The Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled (CPPBSD), an independent federal agency, oversees and manages the AbilityOne Program, which creates job opportunities for individuals who are blind or severely disabled by facilitating government purchases of supplies and services from nonprofit agencies that employ them.

In 1938 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Wagner-O’Day Act to provide employment opportunities for people who were blind, by making it viable for them to manufacture mops, brooms and other commodities to sell to the federal government. In 1971 Sen. Jacob Javits pushed Congress to amend the act so to include people with severe handicaps, and allow the program to provide services to the federal government as well. In addition, the amendment established the CPPBSD as an independent federal agency with a professional civilian staff. With the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Law, the program it administered was referred to as JWOD. In 2006 JWOD was re-named AbilityOne.

The Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled (CPPBSD) administers the AbilityOne Program, a federal initiative that is the single largest source of employment in the U.S. of the blind or people with severe disabilities. In association with two central nonprofit agencies, the National Industries for the Blind (NIB) and National Industries for the Severely Handicapped (NISH), the Committee coordinates with more than 600 nonprofit agencies that hire people with disabilities across the country, as well as in Puerto Rico and Guam.

The Committee, along with NIB and NISH, identifies government procurement requirements that can generate the employment scenarios. Then the product and service requirements are put on a procurement list, and state and private nonprofit agencies that employ the blind and severely disabled are designated, to see if they can furnish the requirements in the time frame needed. The federal agency must procure the product or service from the designated nonprofit at a fair market price, which the Committee has the sole responsibility of setting. Among the products and services that have been part of the program: Office supplies, military clothing, detergents, paints, and surgical items, and jobs in landscaping, building maintenance, food service, mail center operations, laundry services, order processing, and administrative support. 

From the Web Site of the Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled

AbilityOne Program

NISH

Base Supply Centers

Federal Customers

Individuals with Disabilities

  Liaisons

Potential Distributors

Products and Services

Search Services List

Authorized distributors

Defense prime contractors

Earnestine (Tina) Ballard

Tina Ballard, who received a BA in English in 1980 from the University of Dayton in Ohio, an MS in Management in 1989 from Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and an MS in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 2001, also completed the Industrial College of the Armed Forces Senior Acquisition Course, and Leadership for a Democratic Society at the Federal Executive Institute. In her 30 years of federal government work she has served as Director of Combat Support Operations; Deputy Executive Director of Contract Management Operations in the Defense Contract Management Agency; as a Contract Specialist in the Aeronautical Systems Division, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where she was designated a Procuring Contracting Officer; as the Principal Administrative Contracting Officer and Director of Contract Operations for the Air Force Plant Representative Office, Boeing Military Airplanes, Wichita, Kansas; as the Director of Pacific/Caribbean Contract Operations in DCMA International, serving as a liaison to the Air Force Material Command; in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where she led several projects for the Deputy Secretary of Defense; and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Policy and Procurement).

She began her current position March 2, 2008.

While serving as a senior procurement officer for the Army, Ballard was questioned during House Government Reform and Oversight Committee hearings about the allegation that former Halliburton subsidiary KBR had hired the private security company Blackwater USA to service KBR in Iraq even though the law prohibited private security companies from operating in the war zone. In an initial hearing on the subject, Ballard assured the Committee that Blackwater had not been hired under a KBR subcontract. But in another hearing six months later she told the Committee that “after extensive research” it was determined that her earlier statements were incorrect, and by the end of the full hearing she announced that the Army would be reducing its fee to KBR because it was apparent, under several layers of subcontracts, that Blackwater had indeed been hired.

Ballard was a contributor to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama.

KBR’s $400 Million Iraq Question (by Jeremy Scahill and Garrett Ordower, The Nation)

Officials admit private security firm was hired under Iraq logistics contract (by Jenny Mandel, Government Executive)

After Many Denials, Army Confirms Private Security Contract in Iraq (by Larry Margasak, Associated Press)