Federal Acquisition Service

Some of the common criticisms against Agile Development--that it produces sloppy code, that documentation gets overlooked, that user development stories are cumbersome--are unfounded or the result of bad Agile implementations, a group of federal chief information officers said April 23.  "It's perfectly acceptable that you went down one path and now you need to change and refactor," said Mark Schwartz, CIO of USCIS.

Fees collected from the General Services Administration schedules program could fund new programs and offset losses elsewhere if the Industrial Funding Fee were opened up for broader uses, says the General Services Administration.The changes are part of the GSA Acquisition Manual rewrite project, under which the agency says all parts of the regulation are under review.  

As many as 77 General Services Administration conferences and award ceremonies are now under review by the agency's inspector general and Congress, said Committee Chair Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) during an Aug. 1 hearing before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Brian Miller, GSA's inspector general, said an audit of executive compensation is also underway. While Miller said he cannot yet verify Mica's numbers, Mica said his committee believes some $10 million in bonuses were awarded to GSA employees in the last two years.

Program managers for the General Service Administration's Enterprise Acquisition Solution submitted two requests for additional funding in 2011, each time warning that the program was coming close to running out of money.The system is meant to support an electronic workflow for pricing capture, evaluation, negotiation and award for GSA services schedules offers and modifications.