Multicultural Day and Bring Your Kid to Work

This has been a really fun week at my Agency. On Wednesday we had our Multicultural Day. Lots of people brought a dish to share, I brought my spicy meatballs which went over well. But this year I made a point of inviting the contractors that support my applications. They are diverse as well, and if we are celebrating diversity, they should be a part of it. I'm really glad I did too because the owner of one of the companies that supports me is from Taiwan. Her team brought pigs feet.

I promise you that if I lived until 100 I never thought that I would eat pigs feet. I tried it and it wasn't bad at all. Another team brought some Korean food, which I thought would be much more spicy than it was. Anyway, a good time was had by all, and my floor won in the food voting contest. I think that is 4 years in a row now. They might as well rename it the OIT food trophy.

The other really great thing this week was Bring Your Child to Work Day yesterday. This is a tough call because I don't want my kids to miss school, especially now when they are focusing on the testing and that stuff. I decided that this would be a good opportunity to take the middle child, you know, the one who never gets to do anything first. Well, he did this first, and he felt very special yesterday. He met with the Administrator of the Agency and several Associate Administrators. I let him use my key card, which amazed him. We went downtown to the USDA building and they had a terrific set-up on the patio. Each Agency was represented and everyone had something unique to offer. I think he really liked the bugs from ARS, and he liked the 5 pounds of fat from my Agency. He loved spinning the wheel and answering questions. It was a lot of fun for both him and me. Then we ate in the cafeteria in the South Building and caught up with a friend who used to work at my Agency and has since moved to the Department. But the thing he liked the most was the tour of the computer room, and within that, was when I mentioned that the floor is raised in case of a flood of water and when a colleague got a suction cup and lifted up a floor panel to show the floor.

It just goes to show you that you can never predict what is going to catch their attention. We both had a great time, and it was so nice to see all the Agencies really putting on a good show.

I still get jazzed for new software

I read an article today from FCW in which the software called Xtranormal is available to federal agencies for free. Oh man, I was so excited to read this because, as you know, I've been creating web-based training for years. Remember, I created a whole tutorial on how to build the FDPIR Household Certification Training. I know that I can do some cool stuff with this. I'll let you know when I have something to show you.

A Better BVA

A while back I wrote about how to conduct an objective Best Value Analysis. One of my friends quickly caught the flaw in my formula and called me on it. In that example, and in the real case that it was based on, all of the proposals were over the Independent Government Cost Estimate. But it breaks down if one or more proposals are under the IGCE.

I am working on another big round of proposals so it was time to consider this formula once again so that I don't have to try to figure out the process in the middle of proposal review. Thus below i will walk you through my new formula with the goal of making the award of a contract as transparent and fair as possible. But you might have to grab a cup of coffee because it is somewhat tedious.

First, you have to make sure that you are in a BVA type of solicitation. Your solicitation must include the language of "...price and non-price factors..." If you have that language then you are working on a best value award. I would recommend language similar to this in the solicitation:

Award will be made by using price and non-price factors. Those factors will be 70% based on technical merits and 30% based on price.

When we come out of the Technical Evaluation we will have something like this:

• Company - Technical Score
• ABC - 90
• DEF - 85
• GHI - 80
• JKL - 75
• MNO - 72

Then the cost side of the proposal is revealed and we learn how much each of these will cost:

• Company - Tech - Cost
• ABC - 90 - $500,000
• DEF - 85 - $420,000
• GHI - 80 - $385,000
• JKL - 75 - $370,000
• MNO - 72 - $280,000

The next step in the process is to identify the Price Factor score. For our purposes let's say the IGCE is $380,000. As you can see, 2 offerors are below the IGCE, so I have evolved the formula to accommodate. The first part remains the same:

If the proposed cost is higher than the IGCE:
1 ÷ ( Cost ÷ IGCE) = Price Factor

If the proposed cost is lower than the IGCE:
IGCE – Cost = x
IGCE + x = y
1 ÷ ( y ÷ IGCE) = Price Factor

• Company - Tech - Cost - Price Factor
• ABC - 90 - $500,000 - 76
• DEF - 85 - $420,000 - 90
• GHI - 80 - $385,000 - 99
• JKL - 75 - $370,000 - 97
• MNO - 72 - $280,000 - 79

So now let's integrate those Tech Scores and Price Factors to figure out the Composite Score and identify the best value to the government.

• Company - Formula - Calculations - Composite Score
• ABC - (90 x .7) + (76 x .3) = (63) + (22.8) = 85.8
• DEF - (85 x .7) + (90 x .3) = (59.5) + (27) = 86.5
• GHI - (80 x .7) + (99 x .3) = (56) + (29.7) = 85.7
• JKL - (75 x .7) + (97 x .3) = (52.5) + (29.1) = 81.6
• MNO - (72 x .7) + (79 x .3) = (50.4) + (23.7) = 74.1

As you can see, DEF would win in this scenario presenting the Best Value to the government.

What do you think?

Real Use of Prezi

I mentioned a while back that I saw a new presentation application in action and that it was awesome. Since then, I've built my own and delivered it a few times. It is concerning a correspondence management application that I developed. The first time I delivered it was to the all-hands meeting here in IT. Then I delivered it to the new Administrator of the Agency. Finally, last Wednesday I delivered it to the Control Correspondence Officers' quarterly meeting. It was well-received in each of those meetings. See for yourself. You'll miss the soundtrack that goes with it, but use your imagination.

Lessons Learned from the Shut-Down That Wasn't

Late Friday night Congress averted a lapse in appropriations that would have caused most of the federal government to shut down. The run-up to this event required careful planning and preparation. Below (in no particular order) are several items that are important to keep in mind if there is ever going to be another shut-down.

Verify a complete backup of the data for each system that you manage. A lot of times we have a full backup of the data either weekly or monthly depending on the amount of traffic in the system. That full back-up typically occurs on either Saturday night or Sunday night. Because parts may have been closed on Saturday or Sunday, I wanted to make sure that there was a very specific point in time in which I had a complete data back-up and would have fewer differentials to worry about. I asked for a manual backup and that was verified for me.

Next, if the Agency might be closed down for a week or two, be sure to cue up the most important things to work on upon your return. On one project we have a release in the pipeline, and on another we have an iteration. But in addition to all of this, we have a big patch Tuesday coming from Microsoft. I made sure to communicate these things to my development teams. Further on this issue was knowing how long the contractors can work without direct government oversight. Since all of my contracts are Firm Fixed Price and a lot of the development work actually occurs on the contractors' hardware, they can perform some work without me. I had these dates ready.

Update the call-down list. You must know the numbers for the people you are responsible for calling in situations and take the additional step of verifying your numbers with the people who are supposed to call you.

We have to work on our euphemisms a little more. We have one down, we don't use the phase, "laid off", we use "furlough". But we have these other terms that just don't sound good. We have "Non-essential Personnel" and "Excepted Personnel". We all understand the intent of these terms, but they are unfortunate. Nobody wants to be thought of as non-essential or non-excepted. We are all here to do our jobs and because everyone does his or her job the wheels of the government keep spinning. It doesn't matter if you are the lock-smith or the program analyst or a Project Manager. You are a part of the team and your part is just as essential as everyone else's.

Finally, make a plan for what you are going to do if you don't work. I actually had several things I intended to do in the event that we are closed. I just hate to be idle. Anyway, I'm glad we're not closed, because those projects are what weekends were made for.