The partial government shutdown at the start of the year has caused ripples in spending at the agencies affected. Agencies like the Department of Homeland Security have a surplus of funds before the end of the fiscal year, and have to start several short term acquisitions to utilize that money. Ray Bjorklund, president of BirchGrove Consulting, says that there are a few indicators of acquisition problems at agencies.
“Some of the things that I look at are the numbers of procurement cancellations, which is an indicator some turmoil. What I call churn in the procurement system. We also look at the use of LPTA, lowest price technically acceptable, types of procurement strategies, which indicate they are looking for very expedient solutions. Which is fine,” Bjorklund said. “It is fine under most cases, but sometimes there’s a misuse of that and ultimately because there’s a lot of reverse auctions associated with LPTA you end up getting a sub-optimal procurement solution.”
