Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

Tech group calls on President-elect to assess IT vulnerabilities, lower acquisition barriers

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iticThe federal government needs to assess its IT infrastructure and address cybersecurity, modernization and assessment reform as equal, intertwined priorities, suggests the IT Alliance for Public Sector, a division of advocacy and policy organization for the Information Technology Industry Council.

In a letter sent to President-elect Donald Trump, ITAPS declares that its membership — which includes hardware, software, services and solutions companies — is dedicated to working with the new administration to improve government operations and efficiency and reduce wasteful spending on aging inventory. ITAPS hopes that a review of procurement regulations and workaround programs (Digital Services, 18F, DIUx, etc.) will ease barriers to acquiring commercial technologies.

“The federal government spent $80 billion on IT systems last year. Shockingly, 80 percent was spent maintaining costly, vulnerable IT systems that many American taxpayers would expect to see in a Smithsonian collection,” said ITAPS Senior Vice President for Public Sector Trey Hodgkins, who signed the letter to Trump.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/articles/tech-group-calls-on-trump-to-assess-it-vulnerabilities-lower-acquisition-barriers

See the full set of ITIC’s recommendations here: http://www.itic.org/dotAsset/b/b/bb2f1b1e-2a9a-4a8a-ad9a-7aa41a046e3d.pdf

Tech startups struggle to tap $82 billion in federal contracts

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tangherlini-would-be-a-way-better-gsa-administrator-12-2016Jason Wagner’s cyber startup sells a digital platform federal agencies need. But lacking the heft or connections of a major defense contractor, it would be more trouble than it’s worth for him to seek a coveted federal contract. And he’s not alone.

During 15 years as a contract employee for intelligence agencies, Wagner saw cybersecurity analysts waste time transferring data for their investigations across multiple computer applications. So last year he started Tensor Wrench, which makes such information-sharing easier.

Now with a team of six, his customers include General Dynamics Corp.’s Mission Systems division, which helps run communications systems used on satellites, and by law enforcement. But he still hasn’t put the biggest potential buyer — the federal government, which spent $82 billion this year on information technology, about eight times Apple Inc.’s research and development budget — on his list of prospective clients.

“The government is a big juicy target,” Wagner, 38, said in an interview. “It’s tempting, but you got to figure out how much time you want to invest and whether you can afford that. When we added everything up, the answer came back: not now.”

Many cyber startups make similar calculations in weighing whether to do business with the government, where they face a complex and slow procurement process that can strangle smaller companies. Amid rising cyber threats, the gap in getting the latest technology tools is particularly worrisome for federal civilian agencies, from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the Department of Agriculture.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-08/tech-startups-struggle-to-tap-82-billion-in-federal-contracts

GSA holding technology industry day Sept. 8th

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On September 8, the General Services Administration (GSA) is hosting its very first Technology Industry Day.  Participating vendors will get an opportunity to learn about how GSA is transforming technology in the federal government, see demos of products and solutions developed by technologists and, last but not least, provide feedback on how GSA can work better with industry.

The event will be held at GSA headquarters located at 1800 F St., NW, Washington, DC 20405, and the event also will be accessible remotely.

On-site registration will close on September 5, 2016, and remote registration will close on the day of the event.

Below are a few projects to be featured and registration details:

Agile BPA
  • The Agile Blanket Purchase Agreement allows innovation in procurement, lessens the burden on industry and solves problems in a user-centered approach. A great example is the work with the FedRAMP program management office at GSA, the first client to use the Agile BPA. We helped the FedRAMP office hire an agile vendor to implement human-centered design and build a public-facing dashboard about cloud authorizations.
Micropurchasing
  • Micropurchasing is a process is where the federal government makes small procurements to directly buy products and services, as long as the price does not exceed $3,500. Currently, we are using that process to buy small pieces of open source software and design through the Micro-purchase Marketplace. This process has allowed clients to add valuable features to their products through quick, inexpensive purchases.
Cloud.gov
  • Cloud.gov is a shared platform built for government that allows agencies to securely deploy systems to the cloud. It takes care of baseline security and scalability concerns and allows federal teams to focus on delivering quality products.
Agenda

GSA Tech Industry Day 09.08.2016

Registration

If you want to learn more, sign up to join GSA on September 8 for the first Technology Industry Day.

How a bot is changing federal tech purchasing

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18F at GSAA bot managed to clinch the final bid on a recent federal cloud contract, offering to work with an Amazon Web Services broker on an aspect of Cloud.gov for $2,866.

Sixty-nine offers from seven bidders in—and seconds before the bid closed—the bot named the lowest price in what may be the General Services Administration’s first auction with significant bot activity, a spokesperson told Nextgov.

Bots are software applications that run automated tasks over the internet. The winning vendor had built an open-source bot hoping others would use it, but no one did, according to a blog post by GSA’s digital consultancy, 18F.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2016/08/how-bot-changing-federal-tech-purchasing/130687

New tool digitizes feds’ purchase forecasts, targets small-business users

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18F at GSAThe innovation team at 18F has created a tool to help the General Services Administration (GSA) forecast the purchasing needs of federal agencies.

The open source tool displays contract forecasting opportunities targeted to small-business owners and lets users filter and search by keywords, according to a May 2 blog post by 18F. Previously, GSA was forecasting using a spreadsheet with dozens of columns and hundreds of rows that had to be updated manually.

GSA’s Office of Small Business Utilization, or OSBU, is required to compile projections of contracting opportunities that owners of small, disadvantaged businesses and women-owned businesses may be able to compete for, the blog stated, but GSA was publishing only its own agency data.

That meant businesses had to go to dozens of agency web sites to find forecast information for those agencies.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/new-tool-digitizes-feds-purchase-forecasts-targets-small-business-users/2016-05-03

See the new contract forecasting tool at: https://gsaforecast.gsa.gov/

18F debuts micro-purchase platform

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The General Services Administration’s innovation lab, 18F, launched a new platform last week to more easily post and receive bids on micro-purchase tasks.

18F at GSAMicro-purchase authority allows agencies to directly buy products and services as long as they don’t exceed $3,500, and the agency used that authority in a new way in October 2015, when it essentially hosted a reverse auction to micro-purchase open source code for its CALC project.

18F declared the experience a success when it ended up buying open source code for just $1.

Now, 18F is further scaling that model, according to a Jan. 7, 2016 post to the 18F blog.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/18f-debuts-micro-purchase-platform/2016-01-11

 

 

18F micro-purchase pilot reaps code for a dollar

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What Is 18F.Conventional wisdom says you don’t use a credit card for incidental purchases. However, the team at 18F ran an experiment to see if they could buy work on open source code using a credit card — without running afoul of the federal acquisition regulation — and got exactly what they needed for just a dollar.

On Oct. 26, 18F officials posted an open competition to GitHub to incorporate data from IT Schedule 70 into the CALC tool, which tracks pricing for specific labor categories on awarded federal contracts. The competition was structured as a reverse-auction open to contractors registered with SAM.gov, with a starting bid of $3,499, just below the threshold for credit card purchases.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/gsa-gwac/2015/11/09/dollar-micro-purchase-pilot/75452072/

18F app acquisition pilot could be ‘a terrible idea’

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The innovation team at General Services Administration’s 18F has been testing new ways to speed up the acquisition process, particularly when it comes to agile development of software. Today (Oct. 26, 2015), the team will be trying out what could be “a terrible idea.”

18F at GSA18F members will be posting an open competition to GitHub for work on the team’s CALC tool. The work will be paid for using the agency’s micro-purchasing authority, which lets federal offices procure products or services under $3,500 using a credit card.

The bidding will start at $3,499 and the lowest bidder will be given 10 days to produce working code. If the winning vendor fails, the next lowest bidder will have 10 days to succeed where their colleagues could not.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/2015/10/22/micro-purchase-pilot/74392760/

GSA, 18F award first set of contracts to 16 companies for ‘agile’ development services

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The General Services Administration has announced that 16 companies were selected to sell so-called ‘agile’ software development services to federal agencies through a governmentwide contract – the first of three sets of contracts to be awarded.

‘Agile’ is an approach that federal agencies are increasingly using to develop software in increments, typically in a few weeks to a few months, rather than wait two to three years until such a project is delivered.

18F at GSAThe department’s in-house consulting firm, called 18F, pushed for the blanket purchase agreement. In an Aug. 28 blog post, members wrote that there was “explosive” demand for their services to build products for agencies through the agile process.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/gsa-18f-award-first-set-contracts-16-companies-agile-development-services/2015-08-31

Attention ‘agile’ contractors: Come show and tell for 18F

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The Obama administration has ambitious plans to embed a full-scale digital-service team within each agency to help overhaul the way government delivers IT projects.

But the teams won’t do it alone.

Officials at the General Services Administration (GSA) and its in-house digital shop 18F are now sending a message to the traditional contracting industry: We need your help, too.

That was the takeaway from the February 3, 2015 joint GSA-18F industry day where officials and industry representatives mulled over plans for a new agile-only contracting vehicle that will eventually help agencies purchase services specifically from companies that specialize in quick-turnaround software deployments

18F has been doing its part over the past year to help agencies revamp citizen-facing services. All told, the office has agreements with about 18 agencies to perform development and design work, officials said.

The relatively small shop — its staff size currently hovers around 100 — has faced “explosive” demand for its services and can’t keep up, said Greg Godbout, 18F’s executive director.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2015/02/agile-gsa/104577

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