New NASA Procurement Trend: Please Don't Call or Fax Us
NASA Space Technology Research – Development – Demonstration and Infusion 2016
Keith’s note: Yet another NASA civil servant who wants to limit taxpayer interaction with regard to NASA solicitations with an education/technology exchange subject matter. Last week it was someone at NASA HQ who did not want any faxes (while NASA field centers always list them) – but preferred email or phone calls. Their solution was to put 000-000-0000 for their fax number. This week we see that Bonnie James doesn’t even want to talk to you. Just email. FWIW according to people.nasa.gov her phone number is not 000-000-0000 – it is 256-544-6985 and her real email is [email protected].
“Point of Contact
Name: Bonnie F. James
Title: STMD Senior Investment Strategist
Phone: 000-000-0000
Fax: 000-000-0000
Email: [email protected]”
Just trying to be a devil’s advocate here, but could she have used that email address as a means to sort out or highlight those emails that deal specifically with this and not necessarily a way to dodge communication?
Of course, I am not in any way being an advocate for the phone number and fax number crap…..
The people that are likely to win have other channels.
Emails are always preferable to phone calls for procurement purposes. It allows the correspondence to be kept in the digital file and prevents prodding phone callers that look to gain unfair advantages through on the spot probing questions. The consolidated email address is a means to organize the correspondence on the requirement and also allows multiple NASA procurement personnel to receive, view and respond to the emails.
Also, voice messages are useless and difficult to manage over the long term. Email is definitely preferable any time you have widespread public access, just in terms of ensuring responses and an efficient overall process.
There are rules. These people ignore them. Why have rules then?
If stupid outdated policy insists on including phone and fax numbers, without any allowance for whether it’s actually appropriate, then I see no problem with employees subverting such a requirement. Passive resistance against stupidity is a good thing.
There is no policy anywhere that I am aware of requiring or even encouraging fax communication, and nobody is subverting any requirement. There is simply a blank available in the system for a fax number and they chose not to fill one in, likely because they don’t have or monitor a fax machine (who does?). If you review Fedbizopps, very few procurement announcements at any agency offer a fax number. My agency has not used fax communication on solicitations for over a decade. I don’t understand the point of this thread at all.
And of course if employees can just ignore one aspect of NASA procurement regulations and policies – because they want to – then they can ignore others. And then the OIG and GAO do studies that show that NASA does not follow its own (and government regulations) which leads to problems and everyone at NASA then says that the rules/regs will be enforced and then they just go on ignoring them.