Federal vendor with $50M in contracts leaves portal broken for a month

arionhardison

When this administration is gone I think we need to have a new class of systems that do not allow this type of incompetence. I have been working on this https://opm.dev/programs - its obviously not something that can get funding or will be a huge popular thing but it has been incredibly fun and i have gotten to learn a lot about Gov., agents EVAL's etc.. Note: This is one of 5 portals, same codebase mostly but the others are more developed and a few have some programs that have a 90+ % success rate. Note: Here https://big-sandy-usp.bop.doj.dev/program/66366-sick-call is a much more developed example program that has been completed 6 times by inmates at Big Sandy. Super proud of this since I was locked up w/ 2 of the guys and dont know the other 4.

TZubiri

I don't know how it is in the US, but in Argentina, if anyone thinks they can do better, they can compete in the public tender when this contract renews. And potentially, you can impugn the incumbent's offer alleging they have failed to comply with the contract and therefore they have demonstrated they don't have the capacity to comply with the requirements in the future. Fwiw, the US public tender process is probably 10 times better and more mature than the Argentina process, so I don't doubt this avenue and many more are available to compete.

TheJoeMan

The author was involved and knowledgeable in the FOIA processes that existed, and had an understanding of navigating a quagmire of redundant government employees. A cost-reducing restructuring has been going on that seems to funnel all requests to a single place, the "Federal FOIA Portal". Once they submitted to the portal, their request was confirmed as entered. They also had an issue with the new portal, submitted the error, and it was escalated and fixed. This article could just as well been written as "New FOIA Portal: Streamlined, but Still a Few Bumps".