The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are a critical element of business development and capture. This is how you learn about a pursuit’s history and your competition. The problem is – FOIA requests are tricky:
- They take forever to obtain – so someone needs to carefully track them and follow up relentlessly to get any results – sometimes taking months and rendering your requests useless for your capture effort.
- They have a potential to tick off your competition as they will know who is requesting – and if you tend to team with this competitor on occasion, you may want to be strategic as to what you request.
- Third-party FOIA requests through services such as GovWin IQ and Centurion are great. They are faster as these services have established contacts in FOIA offices and they have personnel to follow up. The party whose documents are subject to FOIA doesn’t know who is requesting the FOIA documents. The downside is, now that these services have gone through the effort of fetching the information for you, they may also reuse this information to provide it to your competitors. Brilliant move on your part to FOIA something. Now your competitors subscribing to these services will have a reason to thank you. This may or may not matter to you.
Now it promises to be even harder to get FOIA documents – the length of time is stretching to close to a year. On March 15th, 2012 the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released their yearly Report Card on Federal Government’s efforts to track and manage FOIA requests. This report is critical of the federal government’s tracking of how it processes and responds to FOIA requests. Agencies got an average grade of C-. FOIA logs were requested to be graded based on a few criteria: names of FOIA requesters on log, tracking numbers for requests, descriptions of material sought, and whether records were in fact released. There are now as many as 13-months delays in some requests.
There are two things to consider:
- These grades are an indication of a willingness and ability by certain agencies FOIA offices to show accountability and transparency. You should be concerned about how difficult it is to obtain the information needed to help us decide to pursue an opportunity, enrich our capture efforts, and produce a proposal.
- See if the agencies that received an F grade are part of your customer list. There were two reasons to receive this grade: either the agency did not respond to FOIA requests – which in itself is a bad sign – or failed to produce them in digital format (which is a FOIA rule). In this case, save yourself an effort and don’t count on FOIA information – try to find it in other ethical ways.
If you would like to see the report card, you can download it here http://bit.ly/HQfLx4
What does this report mean to you? Well, a couple of things. First, start waaaay early with your capture. If you feel that you need to FOIA documents, plan for months of waiting to get them. Second, use the resources available to you to their maximum, such as the paid services that can help you. However, be strategic about it, you may get the information faster and anonymously, but know that others may get it as well. There is no difference in the thought process when asking questions about an RFP in a public forum: is getting what you need worth making your competition better off?
Capture and Proposal Seminars
Don’t miss early bird registration pricing – it ends 3 weeks before each class. Register at www.ostglobalsolutions.com/training/schedule
| Date, 2012 | Class Name |
| April 17-18 | Foundations of Capture Management |
| April 19-20 | Foundations of Proposal Management |
| April 23-24 | Proposal Speed-Writing and Persuasion |
| May 14-15 | Preparing Winning Multiple Award and Task Order Proposals |
| May 16 | Cost Proposal Strategy for Proposal Managers |
| June 19-20 | Advanced Capture Management |
| June 21-22 | Advanced Proposal Management |
| July 19 | Proposal Win Themes Development Workshop |
| July 20 | Executive Summaries For Winning Proposals Workshop |
If you don’t find a class that suits your schedule, consider us for on-site corporate training at your company, or for a webinar for your dispersed workforce if you have multiple locations.
Useful Proposal Resources
- Blueprint for Winning Government Contracts – Find opportunities, write winning proposals, and win multimillion dollar contracts to grow your small business in the federal market.
- Task Order Manual Template – Reusable professional toolset (electronic Word template) – instant download.
- Executive Summary Secrets – Self-study course (workbook and audio CD) to persuade evaluators to award the contract to you.
- How to Succeed as a Proposal Consultant – Get more work, higher pay, and better clients – instant download!
- A Proposal Manager’s Essential Checklists – Reusable toolset for consistently successful proposal management and coordination.
- Proposal Resources Estimating Guide – Guide for determining required manpower and hours to calculate how much a proposal should cost
P.S.: As always – if you need business development, capture and proposal consulting or training support, contact us at 301-384-3350 or at service@ostglobalsolutions.com
P.P.S.: Feel free to forward this newsletter to others who may find it useful. If you have received this from a colleague and would like to sign up yourself, here is where you can do it: http://www.ostglobalsolutions.com/eZine-signup.htm.
Written by Olessia Smotrova-Taylor, AF. APMP, President ad CEO of OST Global Solutions, Inc., a business development, capture, and proposal management company that helps businesses grow in the federal market. Olessia has won more than $18 billion for her clients, and helped many small businesses acquire game-changing opportunities. She started working on IDIQs 11 years ago, including working on Task Orders exclusively for 5 years managing a $450 million/year IDIQ. She has won a few dozen IDIQs and Task Orders over the course of her career. She is the President of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) National Capital Area (NCA) chapter, and a well-known speaker and author. She has developed and taught a graduate course in proposal development at NASA for the Stevens Institute of Technology. Prior to founding OST, she won business for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, and wrote for the Financial Times of London. Olessia can be reached at otaylor@ostglobalsolutions.com or at 301-384-3350.
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