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Georgia Tech’s ATDC hosting healthcare summit Sept. 12th

September 4, 2018 By Nancy Cleveland

Georgia Tech’s  Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), the longest-running state-sponsored startup incubator in the country, has been chosen as one of eight stops on a national “Startup Day” tour for federal health officials to connect with tech startups.

The ATDC Federal Healthcare Innovation Summit, which will be held September 12, will allow entrepreneurs and technologists to connect with representatives from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

The federal government spends more on healthcare than any other single entity in the country, about 28.3 percent of the total national health expenditure in 2016. That’s compared to 28.1 percent spent by individual households, 19.9 percent by private businesses and 16.9 percent by state or local government. Those hundreds of billions present a massive market opportunity for startups to make operations more efficient and streamlined with new technologies.

The capstone of the Federal Healthcare Innovation Summit will be a “Shark Tank”-type pitch event where startups can share their products and services with HHS officials, including the agency’s Chief Technology officer Edward Simcox, for feedback. 

The Summit, to be held from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, requires preregistration.  You can register for the event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/atdcs-federal-healthcare-innovation-summit-tickets-49397520313

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: ATDC, CDC, Georgia Tech, health care, health records, health services, HHS

OPM holds 4th quarter readiness forum on July 20th

July 13, 2017 By Nancy Cleveland

The federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Clark Atlanta University have joined forces to present a “4th Quarter Readiness Forum” at Clark Atlanta University on July 20, 2017.

The session is designed to offer the small business community marketing and contracting tips to consider when marketing to federal agencies during the federal government’s 4th quarter (July, August and September).

Representatives from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), General Services Administration (GSA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Education Dept., the Small Business Administration (SBA) and other agencies will be available to discuss how they utilize various contracting tools and vehicles to award contracts in this often challenging 4th quarter time frame in the government’s calendar.

Attendees also will be provided research tips on how to use the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation (FPDS-NG) data base to help you research procurement opportunities.

The session will be held at Clark Atlanta University, Cole Science Research Center at 223 James P. Brawley Dr., SW, Atlanta, GA  30314 from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m.

Box lunches will be available for purchase at this event.

Here’s a link to what OPM buys: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/us-office-of-personnel-management-14499326759

Attendees are required to register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/4th-quarter-readiness-forum-tickets-35946174977.

For more information, feel free to contact Ms. Cherina Hughes at cherina.hughes@opm.gov or Art Brown at 770-732-9392 or art@lescot.com.

Filed Under: GTPAC News Tagged With: CDC, Clark Atlanta University, Education Dept., FPDS, GSA, marketing, NASA, networking, OPM, SBA

CDC and local NCMA chapter planning events honoring small businesses in January

December 10, 2015 By Nancy Cleveland

NCMA logoJanuary is Small Business Month and, to celebrate, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Atlanta chapter of the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) are planning a series of events throughout the month of January 2016.

You may wish to pencil-in these events on your calendar now:

January 7, 2016
  • Women’s Forum – 8:00am to 12:00pm – Georgia Power Auditorium – No Charge
January 14, 2016
  • How to Win at Communications, Part 2 – 11:30am to 1:30pm – Marriott Century Center Hotel – $20.00
January 21, 2016
  • Private Sector Forum – 8:00am to 12:00pm – Atlanta Metropolitan College – No Charge
January 28, 2016
  • Industry Day – 8:00am to 4:00pm – Georgia Tech Research Institute – No Charge

 

For more information and registration, visit www.ncmaatl.org.

Filed Under: GTPAC News Tagged With: CDC, industry day, NCMA, networking

GTPAC-hosted Jan. 22 event to aid Georgia small businesses

January 13, 2015 By ei2admin

On Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015, the Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC) will play host to six federal agencies holding an industry day forum directed at small businesses in Georgia.  NOTE: As of Jan. 16, 2015, this event is booked to capacity, and no further registrations are being accepted.

NCMA logoThe event is being sponsored by the Atlanta chapter of the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) and the regional office of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

The event, billed as “Building Partnerships and Collaborating for Success, a Small Business Industry Day and Matchmaking Event,” is open to all businesses in the region who wish to learn more about doing business with  the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the General Services Administration (GSA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

In addition to federal agencies, representatives of major prime contractors also are expected to be present, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, ICF International, RTI International, WYLE, Westat, Deloitte, and DB Consulting Group, Inc.

Businesses interested in participating in this event must preregister at: http://gtpac.ecenterdirect.com/ConferenceDetail.action?ID=7954.

More than 200 vendors are expected to attend.  Matchmaking events will be scheduled by vendors based on NAICS code requirements of government agencies and prime contractors. Details for the matchmaking aspect of the event will be promulgated separately to confirmed registrants.

All vendors participating in this event are expected to have the following completed prior to attending:  SAM and DSBS registration, business cards, an elevator speech, and a capability statement. See web link above for more information.

Filed Under: GTPAC News Tagged With: ACE, Army Corps of Engineers, CDC, EPA, government contract training, GSA, matchmaking, NCMA, outreach, SBA, small business, small business goals, subcontracting goals, VA

Details of CDC’s May 3 ‘industry day’ now available

May 19, 2013 By ei2admin

Whether or not you were in attendance at the May 3, 2013 Industry Day event sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), all presentations from that event are now available to you.

The event, hosted by the Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC) at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), saw ten government agencies and nine large prime contractors come together to provide information to over 250 small businesses.

Representatives of several federal agencies made presentations on their activities and programs.  These agencies included the Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS) of which the CDC is a part, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the General Services Administration (GSA), the U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), and the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Presentations by representatives of several businesses also were made.  These include FedBid, the J.E. Group, and Rainmaker Growth Partners.

Copies of each of these presentations are now available for download at: http://gtpac.org/training/training-video.

Filed Under: GTPAC News Tagged With: CDC, government contract training, GTPAC, industry day

Will you win the right contracts to survive 2011?

November 15, 2010 By ei2admin

Be prepared for more competition, tighter margins and big opportunities for politically savvy, nimble-footed companies.

The economy — and specifically the federal market — might seem stuck in dirge mode, but it is changing, in subtle, sometimes dissonant ways. And woe to the company that doesn’t alter its step to match the new tune.

To record and distill those changes, Washington Technology talked for several hours with four federal business gurus to create a chapbook for federal contracting in 2011.

Get any group of experts together, and differences of opinion and points of agreement will arise. So it was with our four: Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at FedSources Inc.; Philip Kiviat, partner at Guerra Kiviat Inc.; Kevin Plexico, senior vice president of research and analysis services at Input Inc.; and Warren Suss, president of Suss Consulting Inc.

On some points, such as opportunities for the big score, they were unanimous: It ain’t happening.

“We’re definitely seeing a shift away from large-scale, single-award contracts that are intended to build, develop or integrate something,” Plexico said.

“Most of the top opportunities in this year’s [Input top 20 opportunities for 2011] were multiple-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity vehicles,” he added.

“Many of the contracts that have driven our community in past years have been the large single-award programs that companies around the Beltway are geared up to respond to,” Suss said. But “the world is going to change, and companies will need to come up with different models to respond to a larger number of small opportunities.”

“Fiscal 2011 will be the year of the task order,” Suss said.

Our gurus also gave politics a stronger new emphasis in their calculations.

“The most important thing I can say when I talk to IT people — who tend to view IT as the most important thing in the world because it’s changing everything — is that IT is important, but it’s not immune to the influence of politics,” Kiviat said.

The recent shift of power in the House will especially bear watching, Bjorklund said. “The White House submits a budget, but Congress does the appropriating,” he added.

And with the collective Republican eye on reducing the federal budget, “everything in IT contracting is a target for political scrimping,” Kiviat said.

“We’re already seeing fewer large procurements” as a result of the Office of Management and Budget’s suspension in June of new financial systems at major agencies, he said.

In September, OMB canceled upgrades at the Small Business Administration and Veterans Affairs Department and is trimming financial IT projects at the Environmental Protection Agency and Housing and Urban Development Department.

The Army’s Enhanced Army Global Logistics Enterprise (EAGLE) contract, set for award in the second quarter of fiscal 2011, has been touted as a $30 billion opportunity, subsuming five programs and about 200 other contracts.

“But when we added up what’s being spent on the contracts it’s replacing, we came up with more like $10 billion, which is still a lot of money,” Bjorklund said. “But it’s not $30 billion.”

EAGLE has a big IT component, although its emphasis is not on conventional IT, such as networks. The contracts that EAGLE replaces have research and development projects, but the new contract has no R&D component, Bjorklund pointed out in FedSources’ Army EAGLE Reality Check report.

OMB’s system slashing is an effort “to reduce the size of large programs, make them more manageable and reduce the risk of failure,” Kiviat said. But it also will contribute to less innovation, he said.

“Whenever you do anything large or innovative, you increase risk,” he said. “Democrats did try to increase innovation, which means increasing risk-taking — what’s the saying? If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.”

However, Kiviat added, “failures could well be fodder for political grandstanding, so agencies will tend to put themselves up as targets less often, which means less innovation. That’s bad for contractors, especially those companies that are innovators. It will also take people who are interested in innovation and make them look elsewhere: in the commercial market.”

Bad, Getting Worse

To recap for a moment, we’ve got fewer single, big-dollar opportunities, politics stirring the pot more than ever before, trimmed budgets and less risk-taking. Look for those trends to alter the competitive landscape, put pressure on established federal market players and create openings for new ones.

Together with the general pinch and sag of the U.S. and global economies, “overall contract spending dropping by 4.8 percent,” Bjorklund said. “Whenever that happens, many new interests flock to federal government contracts, believing they’re going to be the saving grace for their business.”

Not all will succeed. “Particularly in the federal space, there are steep barriers to entry,” Plexico said. “But once you’re in, you have the credibility you need for agencies to spend contracting dollars.”

Many of the large IDIQ contracts, from the General Services Administration’s $65 billion Alliant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s $5 billion CDC Information Management Services, have already been awarded.

Contracts that are still to be awarded, in addition to EAGLE, include the Health and Human Services Department’s $30 billion CIO-Solutions and Partners 3 and the Defense Department’s $15 billion DOD Language Interpretation and Translation Enterprises.

Getting on those contracts guarantees nothing. But whether new to the federal market or an old hand, getting on them “is important from a positioning point of view,” Plexico said. “Take an agency like the Homeland Security Department, which may do 40 percent of its work through [DHS’ Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions contract]. If you’re not on EAGLE, you don’t have the opportunity to compete.”

But even when the contract is in place and the money ostensibly is there, it can disappear.

“Companies are going to have to be much more careful in qualifying prospects,” Kiviat said. “It’s not just about: Are the dollars there? But will they stay there? Some already planned procurements may be canceled because of the unknown emphasis of what Republicans will do.”

Take OMB’s halting and trimming of financial system modernization projects, he said. “That could happen to any large enterprisewide modernization project. Say an agency says it wants to modernize human resources management in all its subagencies. The question a contractor has to ask is: Will that project withstand congressional oversight, or could it get frozen?”

Agencies will be showing up not only with smaller purses but also with bigger demands, including tighter margins and greater use.

“DOD wants to avoid having military organizations develop their own systems,” Suss said. “They want to be able to invest once in a new utility or capability, then allow its use many times by all DOD users. For example, the Army, rather than go with its own enterprise e-mail systems just handed over [that acquisition] to DISA.”

The increased competition and decreased budgets will help ensure that big protests will continue. The lack of a government acquisition workforce that is large enough and experienced enough will contribute to protests.

“Take the recent protest by Google over the Interior Department contract, which mandated use of Microsoft software,” Kiviat said. “Everyone in procurement knew that protest was coming. As long as you have acquisition people who do something like that and don’t figure out how to do deal with it beforehand, you’ll continue to have protests.”

Transform Yourself

Once hardware-heavy, contracts increasingly are shifting to services — by 50 percent during the past four to five years, according to Input.

“When contracts were for hardware, all you’d have to do was deliver it. You didn’t even have to know what it did,” Kiviat said. “In services, it’s important to know what they need to have done and how to do it.”

For those companies that know that, there will be more opportunities for providing managed services at a fixed price, Suss said. A shift to cloud-based services “will drive companies to make more upfront investments in infrastructure and technology before realizing a return,” he said. “That may create a significant disequilibrium in the federal environment.”

Thinking about cloud must go beyond the hype, beyond the buzzwords to be a viable technology for government, Plexico said. “Agencies — and contractors hoping to win their business — have to ask themselves: What’s the agency’s exit strategy for dealing with sensitive data if there’s an incident?”

It’s also “going to require a different bidding model than the current [time-and-materials] model,” Suss said. “In this new environment, shops will have to deliver quick turnarounds on proposals,” a feat not all companies will be able to pull off.

More than ever before, success in the federal market will require a defined goal and an informed strategy for attaining it, our experts said.

“Big companies sometimes have a strategy,” Kiviat said. “Small companies don’t have them; they just fight each battle as it comes up. This is time for some strategic thinking, no matter what size you are.” 

With so many potential pitfalls, it’s important to keep your sense of perspective, Plexico said. “The federal space is still a healthy and vibrant market as compared to the rest of the economic environment.”

Here also, our experts found agreement. The status quo is transitory, existing only for an instant and not to be confused with a promise.

“There are going to be losers,” Suss said. “Some companies that are in business now won’t be able to stay in business next year.”

But when a window closes, a door opens. “It’s going to create a fertile ground for mergers and acquisitions, and I think we’ll see an increase in that area,” Suss said.

—  By Sami Lais – Washington Technology magazine – Nov. 10, 2010 – About the Author: Sami Lais is a special contributor to Washington Technology.

Filed Under: Contracting Tips Tagged With: Alliant, Army, CDC, competition, DoD, EAGLE, federal contracting, government contracting, GSA, HHS, Homeland Security, information technology, innovation, Interior Dept., IT, OMB, small business, VA

Recent large IT contracts could cut prices for government, experts say

October 13, 2010 By ei2admin

The Social Security Administration, Homeland Security Department, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention each have awarded during the past month multibillion dollar, comprehensive information technology contracts that could prevent the types of cost overruns that have long plagued projects of all sizes, according to some procurement experts.

The Office of Management and Budget has recently issued numerous policies to curb contracting waste, as well as directives focused solely on IT acquisition reform. None of the memos ban megacontracts, but they do instruct agency heads to renegotiate existing agreements for lower prices and reduce reliance on high-risk contract vehicles.

The three agencies engineered their pacts for an array of services in a way that would ensure competitive prices, ease of ordering and more consistency in contract administration, said Ray Bjorklund, chief knowledge officer at market research firm FedSources. SSA awarded a $2.8 billion contract to four vendors; DHS signed a $2.63 billion deal with one of 59 suppliers participating in a governmentwide contract program; and CDC entered into an agreement worth a potential $5 billion with 30 companies.

But while the trend of one-stop-shop jumbo deals might be positive for the government, it is not always beneficial for vendors that must pay more for a chance to participate in all the contracts.

The companies rack up additional bidding costs, as well as recurring sales and administrative expenses to track upcoming orders — which they sometimes recoup by raising government prices down the road, Bjorklund said.

“If OMB is trying to achieve a less risky contracting environment, I’d say these contracts do that. They’re less risky, [but] it doesn’t mean they’ve mitigated all the risks,” he said.

In each case, interested parties had to or will have to negotiate lower prices to win a contract. While DHS awarded its contract to Northrop Grumman Corp., the company already had competed to get into the huge Alliant program, which consists of a group of contractors authorized to provide governmentwide IT services.

The three projects are variations of multiple-award indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contracts, in which the federal agency has the right to issue an unknown number of work orders during a given period of time.

At CDC offices worldwide, 30 suppliers that were named on Sept. 23 will have to vie for task orders in multiple categories of work during the next decade, CDC Chief Information Officer Jim Seligman said. Groups of three to 11 awardees will bid against each other for services, including information management, management consulting and IT infrastructure.

In addition, CDC officials said the contract reduces administrative costs by merging an existing support services contract and numerous other orders placed through various vehicles, such as General Service Administration schedules, the procurement agency’s list of companies approved to conduct government business.

Dispensing separate contracts saps time, energy and government resources, Seligman explained. “By consolidating these contracts and then having ongoing competitions will achieve better pricing,” he said.

DHS is paying Northrop Grumman to install networks at the agency’s new headquarters on the campus of the former Saint Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast Washington, according to a federal award notice issued on Sept. 23. The work probably will not cost more than $300 million during any one year of the 10-year contract, according to Bjorklund. “Multibillion dollar contracts don’t equate to multibillions in a single year,” he noted.

SSA officials have said they will replace any of the four companies that perform poorly during its seven-year technology refresh project, so no contractors are guaranteed continuous pay. “The fact that there is an ability to fire a contractor means that the competitive practices are still at work,” Bjorklund said. The contract was awarded on Sept. 10 to Accenture, Computer Sciences Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman.

Agency IDIQs simplify the contracting process for the government, but they can complicate the bidding process for contractors, which must repeatedly submit proposals to get into each pool of potential money.

“I don’t think a lot of people in government are sensitive to what impact it has on industry,” he said. “When you start making contractors incur more expenses, many of those additional expenses are rolled up into future pricing.”

Meanwhile, some good government groups view all billion-dollar projects as risky. “They should all be examined thoroughly” by White House officials, said OMB Watch Executive Director Gary Bass, a critic of federal contracting.

The Obama administration “expects all agency IT contracts to be well-planned, well-managed and deliver successful results on time and within budget,” said OMB spokeswoman Moira Mack. “When that does not happen, agencies are expected to make timely and effective interventions to remedy the deficiencies in contractor performance.”


— By Aliya Sternstein – NextGov.com –  10/04/10 – © 2010 NATIONAL JOURNAL GROUP, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: bid proposal, CDC, federal contracting, government trends, Homeland Security, information technology, IT, OMB, Social Security Administration

CDC increases competition with $5 billion IT contract

October 8, 2010 By ei2admin

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has signed a $5 billion deal with 30 vendors that will compete for information technology work during the next decade, CDC officials said on Thursday.

The agreement, which consolidates several expiring IT contracts, continues and expands a seven-year initiative called the CDC Information Technology Support Project, which Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. won in 2003 to provide service to more than 200 information systems. The agency now operates about 400 major systems, according to the solicitation for the new information management services project.

The incumbent companies are among the winners of the new contract, which was awarded on Sept. 23.

Some analysts said the pact makes sound business sense given the fact that the billions of dollars will not be paid out all in one year and CDC’s good track record on fiscal responsibility.

For example, every major spending category at CDC is either flat or declining going into fiscal year 2011, according to Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president at market research firm FedSources. He also noted the agency recently combined its 13 IT infrastructure services to cut operating costs by 21 percent, or $23 million, according to CDC officials.

The 10-year deal is an indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contract for information management, management consulting and IT infrastructure. The vendors will vie for tasks in each of the service areas. Information management involves the planning, development and life-cycle maintenance of systems; management consulting includes broad services such as business case development, training, communications and program risk assessment; IT infrastructure encompasses help desk services, network support, data center operations, information security and conferencing assistance.

“CIMS covers the entire range of IT services at the CDC, while CITS covered a more limited scope of IT — application and information management,” Lockheed spokeswoman Kimberly Jaindl said.

CDC Chief Information Officer Jim Seligman said on Friday the agency tried “to get a broader array of suppliers as well as ongoing competition” to obtain the most cutting-edge tech and achieve better pricing.

CDC relies on computers for communicating information and for supporting research such as conducting epidemiological studies that require scientific data management and performing complex analyses of population data. The solicitation for work, issued December 2009, stated the contract would provide services to offices in Atlanta, where most of the agency’s 15,000 employees live; Cincinnati; Morgantown, W.Va.; Hyattsville, Md.; Research Triangle Park, N.C.; and other cities. Support also must extend to staff working in developing nations and at quarantine offices in major urban areas.


— by Aliya Sternstein – NextGov.com – 10/01/10 – © 2010 – NATIONAL JOURNAL GROUP, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: CDC, competition, federal contracting, IDIQ, information technology, IT

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