During vendor switch, DHS reverts to an old system for posting future business opportunities

The Homeland Security Department is temporarily reverting to a system of forms to publish forecasted federal business opportunities on the Internet, after losing access to a data entry website.

The DHS Advance Acquisition Plan site, previously powered by a system called FIDO.gov, was akin to a calculated wish list of products and services valued at more than $100,000. The contract for the FIDO.gov system expired on Feb.28. A different vendor will launch an enhanced system in June, department officials said.

But until then, employees must submit short descriptions of contracting actions they expect to conduct over the next year on PDF forms, according to a March 8 memo. Federal agencies are required by law to publish planned contract opportunities for which small businesses are eligible, to help the companies tailor their marketing.

The old public site and internal database have been offline since Feb. 28. Fiscal 2011 information is still publicly accessible on a section of DHS.gov. The lapse in functionality apparently is due to a financial disagreement between FIDO.gov software provider DataCall Systems and the department.

Homeland Security officials said they requested a six-month purchase order from DataCall Systems to bridge the gap between contract periods, but the supplier rejected the request. DataCall Systems lead architect Bruce Troutman, however, said his firm offered to keep the system running for six months at a price that DHS refused to accept. For two and a half years, DHS had been paying $1,022 a month for FIDO.gov services, Troutman said. The company offered to continue services at its current government rate of $2,999 a month and DHS declined, he said.

The FIDO.gov system, which the Commerce Department currently uses for its plans, let DHS program office employees easily update data regarding expected project requirements, solicitation release dates, points of contact, award dollar ranges and other purchase details, according to Troutman. "It was asking them: If everything goes right and the budget goes through what would you buy?" and they would enter, for example, "I would buy a boat . . . or we'll fix a building," he said, explaining the purpose of the tool. Troutman has since handed all the archived data over to DHS, he said.

Since its inception six years ago, more than 1.2 million people had visited the Homeland Security's FIDO.gov site to see agency plans accounting for $232 billion in anticipated funding, according to a message left on the now-defunct site.

DHS officials said the new system will be an improvement over the old operation but declined to describe the anticipated changes. For now, employees have been instructed to type the required details into boxes on a PDF template that was distributed along with the March 8 guidelines. They then can either print the form, or hit a "submit" button on the screen to transfer the data to a central repository managed by department headquarters, which then posts the information to the DHS.gov site. This is the process Homeland Security relied on shortly after the department was first established in 2003, DHS spokesman Larry Orluskie said.

"Temporary changes in procedures were made during the transition period to ensure compliance with policy and to maintain acquisition planning and forecasting information on DHS.gov," he said.

In February, a Homeland Security inspector general reported that personnel failed to properly document acquisition planning for fiscal 2010 contracts. There was no evidence staff had entered plans into FIDO.gov for 41 percent of the contracts sampled during an evaluation.

"The department needs to continue its emphasis on better planning and documenting its acquisitions and decision-making processes," wrote Anne Richards, assistant IG for audits. "Making sure each component's acquisition decisions are well-documented" will help "in ensuring that the goods and services acquired are the best value."