Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

Good news for new tech: Panel recommends DoD IT acquisition reform

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As information technology (IT) companies have known for years, the U.S. government regularly acquires inferior technology, often slowly and at high prices. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), which stands to benefit the most from state-of-the-art technology, is encumbered by a web of complex and archaic procurement regulations. For emerging technology companies looking to serve the government, DoD’s procurement approach can be a major source of frustration, discouraging many of them from entering the federal arena altogether.

Fortunately, meaningful reform may be on the horizon. The Section 809 Panel, a group tasked by the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act to identify ways to improve the defense acquisition system, has recently set forth three recommendations aimed at streamlining DoD’s IT procurement process. These IT-focused recommendations are found in Section 3 of the panel’s Volume 3 Report, at numbers 43 through 45. The panel recommended the following:

  • Rec. 43: Revise acquisition regulations to enable more flexible and effective procurement of consumption-based solutions.
  • Rec. 44: Exempt DoD from Clinger-Cohen Act provisions in Title 40.
  • Rec. 45: Create a pilot program for contracting directly with IT consultants through an online talent marketplace.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/good-news-for-new-tech-panel-recommends-46249/

Vendors can still weigh in on GAO’s 5-year tech contract

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The Government Accountability Office is looking for an industry partner to help shepherd its technology improvements over the next five years, and prospective vendors now have a little more time to shape that acquisition.

GAO issued a request for information in December, with an original response date of Jan. 24. That due date has been extended to 2 p.m. on Feb. 2. As this is only an RFI and not an official solicitation, vendors don’t need to participate in order to be considered for the final award. However, the acquisition is still in the formative stages, and information provided through the RFI will affect the scope and form of the final solicitation.

The RFI and other market research being conducted now will inform the eventual strategy for upgrading all of GAO’s IT systems, with a focus on moving to the cloud—where appropriate—and advancing the office’s mobile capabilities.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/01/vendors-can-still-weigh-gaos-5-year-tech-contract/145408/

80 small businesses to get a spot on Alliant 2

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The federal government is likely to award around 80 companies a spot on a massive contracting system approving certain IT companies to sell to government.

Alliant 2, known as a “Government-Wide Acquisition Contract,” is managed by the General Services Administration. Last month, GSA made awards on its larger $50 billion IT GWAC, with a special emphasis on companies selling emerging technology such as artificial intelligence.

The Alliant 2 small business contracts are worth up to $15 billion, with a five-year base and five-year extension option. GSA on Thursday published a pre-award list of businesses likely to get a spot.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2017/12/80-small-businesses-get-spot-alliant-2/144393/

ATDC taking applications for fall 2017 venture showcase road trip

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The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), the state of Georgia’s technology incubator, is now accepting applications from high-growth technology startups for its upcoming Dec. 4, 2017 Venture Showcase Roadtrip to New York City.

The application period is open from Oct. 2 through 5 p.m. on Oct. 20, and any Georgia-headquartered technology company raising a Series A round or higher is eligible.  The 10 selected companies will be notified Oct. 27 after the selection committee has reviewed all applicants.

The Venture Showcase Roadtrip is co-hosted by Morris, Manning & Martin, Silicon Valley Bank, Venture Atlanta, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, and Aprio.

Those interested in applying should send a one-page executive summary to ATDC Assistant Director Jane McCracken at jane@atdc.org.

The initiative is an offshoot of the ATDC’s Investor Connect program, and allows funders — from angels to venture capitalists and other later-stage investors — to network with the highly vetted, market disruptive companies in ATDC’s Signature and Accelerate portfolios.

David Thomas headshot
David Thomas, founder and CEO of Evident, an ATDC Signature portfolio company.

“The Venture Showcase Roadtrip introduces investors to a carefully curated group of companies to foster meaningful and targeted conversations and connections, as well as give the venture firms a sense of the caliber of technology startups in Georgia,” McCracken said. “Our inaugural roadtrip to the West Coast earlier this year is a perfect example of the kinds of connections we facilitate.”

In that trip to San Francisco, 11 Georgia companies met with a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Evident, an ATDC Signature portfolio company, met with New Enterprise Associates (NEA). That initial connection resulted in NEA becoming the lead investor in Evident’s recent $8.8 million Series A round.

“The San Francisco trip was an important milestone for our company. The ATDC name got us in front of an extremely selective and highly sought after group of venture capitalists eager to meet quality, disruptive companies,” said David Thomas, Evident’s founder and CEO. “It facilitated a critically important series of initial meetings that ultimately led to our successful Series A.”

ABOUT ATDC:

The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a program of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the state of Georgia’s technology startup incubator. Founded in 1980 by the Georgia General Assembly which funds it each year, ATDC’s mission is to work with entrepreneurs in Georgia to help them learn, launch, scale, and succeed in the creation of viable, disruptive technology companies. Since its founding, ATDC has grown to become one of the longest running and most successful university-affiliated incubators in the United States, with its graduate startup companies raising $3 billion in investment financing and generating more than $12 billion in revenue in the state of Georgia. To learn more, visit atdc.org.

GSA creates Schedule SIN for health IT services

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Health Information Technology (IT) is one of the fastest-growing fields in the IT industry, in part due to a spurt of government technology modernization initiatives. After seeing skyrocketing demand across federal government agencies for the past several years, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) decided to prioritize Health IT as its own separate category within GSA Schedule 70 by establishing Health IT Special Item Number (SIN) 132-56.

The new SIN was officially established on August 1, 2016. It is the first SIN of its kind directly correlated to Health IT in compliance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).

This new SIN category will give Health IT companies access to business with federal government agencies including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Defense Health Agency (a joint integrated Combat Support Agency that enables the U.S Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force medical services to provide a medically ready force and ready medical force to Combatant Commands in both peacetime and wartime). As military and civilian healthcare reforms take effect, GSA expects these agencies’ demand to continue to grow.

Part of the justification for establishing a separate category is that Health IT is truly different — in that companies involved in the Health IT industry require very specific skillsets and have to comply with various healthcare security standards, including the Privacy Act of 1974, Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA).

Keep reading this article at: http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/gsa-has-created-a-separate-category-for-55952/

Tech trade group to Congress: Let’s collaborate

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A trade group representing some of the largest IT companies is calling for a collaborative approach among the new Congress, the Trump administration and the tech industry.

ITICIn a blog post explaining the tech industry’s legislation priorities for the 115th Congress, the Information Technology Industry Council outlined four priority areas that share commonalities with President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda. Chief among them is reforming acquisition and procurement, the blog states.

“Federal agencies spend approximately 80 percent of their total technology budget on maintaining outdated legacy computer systems,” the blog states. “Congress should reform the way the federal government procures and utilizes technology to ensure all government users keep pace with innovation and modern solutions.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2017/01/tech-trade-group-new-congress-lets-collaborate/134507

Federal IT spending to remain flat over next 5 years

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Federal BudgetWhen the Obama administration’s 2017 budget was released in February, it showed that IT spending was set to grow 1.8 percent, up to $89.9 billion over last year’s total, with about $51.3 billion designated for civilian agencies.

This was positive news for the defense and tech contractors that serve the federal government, but the uptick may not be a sign of things to come. According to the analysts at Deltek, federal IT spending will actually decline over the next five years as agencies attempt to modernize aging IT infrastructure and reduce duplicative technologies and investments.

The Federal Information Technology Market report released earlier this month estimates total federal IT spending declining from $99.8 billion in fiscal 2016 to $98.3 billion by 2021.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2016/07/deltek-federal-it-spending-remain-flat-over-next-5-years/129890

Final federal rule issued on safeguarding contractor information systems

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Federal Contract InformationAfter years of gestation, a final rule was promulgated May 16, 2016 to mandate minimum cyber defenses for companies that do government business. This Federal Acquisition Regulations rule – “Basic Safeguarding of Contractor Information Systems” 81 Fed. Reg. 30439 – seeks to protect the confidentiality and integrity of federal contract information (FCI) that resides in or transits through any contractor information system.

Why this rule?

Agencies are required by the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) to protect federal information. The obligation extends to nonpublic information provided by the federal government to its contractors. Unauthorized cyber extraction of federal information has caused genuine injury to national interests. Using this new FAR provision, every federal agency now will require minimum cyber protection for FCI.

What is federal contract information?

FCI is defined as nonpublic information that is “provided for or generated for the government” under a contract to “develop or deliver a product or service to the government, but not including information provided to the public or simple transactional information. The new rule protects “information systems” rather than carefully defined information types, however. If a contractor processes stores or transmits any FCI, its information system becomes subject to minimum enumerated safeguards. Where a contractor information system hosts FCI and other, non-federal information, the rule applies to the whole system.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/solutions-ideas/2016/06/13/far-rule-federal-contractor-information/85825436/

Additional time provided to implement security controls under new cyber rule

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On December 30, 2015, the Department of Defense (DoD) issued a Second Interim Rule amending its “Network Penetration Reporting and Contracting for Cloud Services” Interim Rule and giving contractors until December 31, 2017 to implement the NIST SP 800-171 security controls required by DFARS 252.204-7012.

NIST Pub 800-171
Click on image above to see a copy of NIST publication 800-171.

As noted in a previous post, DoD has already issued a class deviation giving covered contractors up to nine (9) months (from the date of contract award or modification incorporating the new clause(s)) to satisfy the requirement for “multifactor authentication for local and network access” found in Section 3.5.3 of NIST SP 800-171.  This current revision appears responsive to significant concerns raised by industry about compliance with the remaining safeguarding requirements imposed overnight on contractors on August 26, 2015.

In the Federal Register notice, DoD states that it is granting additional time “for contractors to assess their information systems and to set forth an economically efficient strategy to implement the new security requirements at a pace that fits within normal information technology lifecycle timelines.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2015/12/time-is-on-my-side-dod-hears-industry-concerns-additional-time-provided-to-implement-security-controls-under-new-cyber-rule/

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/

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