Winvale Blog

The Department of Defense (DoD) is addressing an agency-wide concern with the current use and future of GSA Schedules. DoD officials are working with the GSA to explore new options for contracting. In light of recent budget cutbacks, the looming threat of sequestration, and task forces dedicated to eliminating redundancy in procurement across the department- contracting is at the forefront of reform.

The DoD is executing a pilot program exploring the use of different types of contracts for different procurement opportunities. Currently the DoD is somewhat restricted to signing fixed priced contracts. Fixed cost contracts naturally run the risk of wasted funding and contractors not using the most cost-effective strategies. One method currently being explored within GSA Schedules for the DoD is a cost-reimbursement method. This method would require contractors to cover costs up front and provide incentives to complete a service quickly and at the lowest cost. Understandably the…

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Recently, a new wave of trends has emerged in the Human Resources (HR) market. Regardless of industry, HR organizations, departments, and leaders are focused on leveraging technology in new and creative ways to accurately manage and secure a tremendous amount of company and employee data while facilitating employee access to company and benefit information. As a result, they are turning to their internal IT departments for help streamlining and automating their complex human resource business processes. These technologies are showing improved process adherence and policy compliance, as well as increased employee satisfaction while reducing workload.

To effectively automate Human Resources organizations’ business processes, many HR departments leverage flexible workflow automation, enforced approvals, a robust knowledgebase and user self-service capabilities of IT service desk tools. These tools can:

• Easily request, track and manage contractor and temporary employees
…

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A recent Bloomberg Government study reminds us that Federal Government spending on multiple-award contracts (MACs) rose 49 percent to $121 billion over the last four years, more than double the growth rate of all other contracting programs within the Federal Government.

These contracts often go overlooked outside the federal contracting community, but are intended to reduce costs by simplifying the procurement process for agencies in the federal space. Agencies (such as the DoD) will hold competitions to pick multiple suppliers, as opposed to one single provider. Once chosen for the pool, these contractors will bid against each other for orders as specific needs come up.

The rapid growth of multiple-award contracts has raised the stakes for the largest of Government suppliers. Prime contractors know it is the opportunity for millions or billions in revenue for the term of the agreement, which is frequently five years or even longer.

To top it all off, the Government’s fiscal 2010…

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Over the past year the Department of Defense (DOD) has been conducting the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) pilot program which increased the amount of classified and unclassified information flowing between the DOD and private industry. The pilot included 17 defense companies and internet carriers AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink.

In recent years, foreign hackers have had more success stealing information from systems owned and operated by companies in the defense industrial base.  Lockheed Martin is among the companies included in the pilot program, which several years ago had terabytes of data related to the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter project stolen from its networks.

The program utilizes NSA signatures to filter incoming e-mails which, due to the small number of false-positives, has been considered a success. However, the program has been less effective at redirecting outbound traffic headed for bad web sites.

Rep. James R. Langevin (D-R.I.), co-founder of the Congressional…

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David McClure, Associate Administrator at GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, announced at the AFFIRM event on April 13^th that the third party assessment organizations (3PAOs) will be announced in May 2012.

This is a major step for FedRAMP, which will start the process for cloud service providers to obtain the provisional authorizations. These 3PAOs are an important part of the FedRAMP process, because they will be validating the cyber security control requirements for service providers. While the review is being handled mainly by DHS and GSA, the entire Joint Authorization Board (JAB) will have the final say on who will be a 3PAO. The JAB consists of the Chief Information Officers from GSA, DHS, and DOD. Department of Homeland Security Chief Information Officer, Richard Spires, said that once the 3PAO’s are picked in May, he expects the program to take-off in June of this year.

While FedRAMP will mandate the minimum level of security requirements, Casey…

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West Cheshire College, a leading vocational college in the northwest part of England, is the first college to implement a real time location tracking solution. This technology will enable West Cheshire to precisely track, analyze and manage student movements around the buildings’ free flowing public and learning zones. The variety of data being received via real time reporting will allow the college to see which students are in class at any given time. The college can act on this data based on student movement patterns within the building to efficiently allocate resources and optimize staff and resourcing capacity.

The data provided from the system is also used to improve the operating efficiency of other systems through classroom occupancy management. This allows the college to ensure appropriate government funding by accurately recording and reporting enrollment and attendance. In the future the college hopes to connect attendance information to systems such as cooling,…

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