Page 42 - FCW, Jan/Feb 2018

WTInsider Surviving the next
government shutdown
Although the January stoppage was short, federal agencies still face serious obstacles to full-year funding
BY NICK WAKEMAN
Government contractors hunkered down in January and hoped the shut- down would be short and have minimal impact on their business.
They got their wish when Congress passed a short-term continuing resolu- tion on Monday, Jan. 22. The shutdown lasted just 69 hours, most of them over a weekend.
Some of the contractors we spoke with asked employees to take vacation time. Others pulled folks in for training or to work on internal projects. Neither are ideal solutions if there is a longer shutdown.
Dennis Kelly, CEO of Buchanan and Edwards, said his rm had 70 to 80 employees who did not go to work with federal customers on the morning of Jan. 22. Instead, they attended training sessions or worked on projects related to solution architectures and proposals.
“We didn’t want people to feel vulner- able,” he said.
But the company would have to make harder choices if a shutdown were to last longer than a week.
Predicting what happens during a longer shutdown is challenging, Kelly said, because the number of affected employees will change. Someone who is not essential on Day 1 of a shutdown might be deemed essential on Day 3 or 4.
His team has set up a war room to track customers and employees to make
sure the company can shift people to areas where work is available if possi- ble. The company has the resources to keep employees busy for about a week, he added.
OGSystems told employees that if they could not work because of a shut- down, they should take paid time off. In an extended shutdown, the compa- ny would consider other options such as paid-leave donations by executives, which is what it did during the 2013 shutdown.
For now, companies have avoided having to make those kinds of hard and often unpopular decisions. However, the Professional Services Council has been encouraging its members to plan for one or more shutdowns.
Such federal stoppages often com- plicate how contractors get paid and can affect deadlines for proposals and bid protests that fall during the shutdown. Sometimes companies are required to do work but are denied access to government facilities.
PSC President and CEO David Berteau said his association asked members to reach out if they were having any prob- lems, though no hiccups were reported in the immediate aftermath of the Janu- ary shutdown. “We are not aware of any stop-work orders,” he added.
Berteau is more concerned about the long term. As this issue went to
press, Congress had made little prog- ress on funding for the rest of scal 2018, and the short-term CR was set to expire on Feb. 8.
“[A shutdown] can happen again, and it could last a lot longer,” he said. “The only thing that gets us out of this mess is a full-year appropriation. ... A three- week CR doesn’t get us there.”
Last year, the government operated under a CR until May, but there was an overarching budget agreement that set the top-line numbers for the defense and civilian budgets. We do not have that now. And even if Congress can reach a budget agreement before Feb. 8, it will take appropriators another two or three weeks to write the spending bills.
“We’ll de nitely need another CR on Feb. 8,” Berteau said.
He also highlighted something that few are talking about: Trump is supposed to release his scal 2019 budget on Feb. 13. How will those numbers affect getting to a budget agreement and appropria- tions for 2018?
“We have three layers of uncertainty here,” Berteau said.
So although contractors were able to successfully hunker down for January’s short shutdown, they would do well to plan for worse in the weeks to come. n
Nick Wakeman is editor-in-chief of Washington Technology.
WashingtonTechnology, a sister publication to FCW, covers all the ins and outs of the IT contracting community. Learn more at WashingtonTechnology.com.
40 January/February 2018 FCW.COM