Since the country's founding, the president said, "we have held fast to the belief that government doesn't have all the answers, and we have cherished and fiercely defended our individual freedom." But another strand of belief, he argued, has been that there are certain things we can only accomplish through working together, and that "government must keep pace with the times."

That, Obama said, has historically been a bipartisan principle. He noted several Republicans' efforts to expand federal power. Abraham Lincoln, he said, backed the first intercontinental railroad and set up the first land-grant colleges. Theodore Roosevelt was an antitrust crusader and created the National Park System. Dwight Eisenhower pushed for the construction of the interstate highway system.

Obama acknowledged that in "certain instances," government has been inefficient and restricted personal freedom. Examples, he said, included a welfare system that discouraged personal responsibility, a tendency to neglect the role of parents in their children's education and failed regulatory efforts.

But on the whole, Obama argued, government is a powerful force for good.

"Government is the police officers who are protecting our communities and the service men and women who are defending us abroad," he said. "Government is the roads you drove in on and the speed limits that kept you safe. Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them. Government is this extraordinary public university -- a place that is doing life-saving research and catalyzing economic growth and graduating students who will change the world around them in ways big and small."

"In an era of iPods and Tivo," Obama told assembled graduates, "government shouldn't try to dictate your lives. But it should give you the tools you need to succeed."

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Investigators found companies representing themselves as disadvantaged despite owning yachts, luxury automobiles and millions of dollars in ocean-front property. The maximum threshold for entering the 8(a) Business Development Program is $250,000 in annual net worth, excluding the applicant's ownership interest of the company and primary residence. Other executives misrepresented their ethnicity or used a pass-through company to continue winning contracts long after graduating from the program, GAO found.

Fraud in the Small Business Administration's contracting programs is nothing new. In 2008, GAO created bogus companies to win small business contracts in the Historically Underutilized Business Zone program. Last November, the watchdog reported on extensive fraud in the veteran-owned service-disabled small business contracting program.

"Fraud has been a persistent problem with all of the SBA's contracting programs and it is clear from this report, as well as previous work done by the committee and GAO, that SBA needs to do a better job of ensuring these initiatives work as intended," said Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the House Small Business Committee, in a statement to Government Executive.

To participate in the 8(a) program, an applicant must be considered a small business, be unconditionally owned and controlled by a socially or economically disadvantaged individual, show the potential for success and be of "good character." Companies must graduate from the program within nine years.

But GAO found the program is easy to manipulate. For example, a Toms River, N.J., construction company owner reported his adjusted net worth to be $217,000 when it was actually more than $800,000, according to the watchdog. Nonetheless, the firm won $11.2 million in 8(a) contracts from the Defense and Homeland Security departments. The company withdrew from the 8(a) program in September 2009 as a result of GAO's investigation.

In another case, investigators found that a roofing and construction company in Hyattsville, Md., with $48.3 million in contracts was acting as a pass-through for a graduated firm. Both firms were actually run by a white father-and-son team; the 8(a) program is designed for minority-owned firms. The two businesses essentially were operating as one company, the report said, sharing top executives, staff, administrative offices and warehouse space.

The fraud became apparent to investigators during a visit to the business. "The white vice president disclosed much of the operational knowledge of the firm during the site visit, while the black president rarely spoke," GAO said. "The white executives both work out of large suites while the black president sits in a small room located at the back of the building."

The report identified several other instances in which companies established shell companies that would win the award, but not perform any of the work. Some executives hid their lavish lifestyle from SBA, including the president of an information technology firm in Bethesda, Md., who owns a $2.5 million house on a private island in Miami, a $450,000 yacht and a $200,000 Lamborghini, investigators found.

GAO brought three cases to SBA, but the agency failed to take action, allowing the companies to continue winning contracts. For instance, an IT firm in Fairfax, Va., should have been removed from the program after its president failed to disclose $4.2 million in personal property, the report found.

"We brought the unreported assets to the attention of SBA," the report said. "However, once SBA learned that the firm was scheduled to graduate in eight months, it no longer wanted to investigate the firm's actions. Eleven days later, the firm was awarded a $1.7 million contract."

Even firms that voluntarily disclosed ineligibility remained in the program. The president of a human resources firm in Alexandria, Va., told SBA she had an annual salary of nearly $750,000-- well above the threshold to remain in the program -- yet officials allowed the company to stay in the program for another five years.

In response to the findings, SBA conceded that its fraud prevention systems needed improvement. "Although the 8(a) business development program has enjoyed numerous successes, we recognize that there are weaknesses and areas that require increased monitoring and oversight," wrote Joseph Jordan, associate administrator for government contracting and business development.

The agency did have a measure of success in screening out bogus applications GAO submitted. In three cases, SBA discovered questionable assets and income with the fake companies. But in another instance, investigators obtained 8(a) certification for a phony firm using fabricated documents.

"Certification of GAO's bogus firm shows vulnerabilities in the process such as the lack of any face-to-face contact that could allow ineligible individuals or pass-through companies to enter the program," the report said.

According to SBA, in fiscal 2008, there were 9,462 firms certified to participate in the 8(a) program, and about half had at least one active sole-source or set-aside contract. Agencies awarded more than $16 billion in 8(a) contracts that year, allowing the government to exceed its goal of giving 5 percent of all contracts to small disadvantaged businesses.

In October, SBA recommended major changes to the eligibility and income requirements of the 8(a) program. The rule is expected to be finalized by June.

SBA spokesman Michael Stamler said Friday that the proposed regulatory changes would address "several of the recommendations made by the GAO, and will strengthen the program and maximize its benefits for eligible small businesses." He added SBA is "taking further steps, in line with GAO recommendations, to prevent fraud, waste and abuse."

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Volunteers are needed to prepare these basic returns which often include W-2 income, earned income tax credit, and Social Security payments. Do not be worried about having to prepare complicated returns - VITA is not for people with high incomes, complex returns, or business owners.

To volunteer to prepare tax returns, IRS Certification must be obtained by taking the IRS Intermediate Training Course available on-line throughthe IRS' "Link and Learn" website and passing the test with a 70%. Additionally, volunteers are encouraged to attend a hands-on session utilizing the Tax-Wise software and e-filing procedures. More information on Training will be provided to volunteers by Kortney Whiteman.

Please consider volunteering for at least two of the Saturdays to make a difference in your community.

Please email your commitment to volunteer during the times listed above to kortney.whiteman@dfas.mil, ASAP

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The 2010 taxonomy contains significant architectural improvements when compared with the 2009 version, which include an extended use of axes (dimensions) in the taxonomy, and reconsideration of the IASC Foundation's approach for concept naming and of its principle of deleting redundant (deprecated) concepts.

To accompany the release of this taxonomy, the IASC Foundation is undertaking a consultation with companies using IFRSs and filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This consultation will help to establish and demonstrate that the IFRS Taxonomy is practical for filers and for users of filed XBRL content. Based upon the results of the consultation, the IASC Foundation XBRL team will determine whether revisions in the taxonomy are required.

Commenting upon the release Olivier Servais, the IASC Foundation's Director of XBRL Activities, said

The IFRS Taxonomy 2010 has been through the most thorough public testing of any taxonomy developed by the Foundation to date, with consultations beginning in July 2009. We have received comments from a broad range of stakeholders, and are very pleased with the input received from organisations and individuals in both the global financial reporting and XBRL communities.

Roland Hommes, Chairman of the IASC Foundation's XBRL Quality Review Team (XQRT), added

In 2009 the IASC Foundation defined a formal due process for its XBRL activities. The XQRT has endeavoured to ensure that the Foundation has operated in strict accordance with this due process. I believe that the result is a high-quality taxonomy that is consistent with IFRSs, but which also reflects XBRL best practice.

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Weinschenk: So customers who sign on are assured of a certain level of performance.

Parker: When you have a company with the Cloud Communications Alliance logo on it, there is going to be a consistent level reliability, quality of technology, quality of customer service and quality of the product mix you are being sold. We are unifying our customer base around those three things for our companies, which today make up about $100 million in revenue -- which is not a startup -- and 110,000 business users.

Weinschenk: More specifically, what do people get?

Parker: There is a common set of products, though they have different titles. You get hosted PBX service, cloud-based e-mail, Exchange feature [and other elements]. The second thing you get is network reliability and disaster recovery. In order to get cloud to work, especially when you are dealing with voice in the cloud, it has to look and feel and have the same features as used during the last 50 years, 100 years. If voice isn’t clear, if it is not feature rich, if it’s not easy to use, the adoption doesn’t take place. You are going to get that quality. Thirdly, you will get the new category of applications: We are building and are in the process of launching with BroadSoft a sandbox of applications that tie in the developer and the customer together and that bring them the next generation of applications that they can’t afford today or network applications that weren’t available.

Weinschenk: How does this change the equation?

Parker: Before, if your center wanted call recording, you had to get that via buying a box. [In the Alliance], you can buy it by clicking [a menu] in the cloud, you get voice recording. If you want the integration of fax into e-mail and into Web-based CRM, yesterday the only way to get it was by buying a box, deploying it, installing it, maintaining it and configuring it. With us, you get these applications from our sandbox that integrate tightly with real-world needs of what every business has. It gives real differentiation to small and medium-sized businesses.

Weinschenk: Can they maintain the applications they already have?

Parker: We want them to bring their premise-based solution into the cloud. That’s our value. We are not just a different way to deliver voice, but want companies to bring in their enterprise application and help them realize more cost-effective ways to deploy those applications.

Weinschenk: How does this simplify things for the end-user customers?

Parker: What we are doing is combining five entities companies do business with. They deal with [such as] AT&T for the WAN, Cisco for the LAN, Microsoft for servers, MCI or Verizon for long distance and local dial tone and local companies to maintain these different boxes. We are bringing all these into a one-stop shop that takes care of all needs and gets rid of the finger pointing. We are bringing all these pieces together. This will result in cost saving for the companies, and show efficiency because many companies get lost in the minutia of getting things to work day to day.

Weinschenk: What else does this offer?

Parker: Because we have eight data centers throughout the country, this puts disaster recovery on a new level. All of the companies have already built what is needed in their data center and now are able to tie the data center together and can get true disaster recovery.

Weinschenk: How does this approach compare to managed and hosted services providers?

Parker: Most managed and hosted service providers are providing a niche service. Look at a managed service provider. They just manage someone else’s premise-based equipment. It is not a cost saving for that company, just added simplicity. We’re a private network … that give you APIs and a tool kit. You can build whatever you want. Hosted is a closed network with a limited set of features. For example, you can buy a hosted PBX that does voice and dial tone and an e-mail server does e-mail and that’s it. We are a cloud-based open standard system that lets people plug in and get what they want out of it.

Weinschenk: What is the difference between what you are doing and platform-as-a-service providers?

Parker: The difference is hype versus reality. Many companies are talking about it. Not many are doing it today, the APIs and the services and the e-mail and the integration of the website and all the things a company needs. Platform as a service is another way to describe what we are doing in the Cloud Communications Alliance. There are niche companies all around the country doing it, some of the doing them quite well. We are saying that we are eight companies coming together at significant size -- that matters in the telecom market -- and allowing companies on the network in a way that guarantees the quality of service, the network standards and reliability. Customers don’t have to fear dealing with a company that won’t be around tomorrow.

Weinschenk: What standards do you use?

Parker: Our standards deal with three categories. The first is reliability and best practice monitoring. Two is voice quality. Using a private connection allows us to provide significant voice quality. The third is that we are starting to build standards around what we sell. Specifically on voice, we use the BroadSoft standards for equipment and features related to hosted telephony.

Weinschenk: Can you be more specific?

Parker: In VoIP, we use SIP-based equipment and "Skinny" – SCCP – which is Cisco’s client control protocol. On the network level, we use Cisco in our core network, as well as Adtran, Polycom and various others. We are not looking for standards-based applications. We are giving them our standard APIs and hooks from our toolbox. They write applications. That’s what drives creative and innovation and growth.

Weinschenk: How do you feel about unified communications more broadly?

Parker: We really feel UC specifically – and what we are calling UC cloud communication – is the point that it is hitting the hockey stick. All our companies are rapidly expanding now even over last year. Adoption has been at a mainstream level. VoIP is not a technology that you may or may not do anymore. It’s when you choose to do it, not if you do.

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The goal of the caucus, which was announced in March, is to advance transparency and accountability across government. Measuring these goals will require online access to government information in formats that can be searched and downloaded for free, according to the caucus' principles. The group plans to make such information available by educating lawmakers, taking legislative action and overseeing existing polices.

"Our greatest challenge and mandate in government is regaining the public's trust," said Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., the caucus' other co-founding chairman. "It means not just paying lip service, but taking financial responsibility, transparency and ethics as seriously as the voters want us to. If we can make the tough decisions and prove these as our priorities to the public, trust will follow."

Thursday's event included a dialogue among leaders from several government transparency groups, including the Project on Government Oversight and the Sunlight Foundation.

POGO General Counsel Scott Amey, who focuses on contract oversight, said he hopes the caucus will eradicate the stovepipe mentality in agencies that has created numerous databases and systems but little useful information. Too often, he said, he has to search one database to find a contract, another to locate a request for proposals and a third for the track record on the contractor's past projects. "Due to the lack of transparency, unhealthy programs are allowed to fester for far too long . . . and that leads to waste, fraud and abuse," Amey noted.

Following the panel, the packed room in the Rayburn House Office Building asked activists questions and commented on the formation of the caucus.

J.H. Snider, president of iSolon, a nonprofit institute focused on using information technology to bring about democratic reform, said, "You've got a very impressive caucus here, but I don't see the democratic leadership," referring to influential representatives such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md.

Daniel Schuman, policy counsel at the Sunlight Foundation and panel moderator, acknowledged the caucus was a work in progress. Sunlight announced on Thursday it will serve as an advisory committee to the caucus. Schuman, who is the director of the new advisory committee, pointed out that the caucus includes about 6 percent of the House and some of its members hold leadership positions on committees.

"Doing this across party lines, across ideologies . . . I think that is an encouraging sign," he said.

Caucus members include:

Melissa Bean, D-Ill.
Bruce Braley, D-Iowa
Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah
Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas
Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich.
Bill Foster, D-Ill.
Wally Herger, R-Calif.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.
Steve Israel, D-N.Y.
Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
Walter Jones, R-N.C.
Jim Jordan, R-Ohio
Doug Lamborn, R-Colo.
Daniel Lipinski, D-Ill.
Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa
Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo.
Patrick McHenry, R-N.C.
Walt Minnick, D-Idaho
Scott Murphy, D-N.Y.
Jared Polis, D-Colo.
Mike Quigley, D-Ill.
Tim Ryan, D-Ohio
Aaron Schock, R-Ill.
Mark Souder, R-Ind.
Jackie Speier, D-Calif.
Mark Steven, Kirk, R-Ill.
Greg Walden, R-Ore

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Programs:

• Spring Social - Clippers Game or Bowling - Clippers Game social will be pursued, checking on group specials and dates.
• Next Luncheon Meeting, May 13 - TAT or other location suggestions
  • Another date, May 5, was proposed and agreed upon, due to timing of several DFAS Customer Conferences.
  • Proposed locations were 94th Aero Squadron, Hickory House, Napoli's, Old Bag of Nails - location will be determined shortly.
  • This will be the New Officer Induction Luncheon.
• Member Appreciation Luncheon in June - pizza? Need volunteer(s) to assist Jennifer Hurles - Red Pavilion is reserved for June 10.
  • Due to past problems with grilling, decision was made to have pizza and/or party-size subs, and possibly pasta salads and brownies.
  • Lyndsey F. volunteered to assist Jen Hurles with the luncheon.
  • Directors should prepare a list of their committee members for award/recognition - send to chapter secretary Barb Bail and "cc" incoming secretary Diana Sponseller.
    

Membership:

• No updates
• Zac Balas needs access to run membership reports.

Early Career:

• Director transition completed, need to pass the cabinet key over.
  

Certification:

• Suggestions to encourage CGFM certification
• Directors will be included on future AGA Region CGFM calls.
• Suggestion for CGFM Open House, incentives/recognition awards, possible one-time membership discount to new CGFMs.
• Possibility that the 5-day CGFM Management Concept course may not be offered by DFAS in the future
• Committee concerns were summarized in a memo sent to Chapter President (Nancy Zmyslinski) and President-Elect (Justin S.)

Education:

• Schedule of new AGA Audio Conferences, purchase package?
  • List of upcoming audio conferences provided
  • CEC asked to review for discussion at future CEC meeting, in order to recommend which "package" chapter will purchase.
• Next Audio Conferences, April 21 "The Latest Tools & Techniques for Auditors"
• May 19 "Those Faint Signals: Learning to Catch Ethical Slippage before It's Too Late".
• Remaining audio conferences (already purchased as part of last package deal).
  
  

Communications:

• Transition meeting was held. Justin S. will confirm with Ken George that the chapter newsletter was sent to AGA Hdq for chapter competition.
• New website should be approved soon and be up and running, with a demonstration for the CEC and general membership at a future meeting.
  

  Ways & Means:

• Applebee's Fundraiser - planning for end of May, 10% off purchases (except alcohol) all day.
• Still waiting for check from BW3 from that fundraiser.
  
  

Community Service:

• VITA Update
  • Completed with 17 volunteer preparers and 3 intake assistants, working primarily at Northland High School and four secondary locations.
  • United Way is sponsoring a Recognition Dinner and Program for Volunteers on April 27, 6:30 PM (punch at 5:30 PM) at Ohio Dominican University, Bishop Griffin Student Center.
• Whitehall Spring Clean-Up, April 24, 10:00am to Noon
  • Meet and check-in at Whitehall Community Park, lunch provided after. Five volunteers so far.
• Toiletry Drive for local Soup Kitchen being planned for June - Checking into details for toiletry items we could collect for donation in June, more information to follow.
• Chapter still on the list to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, but remain way down on the list.
  

Historian:

• No updates, Henriann Franklin & Lyndsey Foell will get together for director transition.
  

By Laws:

• NTR

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Rules/Regulations:

• For each game, you will be required to be at the stadium 3 hours before kick-off.
• The stand will be in operation throughout the entire game and about 30-40 minutes after the game.
• You will be required to be at the stand at all times; that is, other than approved downtimes/scheduled breaks. During such time, you will have the opportunity to watch some of the game.
• Please keep in mind this opportunity is not to be used as a free game day ticket.
• Family members and children (over the age of 16) are welcome and encouraged to participate in this fundraising event.
• Please keep in mind that AGA is required to provide 8-10 members per game, therefore if a no-show occurs, you forfeit the right to participate in future games.
• Sign-up is a first come first serve basis. Any volunteers that surpass the 10 person threshold, will be waitlisted.
• AGA will provide a $10.00 lunch compensation and a $10.00 parking fee reimbursement to all volunteers.

The 7 home games are listed below with their kick-off times. Please contact Joyce Maleski for the game(s) you are interested in working.

Further details will be provided to the volunteers once the work schedule has been finalized. In the meantime, please contact Joyce Maleski at joyce.maleski@dfas.mil or 693-1334 if you should have any questions or concerns.

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