than 30 agencies that have adopted them. But when you consider how many agencies there are, that still isn’t a very large number, and so it becomes a question of, are the agencies considering these to be just adopted by, in absence of them taking any action, is it that they are still thinking through the deviations, they need to do some additional modifications to a deviation they would be doing, because these were model deviations, they were not agency-specific deviations. And then, this was the FAR Council putting these out with the intention of doing it as a deviation that agencies could adopt and start implementing right away as they started an official rule making process. And the expectation was that official rule making would start sometime mid-November. Now, I don’t know if that’s gotten slowed down by the shutdown or not. But it raises a lot of questions. You still can go on to the acquisition.gov website and give informal comments. And I would suggest anyone who’s thinking of doing so do that, but then start coming up with what they want their real comments, their official comments to be on those rules. What did the FAR Council get right? And then, where are there areas that need changes, that need some adjustments? And I trace it with both, because frequently, at least back in the days when I was actually working on the FAR Council stuff in the Bush administration, we would frequently get comments back from people only about what they disliked. They wouldn’t tell us what was good. And when you don’t tell agencies what is good, they may actually get rid of what it was that you liked in the FAR changes because they’re not hearing people step up and say, that was a good change, that’s going to make things better, please keep that. If all they hear from is people saying we don’t like anything, you never know what’s going to then survive that comment period. So it’s very important to comment, not just on what you think needs to be changed, but also on what needs to be retained.

Eric White I think any Amazon reviewer will cite the same experience if they have that. They only tell me what they don’t like. They titled it the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul. Is that, I want to get your opinion, is that an inappropriate title? Is this really revolutionary or is this a bit of labeling that we’ve seen from the Trump administration in the past?

Emily Murphy I’m not sure that they could be truly and utterly revolutionary in terms, because there were statutory constraints, but they did about everything they could within that statutory framework. They got rid of a third of the clauses that affect commercial contracting. They got rid of the reps and certs, lots of them, and it’s going to be much easier to register as a federal contractor going forward. The commercial type contracting, they broke it down into commercial type contracting for under simplified procedures versus non-commercial, so we’re dividing the world there. It’s the only place where we saw new regulations coming in. Part 15 got rid of the old discussions and replaced it with negotiations. There is a lot of change. Part 8, taking the schedules ordering procedures out of the FAR and putting them back into the GSA Acquisition Regulations, that’s pretty revolutionary. So there’s a lot in there that is very much worth noting and is going to change how agencies operate and how vendors have to comply. It should streamline things, it should speed things up. It really does push decision-making down to the lowest level possible. And it will be interesting to see, since the FAR Council noted on the website that things that require a statutory or regulatory statutory changes or changes to executive order would be addressed with the second round of this, with the official rule making. So whether there’s even more up their sleeve, if there’s going to be more that happens. But I think that they did a lot to make this fairly momentous and they did it really fast. You remember the last time they tried to rewrite Part 15, it took years. They did it this over the course of a summer while they did every other part of the FAR as well.

Eric White We’re speaking with Emily Murphy, former GSA administrator and senior fellow at George Mason University Baroni Center for Government Contracting. Let’s get to the vendors themselves. Shutdown is still ongoing, as of this recording. What are you hearing and seeing from those vendors that have long-term contracts that are coming to a close, or they’re going to need some help operating in this new FAR environment and they may not have the necessary guidance that they could use at a time like this?

Emily Murphy So the first thing I’d say to companies that are operating, have a contract that’s about to lapse, read your contract, make sure you know what’s in it. Most contracts have a provision in there — it’s usually in 52.217, sometimes dash eight, sometimes dash nine — on how to extend that work. Make sure you know which clause you have or what clauses you have, what options are there. I’m hearing some talks about taking a no-cost extension. And that’s a decision agencies and vendors are going to have to make. But the vendors should be aware of when they do that, they’re performing at risk. That there is a good chance that they may not ever have that option exercise. They may not have that ability to get reimbursed for that. They certainly won’t get reimbursed for a no-cost extension, but they may not have something happen once the government shutdown is over. So it’s got to be a business decision they’re making at that point in time. But ultimately, know what’s in your contract, know to the greatest extent possible who it is you’re dealing with at the agency, what set of rules they’re following at this point in time, and have options in a strategy you’re willing to propose to the government to make it easier for them, because whether we’re back from the shutdown by the time this airs or we’re still on a shutdown, you’ve got a very small workforce dealing with a lot of work. And the easier you can make it for them, the better it’s going to be.

Eric White We’ve seen these shutdowns now popping up every couple of years or so, usually right around this time of year. Do you see any adjustments coming down the pipeline by vendors of putting provisions into contracts or taking necessary precautions, maybe waiting until they are messing with the extensions or deadlines before they hear whether or not there is going to be one or not? Especially, like I said, around this time of year when shutdowns seem to occur.

Emily Murphy Well, the last major shutdown that happened happened December of 2018, and it went through January of 2019, so it was the 35-day shutdown, it was the longest shutdown we’ve ever had. So while in the past it was fairly, you thought right after the fiscal year there being a risk of shutdown, the fact that it was a long shutdown that didn’t start until just before Christmas, I remember because I was at GSA at the time and people had gone home for the holiday before the shutdown happened. That made it a tough time. There’s never a good time for a shutdown, so I shouldn’t say that, but that was a tough time for people to be shutdown on Christmas. I don’t know that they’re trying to time a shutdown. It’s sort of reading tea leaves or trying to do some fortune telling. I think that smart companies, though, are planning to know that government shutdowns do happen and they have a plan for their workforce when that’s going to happen, whether it’s mandatory training that they need their employees to be taking, to maintain certifications, to comply with a government requirement, whether its the upskilling of that workforce, whether it’s working on strategic planning documents or other things, they’ve thought about how they’re going to use their workforce if the workforce isn’t able to show up. We talk a lot about what’s going to happen to federal employees and will they be paid for the work for this time that they have been furloughed. The contractors don’t get paid, and good contractors try to do everything in their power to keep paying their employees, but they’re never going to be made whole for that. And there’s a limit to how long a small business and midsize business can continue to pay people to not work. And we need to be very aware that this hits the industrial base, not just the federal employee base, and that both sides of this are feeling a lot of tension right now and a lot stress.

Eric White Wanted to finish up here by getting your thoughts on the East Wing renovation happening at the White House. People were obviously going back and forth about the actual move itself, but people like you and I were probably thinking, huh, I wonder how that contract was structured. What are your thoughts, and who do you think was handling it? We’ve got really three choices, the Executive Office of the President, GSA, your former camp, or even the Park Service, as the White Houses i actually designated as a national park.

Emily Murphy It is, and what’s interesting is when I was the GSA administrator, we were looking at doing renovations in the West Wing and that very much would have been a GSA contract. It would have in the Public Building Service doing that work. The East Wing, though, probably it’s going to fall into either the National Park Service or the [Executive] Office of the President that would be doing that work. It’s not a GSA building once you hit the East Wing. It’s fascinating when you look at the White House complex. There is an agreement that tells you down to what brick along the sidewalk is managed by GSA versus by Interior versus whoever else and who’s got responsibility for what. East Wing would definitely be either the, what they call room one or would be a National Park Service.

Eric White And when a private donor enters the picture, I imagine that that can add some complications to the paperwork, as you shake in your head now for those of us not watching on video. What does that entail, and did you ever have any experience with a private donor paying for something that the government usually does?

Emily Murphy I never had that experience at GSA. When I was at SBA, SBA had a lot of gift authority and we did occasionally get sponsorships or things along those lines that would come into play. It will allow them to go a lot faster because they’ve got private funds. But my recollection is that when they did the renovation at the White House years ago under Jackie Kennedy, that that was also funded a lot through private donations. And so there is precedent for private donations going in and assisting with paying for these things. And it’ll be interesting to see when the contract details come out, and I’m sure they will, how it’s all been structured and how it’s proceeding. And you look forward to getting a chance to look through those documents someday.

The post When the FAR gets a revolutionary overhaul and the government shuts down, who’s reading the fine print? first appeared on Federal News Network.

Following the longest shutdown in U.S. history, the federal workforce is now trying to get back to at least some sense of normalcy.

While federal employees who have been furloughed for the last 43 days return to work Thursday, the Office of Personnel Management is setting expectations for agencies as they begin to update pay, leave and benefits for those impacted by the lapse in appropriations.

In new guidance, OPM said it is “is committed to ensuring that retroactive pay is provided as soon as possible.” Compensation will be provided for both furloughed and excepted federal employees, as the spending agreement that was enacted Wednesday evening reaffirmed. A 2019 law previously called for retroactive compensation for all federal employees impacted by a shutdown.

A senior Trump administration official said the White House “has urged agencies to get employee paychecks out expeditiously and accurately to not leave anyone waiting longer than necessary.”

But the timing of employees receiving their back pay varies, depending on what payroll provider an agency uses, and the different pay schedules across the federal workforce.

Sending out retroactive payments to employees involves working across agency HR offices, federal payroll providers and shared service centers. Agency HR offices, for instance, have to submit timecards for federal employees, which are then processed by the government’s various payroll providers.

According to the senior administration official, employees from the General Services Administration and OPM will be among the first to receive their retroactive paychecks, with an expected deposit date set for Saturday.

Employees at the departments of Veterans Affairs, Energy, and Health and Human Services, as well as civilian employees from the Defense Department, will receive their deposits shortly after that — this Sunday.

On Monday, affected employees from the departments of Education, State, Interior and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Social Security Administration and NASA, are all expected to receive their back pay.

Then on Wednesday, employees from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Treasury, Labor and Justice, along with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Small Business Administration, are projected to get their paychecks. The timing of the retroactive payments for feds was first reported by Semafor.

The National Finance Center, a payroll provider housed under the Agriculture Department, confirmed that employees at agencies using NFC’s services should expect a payroll deposit by the middle of next week.

“In order to provide backpay for employees as quickly as possible, the National Finance Center will be expediting pay processing for pay period 22 and backpay for pay periods 19 (October 1-4), 20 (October 5-18), and 21 (October 19-November 1),” USDA wrote in an all-staff email Wednesday evening, obtained by Federal News Network.

Federal News Network has reached out to several other federal payroll providers requesting details on the timeline for processing retroactive payments.

The National Treasury Employees Union urged immediate back pay for all federal employees who have been going without compensation for the last six weeks.

“This is an emergency for federal employees across the country, and they should not have to wait another minute longer for the paychecks they lost during the longest government shutdown in history,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said. “We call on all federal agencies to process the back pay immediately.”

In its new guidance, OPM also noted that to make payments as quickly as possible, payroll providers may need to “make some adjustments.” That could mean, for instance, that the initial retroactive payments employees receive might not reflect the exact calculations of their pay and leave hours.

“Payroll providers will work with agencies to make any necessary adjustments as soon as practicable,” OPM said.

Who receives back pay, and how much?

Furloughed employees will receive their “standard rate of pay” for the hours they would have worked if the government shutdown hadn’t occurred, OPM said in its guidance Wednesday evening.

But there are some exceptions to that. If a furloughed employee, for example, had been scheduled for overtime hours that would have occurred during the shutdown, OPM said they should be paid their premium rate for those hours.

Additionally, OPM said that allowances, differentials and other types of payments, like administratively uncontrollable overtime pay or law enforcement availability pay, should be paid as if the furloughed employee continued to work.

Although most employees impacted by the shutdown are ensured back pay, there are some smaller exceptions carved out where employees may not receive retroactive pay, OPM added.

If a furloughed employee was in a non-pay status before the shutdown began, for instance, then they are not entitled to receive back pay.

Excepted employees who were considered “absent without leave” (AWOL) — or in other words, took unapproved time off — will also not receive back pay for that time.

Guidance on leave, post-shutdown

Although excepted employees are not required to use paid leave for taking time off during the shutdown — and can instead enter a “furlough” period — there may still have been some instances where excepted employees took leave during the funding lapse, OPM wrote in its guidance.

In those cases, excepted employees who were approved to take paid leave during the shutdown will be charged for the hours from their leave bank, OPM said.

Agencies are also expected to begin adjusting leave accrual for furloughed employees. Now that the shutdown is over, furloughed employees should be placed in a “pay status” for the time they would have otherwise spent working during the funding lapse. That means accrual of annual and sick leave will be retroactively adjusted as if the employees were in a pay status, OPM said.

Excepted employees continued to accrue leave during the shutdown, which should be reflected in their leave banks, OPM said.

What happens to RIFs of federal employees?

On top of reaffirming back pay, the spending bill that was enacted Wednesday evening also rescinds the roughly 4,000 reductions in force that have occurred since Oct. 1. Federal employees will be temporarily protected from additional RIFs, at least until the end of January.

Agencies have five days to inform federal employees who received RIF notices in October that those actions are rescinded.

“Agencies should issue those notices and confirm to OPM the rescissions have been issued,” OPM’s guidance states.

At least 670,000 federal employees have been furloughed, and 730,000 employees have been working without pay during the shutdown. Agencies have been putting plans in the works to return all furloughed federal employees to their duties as of Thursday.

OPM also said agencies “may consider” providing flexibility for employees who might not be able to return to work immediately, such as by approving personal leave or adjusting individual work schedules.

The post Post-shutdown, here’s how soon federal employees can expect back pay first appeared on Federal News Network.