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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FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is led by GSA and is a soon-to-be mandatory government wide program that standardizes the government’s approach to authorizing cloud services for use by federal agencies and monitoring those services to ensure that they continue to meet federal cybersecurity requirements.Once a service goes through the initial FedRAMP authorization process, it will get a stamp of approval that all agencies can use to sign off on the service’s ability to meet federal security requirements. 

FedRAMP is still in pre-launch stage. The launch of its initial operational capabilities is scheduled for June 2012, and the focus will be on infrastructure as a service and e-mail as service. Full operational capabilities are scheduled for the second quarter of fiscal 2013. At this stage, FedRamp will include more diverse products and services. By 2014 the government will move to full implementation with on-demand scalability and all federal agencies…

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While helping my clients with GSA Contractor Post Award and governement business development services, I’ve found that many have never heard of GSA’s MarkeTips Magazine before. I’d like to take a moment to highlight the magazine and show you how you can use it as a tool to advertise your products and services under a newly awarded GSA Schedule contract.

What is MarkeTips?

MarkeTips is GSA’s premier feature length magazine that highlights GSA customers and partnerships, in addition to relevant procurement, supply, property management, and travel and transportation information which is directed towards federal users of the GSA supply system. It’s published on a bi-monthly basis, and distributed to many government buyers who use GSA Schedules.

How can it benefit me?

GSA’s MarkeTips Magazine provides GSA contract holders with an opportunity to promote their products/services to federal customers. All awarded GSA contractors are allotted a FREE ½ page advertising space in the magazine…

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We’ve all heard the overused cliché, “There are two things everyone can count on: death and taxes.” Well, we can add an additional one to that list – rising healthcare premiums. As the debate on healthcare in Washington rages on, there is one thing we can all agree on and that’s that something needs to be done to reign in skyrocketing healthcare costs. While Congress bats legislation back and forth, there is at least one federal government agency that can be counted on for working hard to deliver tangible results in healthcare: The National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH invests hundreds of millions of dollars in healthcare technology solutions every year to keep this great nation on the cutting edge of healthcare innovation and advancement.

NIH is in the midst of collecting proposals for its multi-billion dollar Chief Information Officer Solutions and Partners 3 (CIO-SP3), an agency wide contract that will give all 29 NIH offices and divisions access to the best information…

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