Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

DHS would get more power to bar risky contractors under dueling proposals

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Two House Republicans are working on legislation that would expand the Homeland Security Department’s authority to deny contracts to companies that pose cybersecurity supply chain threats while the Trump administration is pushing an even more expansive proposal.

The bill in the House will be modeled on authorities Congress gave the Defense Department in 2011 that were implemented in 2015, said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., who is drafting the bill with Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

Under those rules, Pentagon contracting officers can bar vendors that pose a security risk from competing for contracts before they’re awarded and halt contractors from hiring risky subcontractors after an award.

Under current Homeland Security Department rules, contracting officers working on unclassified contracts can’t bar vendors before an award based on information provided by intelligence agencies, Soraya Correa, the department’s chief procurement officer, who testified before two House Homeland Security panels last Thursday.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2018/07/dhs-would-get-more-power-bar-risky-contractors-under-forthcoming-bill/149675/

Pentagon is planning another bug bounty contract

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The Pentagon is considering offering a broad bug bounty contract that would accommodate a variety of different bounty models on either short-term or continuous timeframes, according to contracting documents released earlier this month.

The move comes after two years during which the Defense Department and military services have launched five high-profile bug bounties targeting the Pentagon, Air Force, Army and the department’s travel booking system.

Bug bounties are contests in which ethical hackers are offered cash rewards for finding hackable vulnerabilities in websites, apps and other software. So far, the Pentagon and military services have paid out more than $400,000 for valid bug reports.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2018/05/pentagon-planning-another-bug-bounty-contract/148292/

Pentagon seeks to limit bid protests in federal court

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The Defense Department is proposing legislation to impose new constraints on government contractors’ ability to protest federal agencies’ award decisions, including by rolling back their rights to file bid protests in federal court.

Currently, companies who believe an agency mishandled a contract award have two independent forums to file protests: the Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (COFC). But some firms opt to take their cases to both.

If, for example, GAO denies or dismisses their protest, they still have the right to file a new claim at the COFC.

DoD’s proposal would essentially eliminate that option by requiring contractors to bring cases to COFC within 10 days of the agency’s award decision: the same deadline used by GAO. Since GAO has up to 100 days to sustain or deny a protest, a company could not wait and use the court as a backstop if it loses its case at GAO.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/defense-main/2018/05/pentagon-seeks-to-limit-bid-protests-in-federal-court/

Lockheed: Pentagon negotiators are becoming more unpredictable

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Pentagon negotiators have in recent months become more unpredictable and willing to ignore precedent, Lockheed Martin’s CFO said last week.  The seemingly new approach has slowed down talks on the latest batch of F-35 fighter jets and even on other weapons and gear that the U.S. Defense Department has been buying for decades, Bruce Tanner said.

“It’s not like negotiations were always easy, but I’ll say they were more predictable than they are today,” Tanner said in an interview Monday. “There’s just more things that are being changed or things that you thought were sort of foundational elements of negotiation that maybe weren’t up for negotiation that now seem to be up for negotiation.”

For example, he said, the government now wants companies to eat various costs they once would have been reimbursed for.

“Everyone should be interested in cost reduction, not simply not reimbursing elements of cost that you historically reimbursed,” Tanner said. “That’s a strange way to get cost reduction and, I would argue, a very short-sighted, not helpful, not healthy for the industry and ultimately not healthy for the folks in the Pentagon buying under that strategy to use that approach.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2018/03/lockheed-pentagon-negotiators-are-becoming-more-unpredictable/146432

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/

Policy shift: DoD is pushing major program management back to the military

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The Pentagon has steadily been pushing milestone authority for major defense programs to the individual military services, but shifting personnel down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense will take longer.

At a Dec. 7 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, logistics and technology, or AT&L, said her intention is to continue to hand off the day-to-day running of programs to the services, preferring her office serve as a kind of high-level group providing overall guidance.

“AT&L needs to be the strategic body with focus across the board, driving affordability and accountability, reducing timelines, and equipping the Services to execute their programs,” Lord said in prepared testimony, adding that the Defense Department awards an average of 1,800 new contracts a day and 36,000 delivery/task orders a day.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/pentagon/2017/12/11/policy-shift-dod-is-pushing-major-program-management-back-to-the-military/

Pentagon building wish list for new technology spending

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The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer is drafting a list of desired technologies as part of a new effort to coordinate the Defense Department’s research and development, including at U.S. laboratories and government-funded research centers.

“We think that we have to make choices and focus in a limited number of areas and put our funding on it,” Ellen Lord, undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters at the Reagan National Defense Forum, an annual gathering of defense industry and government leaders here.

The goal of the new “modernization strategy” is to “make sure that we are aligned across the services, across all of OSD [the Office of Secretary of Defense] on a strategy that gives us greater overmatch against our adversaries,” Lord said.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/business/2017/12/pentagon-building-wish-list-new-technology-spending/144249

Small business activist wins interim victory against Pentagon, Sikorsky

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For four years, the small but vocal American Small Business League has argued that large federal contractors mislead agencies and the public by overstating their use of small businesses as subcontractors to meet statutory goals.

In U.S. District Court in San Francisco last Friday, attorneys for the advocacy group led by Lloyd Chapman and based in Petaluma, Calif., successfully pried out the previously non-public names of suppliers and other subcontractors used by Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.

The helicopter maker had joined with the Defense and Justice departments in seeking to withhold such information as proprietary when submitted to the Pentagon under its 27-year-old Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program, designed to measure corporate potential for increasing small business opportunities in subcontracting.

Small business booster Chapman has long challenged the Pentagon’s program as nonproductive and oriented mostly toward obfuscating the degree to which large contractors win defense business intended for smaller ones.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2017/11/small-business-activist-wins-interim-victory-against-pentagon-sikorsky/142611 

Got something to sell to the Pentagon? It’s about to get easier

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pentagon-sealA new office just opened to help the Defense Department’s high-tech agency buy more easily from first-time sellers.

In the past, companies that had never sold to the government found it difficult to prove their qualifications to federal buyers.

Today, several agencies are trying to eliminate experience requirements, part of a deliberate effort to acquire cutting-edge technology from commercial companies that have, until now, avoided the federal marketplace.

The Pentagon’s research and development agency is one prominent example: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Microsystems Technology Office is introducing a “simpler contracting approach” for companies that haven’t sold to DARPA and haven’t won large Pentagon contracts, according to a recent announcement.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/10/got-something-sell-pentagon-its-about-get-easier/132320/

DoD invites you (well, some of you) to “Hack the Pentagon” this month

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Last Thursday (March 31, 2016) the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced the launch of a pilot bug-bounty program for the DoD’s public-facing websites.  Called “Hack the Pentagon,” the bounty program will be managed by HackerOne, the disclosure-as-a-service company founded by Alex Rice and Michiel Prins.

Since Hack the Pentagon is a pilot, its budget and duration are fairly modest by DoD standards. The Pentagon has budgeted $150,000 for the month-long bug hunt, which will begin on Monday, April 18 and end by Thursday, May 12. Payouts for accepted bugs will come from HackerOne and will be doled out by June 10.

Hack the Pentagon

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook did not specify which DoD sites would be considered fair game for Hack the Pentagon. “The program will target several DoD public websites which will be identified to the participants as the beginning of the challenge approaches,” he said. “Critical, mission-facing computer systems will not be involved in the program.”

The program is not open to everyone. HackerOne’s page sets out the conditions for those eligible for participation.

Keep reading this article at: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/dod-invites-you-well-some-of-you-to-hack-the-pentagon-this-month/

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