Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

Agencies spent record $64.7 billion on IT contracts in 2018

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Federal agencies spent a record $64.7 billion on IT contracts in fiscal 2018, according to research released last week by Bloomberg Government.

The nearly $65 billion spent represents a 9.5 percent increase over fiscal 2017 levels, and includes higher levels of spending in cybersecurity ($6.4 billion), cloud computing ($4.1 billion) and almost a doubling of other transaction authority spending, to $4.2 billion from $2.3 billion.

IT spending jumped in both civilian and defense agencies. Across the Defense Department, IT contract spending grew by about 12 percent to $33.8 billion — the highest nominal spending figure ever for the Defense Department, and highest adjusted for inflation IT contract spending since 2012.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2019/01/agencies-spent-record-647b-it-contracts-2018/154510/

GSA releases new IT modernization RFI in post-shutdown procurement deluge

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The General Services Administration released two pre-cursors to major acquisitions last week with the release of the draft solicitation for the $8 billion back-office cloud procurement and a request for information to expand the Centers of Excellence initiative.

The Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and GSA launched a major cloud and IT modernization effort by announcing an industry day on Feb. 26 in Washington, D.C.

And the Office of Personnel Management is exploring how to create a central portal for the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program.

These are just a few of the more than 4,700 requests for proposals, RFIs and awards released on FedBizOpps.gov in the week after the partial government shutdown ended, opening up the acquisition floodgates.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook/2019/02/gsa-releases-new-it-modernization-rfi-in-post-shutdown-procurement-deluge/

Pentagon’s commercial cloud will be a single award — and industry isn’t happy

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The Defense Department plans to issue a single award for a commercial cloud computing contract that some analysts believe could be worth as much as $10 billion over the next 10 years.

Pentagon officials released a draft request for proposal last week that coincided with an industry day regarding the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud procurement, an effort that began in September.

Companies have until March 21 to submit feedback as they position themselves to compete on what is assuredly an aggressive acquisition timeline. Pentagon officials said they plan to post the final solicitation in May before awarding a single indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract in September.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/03/pentagons-commercial-cloud-will-be-single-awardand-industry-isnt-happy/146482/

Company calls out ‘old guard’ after Pentagon cuts its $950 million cloud contract by 93 percent

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One week ago, Virginia-based REAN Cloud was preparing to hire an additional 100 employees to meet demand across the Defense Department after it received a $950 million other transaction authority agreement to provide cloud services across Defense agencies.

Now the company is calling out the contracting community that it feels helped successfully pressure the Pentagon to curb its contract award by more than 90 percent — from $950 million to $65 million — and looking for answers from the Defense Department.

“Based on the threat of legal action and protest by the old guard, the only winners in this delay are those large companies that stand to lose money if the Defense Department proceeds with innovation. In the meantime, the cost of maintaining antiquated government infrastructure has not subsided,” said Sekhar Puli, the company’s managing partner, in a statement.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/03/company-calls-out-old-guard-after-pentagon-cuts-its-nearly-1-billion-cloud-contract/146529/

DIUx and DoD ‘other transaction’ prototype agreements: Fast track to DoD funding

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On February 7, 2018 the Department of Defense (DoD) awarded REAN Cloud a contract valued at up to $950 million to work with defense agencies to migrate existing applications to commercial cloud solutions. The award is of significant relevance to efforts currently underway in connection with the upcoming DoD Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure — or “JEDI” — procurement. However, the award is also important in a broader context in that it was issued as a follow-on production contract to an “other transaction” (OT) prototype agreement awarded on an expedited basis by DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental organization (DIUx). The award, therefore, reflects DoD’s increased comfort with issuing high-value production contracts following preliminary work with DIUx under OT prototype agreements.

In 2015, DoD founded DIUx to increase its access to technical innovations from nontraditional contractors. Defense contractors’ spend on research and development in the last decade has been adversely impacted by increasing budget cuts, protracted procurement cycles, and numerous government shutdowns. As a result, DoD has both needed and wanted access to cutting-edge technology in the commercial sector, but commercial companies with robust global markets have historically been wary of the significant compliance obligations that come with traditional defense procurements. DIUx is the Department’s attempt to contract with these innovators in a way that mimics the speed and terms of commercial transactions and significantly reduces compliance obligations.

Essential to the success of this approach is the use of OT agreements to govern DIUx transactions. According to recent congressional testimony, since it was established, DIUx has awarded 61 OT agreements totaling $145 million and averaging only 78 days from initial contact with a potential partner to signing an agreement. And, beginning in September of last year, DoD has followed some of those DIUx awards with follow-on production contracts. In addition to the recent $950 million award to REAN, DIUx has awarded two more production contracts together valued at up to more than $1 billion. Importantly, DoD can issue these high-value follow-on contracts without competition as long as competition was established for an initial DIUx OT award.

Recent efforts, therefore, suggest that DIUx, OT agreements, and follow-on production contracts are here to stay, and potential contractors of all sizes and sophistication should understand how they may impact the competitive landscape.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/diux-and-dod-other-transaction-prototype-agreements-fast-track-to-dod-funding

Pentagon announces industry day for major cloud acquisition

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The Defense Department will take the next step in its quest for an enterprise-wide cloud computing contract potentially worth billions on March 7, hosting an industry day.

The industry day, which will take place at the Sheraton Hotel in Pentagon City, will give tech and defense contractors the opportunity to listen to a series of Defense Department officials provide updates on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud acquisition. According to the public posting, officials expect to release a draft request for proposal — a precursor to a contract the department intends to award in fiscal 2018 — with instructions for submitting written questions. Officials will not take live questions during the event.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/02/pentagon-announces-industry-day-major-cloud-acquisition/146062/

Moving to the cloud for DoD becoming a complex acquisition affair

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The Defense Department’s more aggressive move to the cloud will not be without some ups and downs.

Feb. 7th was the perfect example of those trials and tribulations. Within a matter of hours, DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit — Experimental (DIUx), expanded a third pilot into a full-fledged effort to make it easier for services and agencies to obtain cloud computing services.

DIUx awarded a contract that could be worth up to $950 million to REAN Cloud. The five-year deal will let DoD buy cloud services from REAN through a new streamlined process. Under the contract, REAN will provide access to Amazon Web Services using an automatic pricing and procurement model.

While at the same time, the Pentagon learned its $6.7 million contract for support services for its Cloud Executive Steering Group came under protest at the Government Accountability Office.  DoD launched the steering group in September and then reshuffled its members in January.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2018/02/moving-to-the-cloud-for-dod-becoming-a-complex-acquisition-affair/

Impact of FedRAMP for Small Businesses

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Did you know that over 30% of FedRAMP Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) are small businesses?  When this statistic is shared across industry and the federal community, people are quite surprised — and pleased!  Since small businesses represent an essential component of FedRAMP, organizers of the program realized it was essential to engage directly with the small business community to gather feedback to improve the program.

The convenor of FedRAMP, the General Services Administration (GSA), recently reached out to more than 40 small businesses engaged with FedRAMP to hear their feedback, learn about their experience with FedRAMP, and gather best practices to share across the small business CSP community. These CSPs spanned all stages of the FedRAMP process: In-Process, Ready, and Authorized.

From these meetings, GSA learned that most of the best practices for achieving a FedRAMP ATO are the same for both large and small CSP. For example:

  • Be prepared and utilize the Readiness Assessment Report,
  • Engage early and often with the FedRAMP PMO, and
  • Know the ins and outs of your system.

However, there were three unique differences that small businesses who have made it through FedRAMP repeatedly told us during our interviews:

Bigger Impact to Resources – But More Agile Teams

Pursuing and maintaining a FedRAMP Authority to Operate (ATO) proportionally requires more resources for a small business, requiring a team with specialized skillsets and costs associated with hiring a Third Party Assessment Organization (3PAO). As a result, staff often wear multiple hats and blend several duties into their role. This requires monitoring resource allocation carefully. Yet, the organizational structure of small businesses may provide some advantages. For example, teams don’t operate in silos and CSPs don’t have to navigate bureaucracy. With more centralized decision making and fewer layers of management, the process can go faster.

Levels Playing Field During Acquisition

Additionally, having a FedRAMP Authorization levels the playing field for acquisitions, as some Federal Agencies choose to require a FedRAMP ATO in their competitive procurement process.

Increased Security

Finally, being FedRAMP-Authorized can enhance the company’s internal security processes and rigor across all their products — not just those that are authorized — creating higher and more rigorous security standards for all systems and increasing system maturity.

The governance of FedRAMP is comprised of different executive branch entities that work in a collaborative manner to develop, manage, and operate the program.

Source: https://www.fedramp.gov/impact-of-fedramp-for-small-businesses/

Pentagon’s next cloud contract could be worth billions

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According to an internal strategy document obtained by Nextgov, the Pentagon aims to award a 10-year cloud computing contract—potentially worth billions—to a single company by the fourth quarter of 2018.

The contract would call on one commercial cloud service provider to host unclassified, secret and top secret Defense Department data, and the Pentagon’s approach mirrors the CIA’s enterprisewide approach to cloud four years ago, which resulted in a 10-year, $600 million contract with Amazon Web Services. AWS has since invested heavily to provide capabilities across all data classification levels.

The similarities between the Defense’s early cloud strategy and the CIA’s has rival tech companies worried that the department’s acquisition may lean toward AWS. In any case, such a massive contract could disrupt the $100 billion federal IT market and leave the winner in a position to dominate it for years to come.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2017/12/pentagons-next-cloud-contract-could-be-worth-billions/144506/

New research may improve communications during natural disasters

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Storms like Hurricane Irma and other natural disasters bring with them lots of uncertainty – where will they go, how much damage will they cause. But, what is certain is that no matter where they strike, natural disasters knock out power.

And, no power means no internet for thousands of people in affected areas.

However, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are proposing a new way of gathering and sharing information during natural disasters that does not rely on the internet.

Using computing power built into mobile phones, routers, and other hardware to create a network, emergency managers and first responders will be able to share and act on information gathered from people impacted by hurricanes, tornados, floods, and other disasters.

“Increasingly, data gathered from passive and active sensors that people carry with them, such as their mobile phones, is being used to inform situational awareness in a variety of settings,” said Kishore Ramachandran, computer science professor at Georgia Tech.

“In this way, humans are providing beneficial social sensing services. However, current social sensing services depend on internet connectivity since the services are deployed on central cloud platforms.”

In a paper presented earlier this year at the 2nd International Workshop on Social Sensing, the Georgia Tech research team detailed how it may be possible to access these centralized services using a decentralized network that leverages the growing amount of computing power at the “edge” of the internet.

This ability will give a huge advantage to first responders.

In a flooded area, for example, search and rescue personnel using a geo-distributed network would be able to continuously ping enabled phones, sensors, and other devices in an area to determine their exact locations. The data is used to create density maps of people in that search region. These maps are then used to prioritize and guide emergency response teams.

The Georgia Tech proposal takes advantages of edge computing. Also known as fog computing, edge computing places more processing capabilities in sensing devices – like surveillance cameras, embedded pavement sensors, and others, as well as in consumer devices like cell phones, readers, and tablets – in order to improve network latency between sensors, apps, and users.

Rather than just being able to communicate through the internet with central cloud platforms, the Georgia Tech team has demonstrated that by harnessing edge computing resources, sensing devices can be enabled to identify and communicate with other sensors in an area.

“We believe fog computing can become a potent enabler of decentralized, local social sensing services that can operate when internet connectivity is constrained,” said Ramachandran.

“This capability will provide first responders and others with the level of situational awareness they need to make effective decisions in emergency situations.”

The team has proposed a generic software architecture for social sensing applications that is capable of exploiting the fog-enabled devices. The design has three components – a central management function that resides in the cloud, a data processing element placed in the fog infrastructure, and a sensing component on the user’s device.

The researchers say that it is not enough to simply run a centralized social sensing service on a number of parallel fog nodes.

“Rather, the social sensing service has to become a distributed service capable of discovering available fog nodes and building a network that aggregates and shares information between social sensors that are connected to different fog nodes,” said computer science Ph.D. student Harshit Gupta.

Beyond emergency response during natural disasters, the team believes its proposed fog architecture can also benefit communities with limited or no internet access. These include applications for public transportation management, job recruitment, and housing.

Another possible application of the new approach is monitoring sensing devices in remote areas.

To monitor far-flung devices in areas with no internet access, a bus could be outfitted with fog-enabled sensing capabilities. As it travels in remote areas it would collect data from sensing devices. Once in range of internet connectivity, the “data mule” bus would upload the information to the centralized cloud-based platforms.

“In places that did not benefit from the first wave of cloud-based social sensing services, our hope is that these communities can leapfrog having to rely solely on the internet and directly use fog-based services,” said Ramachandran.

Source: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2017/09/08/new-research-may-improve-communications-during-natural-disasters

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