Black Rock Engineering & Technology Services
Feel free to call us: 321-821-7792

Federal Agencies

Black Rock provides advisory services that support the government’s move toward a more cost-aware, performance-based delivery model.

W e help government agencies solve complex business issues, manage risk and add value to performance through our service offerings in human capital, enterprise effectiveness, financial management, governance, risk and compliance, program management, and technology, which are delivered seamlessly throughout the world. As federal agencies strive to meet the demands of the nation’s citizens, Black Rock can help develop and support department-wide strategies, manage risk and compliance, and harness business intelligence and analytical capabilities. Our advisory professionals bring direct hands-on knowledge of federal standards for systems, internal controls and financial reporting.

Financial Management

We integrate the required financial processes that alignment and enable organizations to achieve cost reductions, increased reliability, and added integrity to financial information. We provide:

  • Financial reporting & controls
  • Business & financial planning
  • Property & asset management
  • Grants and credit management
  • Fraud investigation & recovery
  • Financial & performance audit
  • Audit readiness & remediation
  • Budget and performance integration

 

Governance, Risk & Compliance

Black Rock provides assessments of federal agency management processes such as:

  • Regulatory function management
  • Regulatory reporting
  • Enterprise and programmatic risk management
  • Continuity of operations
  • Ethics and compliance
  • Privacy

 

Operational Effectiveness

Black Rock assesses current operations issues to increase efficiencies and effectiveness.  Black Rock provides human capital insight in the identification, attraction, development, training, and retention of human capital.  We provide roadmaps for organizations to evaluate their effectiveness through enabling agencies to discern critical:

  • Performance metrics & management
  • Business process and controls
  • Sourcing and alliance management
  • Privatization & outsourcing advisory
  • Economic advisory
  • Human capital change management

 

Program Management

Black Rock provides federal agencies with:

  • Program and project management office design & implementation
  • Organizational, program and project management assessment
  • Project portfolio management support services
  • Feasibility & business case development & monitoring
  • Acquisition management support
  • Performance assessment & benefits realization
  • Dispute and investigations support

 

Technology

At a time when public finances are under strain, the U.S. government must deliver new services and improve existing ones, while operating more efficiently. Technology is at the core of addressing these challenges.
Black Rock addresses the federal agency challenges by marrying their strategic vision with the operational and technological initiatives necessary to actualize that vision, including IT infrastructure consolidation, application rationalization, and lean IT.

  • IT Strategy & Enterprise Architecture
  • Enterprise Application & Integration
  • Information Management
  • IT Infrastructure and Managed Services
  • IT Security, Privacy & Risk
  • IT Program & Portfolio Management: Project, Program and Project Portfolio
  • Management

OutlookIndustry Outlook

Policymakers need to establish stronger incentives to ensure that federal agencies meet their small-business contracting goals. For the 11th year in a row, the government failed to achieve its objective of awarding 23 percent of federal contracting funds to small businesses, coming in at 21.7 percent, a recent Small Business Administration (SBA) report reveals.

Such targets are intended to ensure that small businesses receive a fair share of federal contracting dollars, which otherwise would go primarily to large companies with stronger connections to government administrators. Moreover, given their druthers, federal agencies would prefer the ease of managing a few contracts with a handful of giant corporations to juggling a multitude of contracts with tiny businesses.

The SBA, which is charged by Congress with ensuring that federal agencies meet small-business contracting targets, reports that it has tried to increase the share of federal dollars going to small businesses by implementing new contracting provisions, getting senior agency executives to commit to use small businesses as contractors, training small businesses to win federal contracts, undertaking outreach events to introduce small businesses to federal buyers, and promoting partnerships with big businesses to give small businesses access to their supply chains. Unfortunately, these actions have done little to ensure that small businesses get their targeted share of federal contracting dollars. In fact, the small business share of contracting dollars declined in the most recent fiscal year from 22.7 percent in 2010.

Lawmakers are searching for solutions to the failure to meet small-business contracting targets. Of course, finding the right answer depends on identifying the cause of the problem. Many explanations have been offered, from failure of Congress to approve spending bills in a timely manner to the end of stimulus money to large corporations' acquisitions of small companies that have obtained federal contracts. But another reason stands out for the clear economic theory behind it: Federal agencies don't meet their small-business contracting targets because they and their senior executives don't face any penalties for falling short.

That's a problem. As any first year economics student will tell you, making desired goals optional is not an effective way of motivating people to achieve them. If you want people to achieve something, you need to either reward them for reaching the goal or punish them for failing to do so.

Federal officials know this. They don't give Americans a "goal" for the percentage of their income that they should pay in taxes and then leave it up to them to decide how much to pay. Rather, they establish penalties to punish those Americans who fail to pay the taxes they owe.

A few members of Congress from both parties understand the basic economics of incentives and would like to use them to ensure that small businesses get their fair share of federal contracting money. Sam Graves of Missouri, the Republican chair of the House Small Business Committee, introduced the Government Efficiency Through Small Business Contracting Act (HR 3850), which would deny bonuses and sabbaticals to senior executives of the agencies that fail to meet their goals. Benjamin Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

Unfortunately, in a deadlocked Congress focused on political posturing for the November election, even legislation with bipartisan support is unlikely to go anywhere. Therefore, my bet is that federal agencies will once again fail to meet their small-business contracting targets in the current fiscal year.— By Scott Shane