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Government Contractor’s Blog

You Get What You Pay For

The Commerce Department is succeeding in an area where most other agencies have failed: the shared services arena. Glen Davidson, the former executive director of enterprise services at Commerce, who led the shared service’s effort said, “the initiative is saving millions of dollars, providing better services and setting Commerce up of for future successes.”(Miller, J., Federal News Network December 10, 2018)

According to Davidson, Commerce may have paid less in the past, but the quality of services was substandard. He felt that poor quality and lack of timeliness likely impeded the mission. Davidson believes the impact of shared services is clear particularly around IT services.

Rod Turk, the acting Commerce chief information officer, gave a great example of how shared services work.  He recently shared how something as simple as taking printers off of employees desks and moving to a centralized and secure approach reduced costs for printing and maintenance of the printers. According to Turk, the next big effort will be around IT shared services for identity credentialing and access management (ICAM).

Davidson explained why Commerce has been so successful with shared services

•A long view of the effort was taken. It was a crawl-walk-run scenario.

•Data was painstakingly collected The data set a true baseline of current costs, as in the example above, for printers.

•It was understood that it would take money to save money.

Davidson looked well beyond the cost for labor. He said, “Most people look at labor costs. But I go beyond that and look at the costs of the building, electricity, the operations, and maintenance of the technology platform and other things so I could determine total costs. There is a lot of information that currently exists in the systems that we have, but you have to go and find it. No one even knew exactly how many people were employed at Commerce. My standup costs came from Commerce’s working capital fund that is largely made up of contributions from all the bureaus in order to fund my stand up costs. I was under a great deal of scrutiny because any dollar I received meant another organization was receiving less.” (Miller, J., Federal News Network December 10, 2018)

Commerce has built a one-stop portal so that actions, including acquisition, can be accomplished via an online request. Davidson said Commerce will deliver acquisition services for its eight smallest bureaus of the Office of Secretary, mainly around commodity products and services.

Davidson said, “we can continue to deliver IT services in a more consolidated way. We will look at grants management services too. The list of possibilities is endless.” (Miller, J., Federal News Network December 10, 2018)

The current administration will use Commerce’s success as a model for other agencies.

Questions about shared services? Give us a call at 301-913-5000.

There’s an App for That!

The Per Diem mobile app shows travelers the Federal Government per diem rate by city and zip code for US states and territories. GSA’s per diem rates are the daily allowance for lodging, meals and incidental expenses (excluding taxes).

The Department of State sets rates for foreign locations.

For Apple users, the app is available on the App Store, for Google users, the app is available on Google Play.

Give us a call at 301-913-5000 if you have questions about the app or per diem rates.

New Year Will Bring DEOS, an $8 Billion Contract

DoD and GSA are finishing up the Defense Enterprise Office Solution (DEOS) RFQ, expected in February. Contract award for the $8 billion cloud contract is expected in April. DEOS will replace the Defense Enterprise Email Service run by DISA and used mainly by the Army.

Hassan Harris, DEOS contracting officer, said the final acquisition strategy has yet to be determined. Once it is, everything will move quickly.

Under DEOS, DoD plans to consolidate and upgrade all of its desktop and collaboration services into the commercial cloud. DISA recently partnered with GSA to move DEOS from a standalone contract to one that may come under Schedule 70. (It remains unclear whether DEOS will be a single or multiple awards.)

Margie Graves, federal deputy CIO, said OMB is encouraging agencies to develop an IT modernization roadmap for back-office, command-and-control, and mission space capabilities. She believes a demand signal and clear message is being sent to industry regarding DoD’s, GSA’s and OMB’s commitment to maximizing buying power for all of the federal government and ensures that the government and DoD receive the best market offerings at the best price. She also noted DoD’s experiences with DEOS will give civilian agencies the ability to adopt cloud email and collaboration tools more quickly.

GSA and DoD continue to ask for industry feedback and comments on the best way to approach DEOS. DoD expects a phased implementation with approximately 200,000 users initially, on an unclassified network.

Want to talk about DEOS? Give us a call at 301-913-5000.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clearance! Get Your Clearance Here!

An Executive Order (EO) proposed in June will transfer the governmentwide security clearance program from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) to the Pentagon.

DoD is preparing to restructure and reorganize personnel and resources to take over the security clearance program. Their effort has been ongoing since Congress authorized the department to take responsibility for defense-only background investigations in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.

DoD plans to merge the NBIB workforce with the Defense Security Service, along with several defense entities, to form a new security clearance organization. Although only Congress can create a new agency, DoD has the latitude to restructure existing functions.

The new agency, likely to be called the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) will have upwards of 10,000 employees. The employees will include both federal and contracted investigators. Employees will come from NBIB and the Defense Security Service’s current workforce of approximately 900 employees. DCSA will have two additional “clearing arms”: a Critical Technology Protection Center and a Counterintelligence and Analysis Center. Ultimately DCSA will serve as the governmentwide security clearance provider.

The goal is to decrease waits for clearances, which is currently absurdly long. People graduating from college and offered a government job, pending a clearance, often are lost to other companies due to long waits for their clearances. The government wants a less expensive workforce and newer technologies,  but cannot get it until they have the cleared personnel.

If you have clearance questions, give us a call at 301-913-5000.

 

One and Done! – Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services (HACS) update to Schedule 70

The field of cybersecurity has grown substantially since the initial launching of the four HACS in 2016. This growth has led GSA to restructure the original HACS SINS 132-45 (A-D) into a single HACS SIN, 132-45, with subcategories of cybersecurity services.

Federal agencies use large complex network and data systems to maintain and manage many forms of data and information, including High Value Assets that hold sensitive information critical to national and economic security. As a result, the proposed restructure will include the following full set of HACS SIN services:

• High-Value Asset Assessments

• Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA)

• Incident Response

• Penetration Testing

• Cyber Hunt

The four current HACS SINs will be deleted from the solicitation and added as subcategories under the new HACS SIN 132-45.

Please feel free to give us a call at 301-913-5000 if you’d like to discuss your cybersecurity solutions for GSA Schedule 70.