Feral Jundi

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Industry Talk: Obama Administration Steers Lucrative No-Bid Contract For Afghan Work To Dem Donor

Filed under: Afghanistan,Industry Talk — Tags: , , , , , , — Matt @ 12:10 AM

   How come this does not surprise me? For years, the media was slamming President Bush and his administration for this practice, and now here we have the Obama Administration doing the same thing? Didn’t President Obama run on a campaign saying he would not do this?

   Although I am not too shocked by this stuff, because as we can see within the last year, Obama has been highly dependent on contractors for his war effort. He needs us, as much as he needs his military, in order to make his war plans successful before elections come up.  Not to mention that if he wants to have a long term commitment in Haiti, then that is going to impact his plans for Afghanistan and Iraq as well. And guess who will make up the difference in the meantime?-Matt

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Obama Administration Steers Lucrative No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work to Dem Donor

January 25, 2010

By James Rosen

The Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a prominent Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids, Fox News has learned.

Sunday: U.S. Army soldiers patrol inside Pech Valley, Kunar province, in northeastern Afghanistan. Private consultants Checchi & Company won a no-bid contract from the Obama administration to ‘train the next generation of legal professionals’ in Afghanistan. (AP)

Despite President Obama’s long history of criticizing the Bush administration for “sweetheart deals” with favored contractors, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids, Fox News has learned.

The contract, awarded on Jan. 4 to Checchi & Company Consulting, Inc., a Washington-based firm owned by economist and Democratic donor Vincent V. Checchi, will pay the firm $24,673,427 to provide “rule of law stabilization services” in war-torn Afghanistan.

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Sunday, January 24, 2010

Haiti: The Growth Of Aid And The Decline Of Humanitarianism, From The Lancet

Filed under: Africa,Disaster Response,Haiti,Industry Talk — Tags: , , , , , , , — Matt @ 7:34 AM

   Boy, this is a big slam on aid organizations.  Bravo to the Lancet for having the courage to point this out, and especially during this time with the Haiti earthquake.  I am sure they will get all sorts of hate mail.  The truth hurts though, and these aid groups do the same things in places like Africa or war zones.

   So why is this on Feral Jundi?  Part of the reason is that there is no regulatory apparatus in place to keep these aid organizations in check. Where is the scrutiny, and why do we give them a free pass?  My industry is constantly getting the label as disaster capitalists, yet you never hear that kind of language used to describe aid organizations.

   And when it comes to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, security is pretty damn important. You can’t be happy or live in peace, when rebels or criminals are actively trying to kill you and your family for whatever reason.  You can’t eat, if rebels and criminals are stealing your food or destroying your farm lands.  It takes security forces to step up and be that sheep dog, in order for others to be able to eat and live in peace.  Yet my industry continues to get this treatment as if we are less than, or not needed. Pffffft. We put our life on the line to protect others, and that is our value in the world of disasters and wars. And to me, we are worth every penny spent.

   Finally, what really kills me about these aid organizations, is that they will scream until they are blue in the face on how immoral or unethical security contractors are, and yet they will contract the services of our industry so they can do their thing in countries like Africa, or in wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. Pure hypocrisy, and when you couple that, with this article written below, you start to realize that this is an industry that needs some attention. –Matt

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Haiti aid agency accused of rivalry tactics

By Andrew Jack in New York and David Blair and Benedict Mander in Port-au-Prince

The Financial Times

January 22 2010

A prominent British medical journal, The Lancet, has accused aid agencies operating in earthquake-ravaged Haiti of using “unsavoury” corporate tactics as they compete with each other to attract funding during a chaotic relief effort.

More than 500 relief agencies are operating in Haiti and the skies are filled with aircraft ferrying supplies to Port-au-Prince.

With 150 arrivals at the airport every day, immense quantities of material are piling up in hangars or on the taxi-ways.

But while flying supplies in to the stricken city has become relatively easy, getting them out to people is more challenging, a week and a half after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed an estimated 75,000 people.

In an editorial published on its website on Friday, The Lancet said the situation in Haiti remained “chaotic, devastating and anything but co-ordinated”. It accused agencies of “jostling for position” and needless competition for funds.

“Polluted by the internal power politics and the unsavoury characteristics seen in many big corporations, large aid agencies can be obsessed with raising money through their own appeal efforts,” The Lancet wrote.

One logistics specialist handling airport arrivals for Haiti said: “You should see the circus that has come to town.”

Aid workers in Haiti deny any suggestion of rivalry. “To say that there is something of a bad feeling among us is totally false – period,” said Louis Belanger, a spokesman for Oxfam. “This is a massive disaster and it takes time.”

Meanwhile, an 84-year-old woman was pulled alive by rescuers from under a wrecked building in Port-au-Prince yesterday, 10 days after the earthquake struck.

Story here.

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Growth of aid and the decline of humanitarianism

The Lancet

Picture the situation in Haiti: families living on top of sewage-contaminated rubbish dumps, with no reliable sources of food and water and virtually no access to health care. This scenario depicts the situation in Haiti before the earthquake that catapulted this impoverished and conflict-ridden country into the international headlines. Now the latest target of humanitarian relief, international organisations, national governments, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are rightly mobilising, but also jostling for position, each claiming that they are doing the most for earthquake survivors. Some agencies even claim that they are “spearheading” the relief effort. In fact, as we only too clearly see, the situation in Haiti is chaotic, devastating, and anything but coordinated.

(more…)

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Industry Talk: Xe Gets A Good Grade In Audit By DoS Inspector General’s Office

Filed under: Afghanistan,Industry Talk — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 8:06 AM

   Bravo to Xe and to all the hard working contractors out in the field that made this happen. It’s all about customer service and satisfaction, and applying Kaizen to all of your operations. If anything, the main things that the report hit on, was that the Bureau of Diplomatic Security just needs to continue insuring the company is being honest and providing a good service.  That to me shows that State wants to implement more quality control features into the process and they care about the services.  That is good.

    Like with building homes, you need to watch what the contractors are doing during the build process, and insure it is the product and service you asked for and paid for. That’s if you care about how your money was spent, or the quality of your home. It also let’s the contractors know that you actually care and are watching what they are doing.

   This isn’t rocket science, and this is purely a matter of demanding a quality product or service because you want the best value for the money spent. Government should be totally focused on that, because in this case, the service given, impacts DoS and the population’s lives in a war zone, the reputation and prominence of the DoS and US mission in Afghanistan, and the tax payer’s wallet. –Matt

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“In 2008, USTC conducted 2,730 personal protection missions in support of staff from the Department of State, including the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, USAID, and various Congressional delegations (see Table). In 2008, 257 (9.4 percent) of the missions were performed for USAID. During the entire time USTC has operated in Afghanistan, no one under USTC’s protection has been injured or killed, and there have been no incidents involving the use of deadly force. OIG observed personal protection missions and interviewed various representatives from the Department of State and USAID who regularly use USTC’s personal protective services. The representatives reported that USTC employees are professional, make them feel secure, and are respectful to both officials under chief of mission authority and their Afghan counterparts.”- Inspector General’s Office of DoS, recent performance audit for protective services for August 2009.

And………

  “I would like to pay special tribute to the brave and hard working personnel, RSOs and ARSOs, who have protected me and my missions in dangerous times. I would also like to acknowledge my respect for the men of DynCorp and Blackwater who ran my personal protection details in Iraq and Afghanistan. They performed with courage, judgment and restraint and one lost his leg in the process. Whatever opprobrium now attaches to others I owe all those gallant men—State Department and contractor employees–my gratitude and I am glad to have a public forum in which to express it.”-Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann, the former Ambassador to Afghanistan (2005-2007) had this to say at a congressional hearing.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Industry Talk: The Cost Of Compliance Is About To Increase

Filed under: Industry Talk — Tags: , , , , , , — Matt @ 7:02 AM

   Excellent.  The government/customer has every right in the world to demand accountability from the people they are contracting with.  This is like a large scale version of my Three Strikes Principle.  First you give them a warning to clean up their act, then if they don’t do that, then take a days pay or fine them, and if they still can’t get it right, then fire them.  Just pull the trigger and end the contract, because obviously the company could care less about providing a quality service. If the government does not have the courage to at least exercise their right as the customer in this deal, then of course they are going to continue to get screwed over. It’s the tax payer’s money you are playing with, the least you can do is actually care that it is wisely spent. –Matt

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The Cost of Compliance is About to Increase

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Defense Department has proposed a new regulation that they say is designed to improve the effectiveness of DoD oversight of contractor business systems – Defense is going to withhold funds on cost reimbursable (and other flexibly priced) contracts until contractors fix their inadequate business systems. The withholds begins at 10 percent and could go as high as 100 percent under certain circumstances (though the higher figure seems highly unlikely). Withholds affect cash flow and disrupting cash flow will certainly get contractors’ attention.

Over the next few days, we will provide analysis and comment on what this regulation portends for Defense contractors. To state that it will represent a very significant change in the way the Government does business is a huge understatement.

Currently, contractors bear no direct consequences for inadequate business systems. When deficiencies are identified, contractors are allowed time to fix those deficiencies. There is no perscribed timetable for effecting corrections nor does the Government withhold any billings until changes are made. After corrective actions are implemented, the Government (usually the auditor) has no prescribed timeframe for determining whether the actions have been effective in correcting the deficiencies. Many times, these deficiencies are “on the books” for years without any permanent resolution. Under the proposed regulations, there are very tight timetables for implementing corrective actions.

The propsed regulations set forth certain criteria for adequate business systems. Some are very objective while others are highly subjective. For example, there are 17 criteria for an adequate accounting system. One criteria is the system must be capable of segregating preproduction costs from production costs. This functionality is built in to most moden accounting software and is easy ot audit. It is basically a yes/no answer. However, other requirements are very subjective. One such subjective requirement is the contractor must conduct periodic monitoring of the system, as appropriate. What does that mean? How often is “periodic”? What is entailed in the term “monitoring”? What does the term “as appropriate” mean? These are very subjective elements and contractors are going to experience the vagaries of auditor judgement when the auditors come in to test for compliance with this standard.

The ten business systems covered by this new regulation include

• Accounting systems

• Estimating systems

• Purchasing systems

• Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS)

• Material Management and Accounting Systems (MMAS)

• Property management systems (Government property held by contractors)

Story here.

Full text of new regulations here.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Afghanistan: U.N. Embraces Private Military Contractors

Filed under: Afghanistan,Industry Talk,Nepal — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 8:33 AM

   Oh say it isn’t so? An actual article about the U.N. embracing Private Military Contractors? lol.  All I have to say is that I am flabbergasted.

   Now the rule of thumb here, is don’t be the typical customer and not care about what goes on with your contract or how it is written.  If you actually care about the quality of the product, then hold the company you are contracting with to the standard written in the contract.  It takes leadership, and I highly suggest using your powers of firing people or defaulting the contract, and get the service you want.  Don’t do like the State Department, and look the other way while a company does a completely crappy job or embarrasses them.  And don’t go cheap, because you get what you pay for in this industry–learn from everyone else’s mistakes and you will do well.

   As to the companies involved with providing these security services to the U.N., all eyes are on you. The media and myself will be all over you, if you screw it up.  If you apply Jundism to your contract, and just ensure that the U.N. gets good quality customer service and satisfaction, then you will do just fine.

  By the way, I hope the author of this article, and the U.N. for that matter, understands that more than likely they are not getting all Royal Gurkha Rifles.  They are probably getting Nepalese guards(former army and police), with maybe a few RGR’s mixed in. It would be like calling a bunch of U.S. mall guards, Green Berets. The Gurkha or RGR’s are Nepalese/British special forces, and it is disrespectful to those who really are Gurkha to confuse them with the regular guards. It’s a pet peeve of mine, because everyone that talks about the Gurkha usually have in mind the kick ass dudes that protect Madonna or the Sultan of Brunei, and that just isn’t the case. –Matt

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Lil John

U.N. embraces private military contractors

By Colum Lynch

Sunday, January 17, 2010

For years, the U.N.’s top peacekeepers have been among the world’s staunchest critics of private security contractors, often portraying them as unaccountable mercenaries.

Now they are clients.

As the U.N. prepares to expand its operations in Afghanistan, it is in talks with a British security firm to send in scores of additional Nepalese Gurkhas to the country to protect them.

The U.N.’s top security official, Gregory Starr, the former head of U.S. State Department Security, has also been advocating an increase in the use of private security firms in Pakistan, where U.N. relief workers have been the target of kidnappings and killings, according to U.N. officials.

The embrace of a private security contractor marks a shift for the United Nations, which has relied on governments to supply peacekeepers to protect U.N. staff. In Iraq, the U.N. used a contingent of Fijian peacekeepers for protection. But it has accelerated its move toward hired guns in Pakistan since the Taliban launched an October attack against a U.N. residence, killing five U.N. employees, including two Afghan security guards, and triggered the withdrawal of U.N. personnel from the country.

(more…)

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