NITAAC Industry Advisory Council (IAC) Meeting

Thursday October 20, 2005

Bldg. 6100 Executive Blvd., Rockville, MD

Conference Room 6D01

10:00 A.M. – 12:30 P.M.

 

“Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.”                                             —  Albert Einstein

 

 

Attendees:

Diane Frasier, NIH, IAC Chair

Rusty Wall, CSC, IAC Co-Chair

Diane McLaughlin, BearingPoint

Victor Powers, Program Director, NITAAC

Millicent Manning, CO, NITAAC

Donald Wilson, CO, NITAAC

Wanda Russell, CO, NITAAC

Bruce Thorner, NITAAC Support, ASSYST

Joanne Connelly, President, Connelly-Works

A.J. Guenther, Connelly-Works

Belinda Coleman, Coleman Group

Beverly Bricker, CTS, NITAAC’s new Business Development, Communications,
    Outreach, and Education support contractor

 

IAC Agenda Items

 

1.        Report and discussion of various program activities within NITAAC

§         Task Order and Delivery Order Scope Review – as a part of NITAAC’s continuous program audit process, all tasks on all the contract vehicles are undergoing a periodic scope review. The GWAC scope review is customer-focused to assist customers and prime contractors in addressing ordering procedures and in identifying opportunities for improvement.  This review will assist NITAAC, customers, and prime contractors in ensuring that orders are within the scope of the GWACs.  The review included 35,823 orders on all contract vehicles. The final audit report is in progress by the MITRETEK audit staff and, while the major findings are not yet known, no major issues have been telegraphed by the auditor.  NITAAC intends to share the findings with the IAC to show that it has a well-managed program emphasizing procurement integrity and to ensure that customers and prime contractors work to address necessary corrections.

 

§         QA/Risk Management Plan – OMB has recently renewed NITAAC’s Executive Agent Status.  As a part of that redesignation, NITAAC just submitted to OMB its QA and Risk Management Plan.  OMB’s intention is to adopt a common QA/Risk Management Plan across all Four Executive Agencies holding GWACs.  OMB has also reinvigorated the Chief Acquisition Officer Council, on which Diane Frasier represents NIH, to address a common QA/Risk Management process across all the GWACs. Many of the following items listed below are a part of this new plan.

§         Training/Process Improvement – additionally, as a part of the Executive Agent renewal by OMB, NITAAC has vigorously renewed its training process and has adopted a plan to update training for its staff and current customers.  Additionally, a vigorous training program has been initiated for future customers in task and delivery order development and implementation to ensure maintenance of the necessary procurement integrity standards. 

§         Status of new EGOS – NITAAC expects to implement a new Electronic Government Ordering System automated process in January 2006 common to all three GWACs.  More to follow on this system.

§         Status of Enhancements to RFQ system – Bruce Thorner, from NITAAC, previewed the training being provided to all ECS III contractors in the next few weeks.  A reminder to all ECS III contractors to please respond to NITAAC and sign up for the on-site training if you haven’t done so already.
 

§         Contract Line Item Numbers (CLINs) Business Improvement Study –  Based on suggestions from prime contractors, specifically by the IAC subcommittee that met a few months ago, NITAAC is benchmarking to automate the CLIN process for ECS III and IW2nd. NITAAC is evaluating best practices used in industry and other GWACs to make the CLIN process more streamlined through automation.  NITAAC will be contacting prime contractors to discuss ideas and information on current successful systems and processes.  Mitretek Systems is assisting NITAAC with the study and process improvement effort.

 

§         Award of new NITAAC outreach contract and introduction of the new contractor, CTS – The new contract was awarded to Computer Technology Services, Inc. (CTS) in September 2005.  CTS is teamed with Connelly-Works and the Coleman Group to work with NITAAC and the Prime contractors to provide business development and outreach support. All prime contractors on NITAAC’s contracts should soon have the opportunity to assist in the partnership, outreach, and marketing efforts. 

This new effort is designed to increase the success of NITAAC’s programs and will enable the Primes to shoulder less of the marketing burden while highlighting NITAAC’s streamlined processes and successes.  The business development and communications outreach contract is planned to be a collaborative effort involving the Prime contractors, and their inputs will be aggressively sought by NITAAC and the CTS Team. 

CTS introduced their team and addressed their plans to make this partnership.  CTS plans to attend all IAC meetings and looks forward to meeting you and hearing your thoughts and ideas at our next IAC meeting.

 

2.        Report of Contract performance for the last FY and grand totals

§         CIO-SP2i – Wanda Russell briefed and announced 83 Orders last FY totaling $459M not including options—with options $1.2B. Grand total now is 411 orders - $4.8B

§         IW2nd – Donald Wilson briefed and announced new cumulative totals of  42 T.O.s valued at $16.3M - with options of $25M and a grand total of 541 D.O.s valued at $74M.  These are cumulative totals since award.

§         ECS-III – Millicent Manning briefed and the FY totals are 16,205 D.O.s valued at $234M – cumulative numbers on the contract are now 52,766 D.O.s valued at $1.066B.

 

3.        IAC Membership- Partnership – the current IAC membership from the contractor community was not well represented at this month’s IAC meeting and we solicit greater involvement at the November meeting.  This will be a major agenda item in November and your ideas and recommendations are welcome!  Diane Frasier personally expressed her desire to work closely with the IAC and to revive the partnership that has been so successful for NITAAC and its contractors.

 

4.        Open Discussion/New Agenda items for the next meeting - Your input is requested. Please propose any desired agenda items for our next meeting to Rusty Wall, rwall@csc.com or Victor Powers, powersv@od.nih.gov.

 

 

The next meeting is scheduled for:

Wednesday, November 16th

Building 6100, Conference Room 6D01

 

We look forward to seeing you.

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