7 ms·

My read is that the title here is a bit misleading. The article implies that the illegality is not outsourcing to India, but rather that the Indian contractor w

by abruzzi 11y ago

My read is that the title here is a bit misleading. The article implies that the illegality is not outsourcing to India, but rather that the Indian contractor was not approved to handle the data it indexed. Am I misreading this?

nindalf 11y ago
I think it would be cool if the clickbait title could be edited.
- hemantv 11y ago
  It would be great if you can remove India from title it make it clickbait. It could have been any country.
  - jedmeyers 11y ago
    It could have been but it was not any other country, so why have it removed?
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      Because we only read the titles nowadays.
  - xufi 11y ago
    I wish but gotta keep the outsourcing in there atleast give it a hint haha
tossaway1 11y ago
Well that and "the failure of Focused to adhere to a requirement that over 50 per cent of the labour hours of the contract be performed by individuals with disabilities"
Spooky23 11y ago
When you sign a contract to employ disabled people, and get a subsidy to do so, outsourcing to India is a contract violation.
ksherlock 11y ago
> Given the confidential nature of the information of the fingerprint cards, Focused was required to perform all of the work in New York and it could only use employees that had passed a criminal background check. It was also prohibited from subcontracting any of the work to any other entity. (Breaching your contract is only illegal (as opposed to a tort) when the other party is the government)
- brudgers 11y ago
  I am not a lawyer. The contractual terms probably reflected statutory or regulatory requirements...in my experience that's pretty much the case with all government contracts. It's a two way street, those statutes and regulations place obligations on the awarding party as well.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Not necessarily. In this case, the contract involved a vendor bidding with/through NYS Industries for the Disabled, which is a "preferred source" contractor that is supposed to employ disabled people to perform work. Typically this is light manufacturing work, although operating scanners for a purpose like this is also common. As a preferred source contractor, they have preference over any other competitor -- if you bid on the contract and offered to perform the services for $1, the preferred source vendor would win. The issue is that this is a serious fraud, not just a case of violating some contract term. I'm curious as to why the principles aren't facing criminal prosecution.
  - newjersey 11y ago
    > "To advance special social and economic goals, certain providers have preferred source status under the law. The acquisition of commodities and/or services from preferred sources is exempted from statutory competitive procurement requirements. All state agencies, political subdivisions and public benefit corporations (which includes most public authorities), are required to purchase approved products and services from preferred sources in accordance with the procedures and requirements described in the Preferred Source Guidelines. https://www.nyspro.ogs.ny.gov/content/buying-preferred-source-0 https://www.nyspro.ogs.ny.gov/content/buying-preferred-sourc... This is why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It seems to me that the people who should face criminal prosecution are the people who came up with this nonsense "preferred source" scheme.
Dylan16807 11y ago
I think you're right, but on the other hand I wouldn't mind for it to be a violation of something to subcontract work and resell it to the government with a 10x profit markup. 37% of the work for 2.4% of the price they charged, what a perfect example of the pitfalls of government contracts.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  It is at least for DoD contracting. If I remember correctly we weren't allowed to have a higher profit margin than about 13% or near that. That's why in the DoD contracting space there is a huge emphasis of butts-in-seata because that's the only way they make more money.
  - USNetizen 11y ago
    There is no limit on the profit a company may take, though on Cost-Plus contracts the government may explicitly state the profit margin a company is allowed based upon performance metrics. The government CAN, however, audit your books for DCAA compliance on T&M (time and materials) and Cost-Plus contracts to ensure what's being charged to them isn't overly inflated. On fixed-price contracts, however, companies can pull in 20-25% net margins sometimes. The average net margin on all contracts is between 8% and 12%. You can verify this by looking at the financials of the publicly traded contracting firms like Booz Allen and Leidos who are all in that 8% to 12% net margin range. There is no limit on these margins set by the government, however, just guidelines on what is "acceptable" to them to be included in your pricing (costs and profits passed on in the form of billed fully-loaded labor rates for hourly work). It's actually more profitable for companies to do contractor-facilities (remote) work on a fixed-price basis, contrary to what people outside of the industry think.
    - Amezarak 11y ago
      Can you provide more detail about this? I'm really curious, a defense contractor I know of is moving to a fixed-price contract and there's a lot of messaging about how they just won't be able to afford a lot of folks and so forth. It would be highly interesting to me if they came out of it with a higher profit margin. Anything I should look out for to determine if that's the case?
imjared 11y ago
The website's sidebar also has a headline that says "North Korea Nukes Washington" so take it with a grain of salt.
- esbranson 11y ago
  "New York State Contractor Is Said to Threaten Privacy of Millions With Outsourcing", New York Times, 24 March 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/nyregion/new-york-state-contractor-is-said-to-threaten-privacy-of-millions-with-outsourcing.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/nyregion/new-york-state-co...
- hga 11y ago
  But the DPRK did ... "in a new propaganda video", as the article itself says in its first sentence. An allowable fudge if you're going for short, albeit click-baity, article headlines.
  - make3 11y ago
    I think most people would disagree that this is behavior they would accept from a journal wishing to be taken as a serious / primary source of information
USNetizen 11y ago
Outsourcing outside the U.S. for federal contracts is typically illegal unless explicitly allowed by the Contracting Office most times, especially for defense work where all contractors must be U.S. citizens. Exceedingly rarely do federal agencies allow outsourcing outside of the U.S., both for security and political reasons. This mostly applies to services, but some products are also affected. The biggest exception to this, at times, is in the case of Overseas Contingency Operations such as in a warzone or other hostile areas where local contractors and companies might be used. However, there have been instances that bypass this in a sort of "gray area". For example, I knew a company that was outbid on a job by over $200k to convert 11,000 documents to web pages and re-design an entire series of agency websites. The government themselves acknowledged it would take about 3 full time people (developers) 9-12 months to do the work, but the winning bid for the whole thing was from an outsourcer who bid less than $60k total. The agency in question turned a blind eye to the minimum wage requirements for technical labor categories written directly into the contract. Had this been a larger procurement with more money at stake, it would have easily been overturned and resulted in legal action against both the agency and the winning bidder (the outsourcer). There is also the whole "buy American" thing written into most contracts nowadays, but which mostly applies to construction.
- kuschku 11y ago
  > There is also the whole "buy American" thing written into most contracts nowadays, but which mostly applies to construction. Interestingly, both TPP and TTIP make that illegal.
  - USNetizen 11y ago
    No, they don't. Not for federal contracts, which is governed by a whole different set of rules from the rest of commerce (the FAR vs. UCC).
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Wait, so we in Germany can't demand "buy all German" anymore, but the US can demand "buy all American"? Seriously, I feel like this deal is getting worse all the time.

by abruzzi 11y ago

nindalf 11y ago

I think it would be cool if the clickbait title could be edited.

hemantv 11y ago
It would be great if you can remove India from title it make it clickbait. It could have been any country.
- jedmeyers 11y ago
  It could have been but it was not any other country, so why have it removed?
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    Because we only read the titles nowadays.
- xufi 11y ago
  I wish but gotta keep the outsourcing in there atleast give it a hint haha

tossaway1 11y ago

Well that and "the failure of Focused to adhere to a requirement that over 50 per cent of the labour hours of the contract be performed by individuals with disabilities"

Spooky23 11y ago

When you sign a contract to employ disabled people, and get a subsidy to do so, outsourcing to India is a contract violation.

ksherlock 11y ago

> Given the confidential nature of the information of the fingerprint cards, Focused was required to perform all of the work in New York and it could only use employees that had passed a criminal background check. It was also prohibited from subcontracting any of the work to any other entity. (Breaching your contract is only illegal (as opposed to a tort) when the other party is the government)

brudgers 11y ago
I am not a lawyer. The contractual terms probably reflected statutory or regulatory requirements...in my experience that's pretty much the case with all government contracts. It's a two way street, those statutes and regulations place obligations on the awarding party as well.
Spooky23 11y ago
Not necessarily. In this case, the contract involved a vendor bidding with/through NYS Industries for the Disabled, which is a "preferred source" contractor that is supposed to employ disabled people to perform work. Typically this is light manufacturing work, although operating scanners for a purpose like this is also common. As a preferred source contractor, they have preference over any other competitor -- if you bid on the contract and offered to perform the services for $1, the preferred source vendor would win. The issue is that this is a serious fraud, not just a case of violating some contract term. I'm curious as to why the principles aren't facing criminal prosecution.
- newjersey 11y ago
  > "To advance special social and economic goals, certain providers have preferred source status under the law. The acquisition of commodities and/or services from preferred sources is exempted from statutory competitive procurement requirements. All state agencies, political subdivisions and public benefit corporations (which includes most public authorities), are required to purchase approved products and services from preferred sources in accordance with the procedures and requirements described in the Preferred Source Guidelines. https://www.nyspro.ogs.ny.gov/content/buying-preferred-source-0 https://www.nyspro.ogs.ny.gov/content/buying-preferred-sourc... This is why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It seems to me that the people who should face criminal prosecution are the people who came up with this nonsense "preferred source" scheme.

Dylan16807 11y ago

I think you're right, but on the other hand I wouldn't mind for it to be a violation of something to subcontract work and resell it to the government with a 10x profit markup. 37% of the work for 2.4% of the price they charged, what a perfect example of the pitfalls of government contracts.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago
It is at least for DoD contracting. If I remember correctly we weren't allowed to have a higher profit margin than about 13% or near that. That's why in the DoD contracting space there is a huge emphasis of butts-in-seata because that's the only way they make more money.
- USNetizen 11y ago
  There is no limit on the profit a company may take, though on Cost-Plus contracts the government may explicitly state the profit margin a company is allowed based upon performance metrics. The government CAN, however, audit your books for DCAA compliance on T&M (time and materials) and Cost-Plus contracts to ensure what's being charged to them isn't overly inflated. On fixed-price contracts, however, companies can pull in 20-25% net margins sometimes. The average net margin on all contracts is between 8% and 12%. You can verify this by looking at the financials of the publicly traded contracting firms like Booz Allen and Leidos who are all in that 8% to 12% net margin range. There is no limit on these margins set by the government, however, just guidelines on what is "acceptable" to them to be included in your pricing (costs and profits passed on in the form of billed fully-loaded labor rates for hourly work). It's actually more profitable for companies to do contractor-facilities (remote) work on a fixed-price basis, contrary to what people outside of the industry think.
  - Amezarak 11y ago
    Can you provide more detail about this? I'm really curious, a defense contractor I know of is moving to a fixed-price contract and there's a lot of messaging about how they just won't be able to afford a lot of folks and so forth. It would be highly interesting to me if they came out of it with a higher profit margin. Anything I should look out for to determine if that's the case?

imjared 11y ago

The website's sidebar also has a headline that says "North Korea Nukes Washington" so take it with a grain of salt.

esbranson 11y ago
"New York State Contractor Is Said to Threaten Privacy of Millions With Outsourcing", New York Times, 24 March 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/nyregion/new-york-state-contractor-is-said-to-threaten-privacy-of-millions-with-outsourcing.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/nyregion/new-york-state-co...
hga 11y ago
But the DPRK did ... "in a new propaganda video", as the article itself says in its first sentence. An allowable fudge if you're going for short, albeit click-baity, article headlines.
- make3 11y ago
  I think most people would disagree that this is behavior they would accept from a journal wishing to be taken as a serious / primary source of information

USNetizen 11y ago

Outsourcing outside the U.S. for federal contracts is typically illegal unless explicitly allowed by the Contracting Office most times, especially for defense work where all contractors must be U.S. citizens. Exceedingly rarely do federal agencies allow outsourcing outside of the U.S., both for security and political reasons. This mostly applies to services, but some products are also affected. The biggest exception to this, at times, is in the case of Overseas Contingency Operations such as in a warzone or other hostile areas where local contractors and companies might be used. However, there have been instances that bypass this in a sort of "gray area". For example, I knew a company that was outbid on a job by over $200k to convert 11,000 documents to web pages and re-design an entire series of agency websites. The government themselves acknowledged it would take about 3 full time people (developers) 9-12 months to do the work, but the winning bid for the whole thing was from an outsourcer who bid less than $60k total. The agency in question turned a blind eye to the minimum wage requirements for technical labor categories written directly into the contract. Had this been a larger procurement with more money at stake, it would have easily been overturned and resulted in legal action against both the agency and the winning bidder (the outsourcer). There is also the whole "buy American" thing written into most contracts nowadays, but which mostly applies to construction.

kuschku 11y ago
> There is also the whole "buy American" thing written into most contracts nowadays, but which mostly applies to construction. Interestingly, both TPP and TTIP make that illegal.
- USNetizen 11y ago
  No, they don't. Not for federal contracts, which is governed by a whole different set of rules from the rest of commerce (the FAR vs. UCC).
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Wait, so we in Germany can't demand "buy all German" anymore, but the US can demand "buy all American"? Seriously, I feel like this deal is getting worse all the time.