Onto New Things...

Well, thankfully the offsets report is finally complete. After waiting from a report from DoD called " DoD Purchases of Manufactured Items –Fiscal Year 2008”) I was finally able to gather the last bit of datathat I needed to finish chapter 5. And least the draft is anyhow. It will still have to move through the Department of Commerce to get signedoff. All in all, the work is done; it’s just a matter of waiting on bureaucracy at this point.
Another thing I have forgotten to mention before is the work I have been doing for something called “NAMSA” also known as NATO Management and Supply Agency. NAMSA’s primary task is “to assist NATO nations by organizing common procurement and supply of spare parts and arranging maintenance and repair services necessary for the supportof various weapon systems in their inventories.”

Primarily, my role in working with NAMSA to in processing requests ofeligibility. NAMSA will request information to my office on differentfirms and their eligibility to compete on a NAMSA procurement. This iswhere I get down to business. They will submit a list of firms to me. After receiving the list I will check to make sure that they arelegitimate. The first step to do is to examine their company’swebsite. Some firms unfortunately that are looking to compete on aNAMSA procurement are sometimes too small to have a website—they couldoperate with just 3 people. Needless to say, this is cause for greaterresearch. The next thing I do is search Lexis.com for news related toeach firm. Should they have articles on winning government contracts,it’s a good sign. No articles could be a problem. After that, I go on to check the “Excluded Parties List System”. That is a “WorldWide Web site is provided as a public service by General Services Administration (GSA) for the purpose of efficiently and convenientlydisseminating information on parties that are excluded from receiving Federal contracts, certain subcontracts, and certain Federal financialand nonfinancial assistance and benefits, pursuant to the provisions of31 U.S.C. 6101, note, E.O. 12549, E.O. 12689, 48 CFR 9.404, and each agency's codification of the Common Rule for Nonprocurement suspensionand debarment.” In lament’s terms, it means that I am searching through a GSA database to make sure that none of the interested firms have been barred from doing business with the U.S. government. Should there be any issues, I would notify NAMSA accordingly.

The next few weeks should be interesting because I have an appointmentto meet with the Acting Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, named Matt Borman. I’m quite excited to get to meet with such a high-ranking official in my office. I will also be joined by the otherintern at SIES—Victor. He just started a little bit ago and seems quite nice. I will let you know how the meeting goes!