November 17, 2005

PMA Scorecard shows eGov disappointments

OMB released the PMA Scorecard for September 30, 2005, and grades on e‑government have dropped for six agencies, as FCW reports here. Meanwhile, Transportation and Labor maintained their green status, and HHS and Treasury moved from yellow to green on…
November 15, 2005

Spending bill has stiff telework requirements

I see that Rep. Frank Wolf (R‑Va) has written some stiff penalties into a new spending bill for certain agencies to prove that their use of teleworkers is increasing. We at TCG have been advocates of teleworking for many years but…
October 18, 2005

Challenging Torvald: Specs Are the Language of Negotiation

According to an article in SYS-CON, Linus Torvald posted a message on the ‘net saying that specs don’t help in software development, that they are a needless level of abstraction. Torvald may be right when the developer is the client, creating a program…
October 14, 2005

Recycling business detritus

When in the course of business events it becomes necessary for one party to dispose of that which once seemed necessary, the question is always: What the heck do I do with all this stuff? It used to be easy to donate…
October 5, 2005

Better proposals — feedback from evaluators

Captureplanning.com has a great insight into what proposal evaluators are looking for, what they do not like to have to read through, and what type of information delivers the strongest proposal. There is a wide range of evaluator types included in the…
October 4, 2005

Small Business Report leaves questions

An article at FCW.com points out that the Small Business Administration may have overstated the percentage of federal contracts going to small businesses in a recently released report. An Aug. 25 SBA report states that the government awarded small businesses $69.2…
October 3, 2005

The Information Pioneers

Last week I attended the a reunion of the NSFnet crowd — lots of people whose names you probably don’t know (and a few whose names you’d recognize immediately, like Dave Farber), who 20 years ago developed the standards and the systems that…

What not to say in proposals — a quick list

What Not To Say In Proposals is a good resource for review prior to submitting a proposal. Since proposals are the final chapter in closing professional services and development projects, it never hurts to get advice and reminders of what might make…
September 30, 2005

Small businesses struggle to win business after Hurricane Katrina

With the need for emergency efforts and immediate response, small businesses fall short of providing their services in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, even though they want to be able to offer assistance and be part of the recovery. Why? …

Amendment could hurt small businesses

(Via VAR Business)  There is currently a proposed DOD pricing amendment that will require prime contractors engaged in time and materials contracts with federal agencies to pass through subcontractor rates for firms added to a program after contract award. Unfortunately this will…