Reporter’s Notebook

The departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Treasury, Labor and Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development asked Congress in their fiscal 2021 budget requests to use money saved from other programs for IT modernization initiatives.

The General Services Administration says the number of help desk calls about the beta.sam.gov website is at or below the levels that came in for the old site. Some contractors, however, say the new site continues to struggle and remains frustrating to many.

Andre Mendes, who has been acting CIO at the Commerce Department since August, is now the permanent technology leader. Beth Angerman, the former GSA principal deputy associate administrator in the Office of Governmentwide Policy, found a new home in the private sector.

GSA released the results of its In-depth Feedback through Open Reporting Methods (INFORM) pilot and found the overwhelming majority of contractors and federal acquisition workers said giving more information about why a bid failed was valuable.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 31 outlining the actions the government will take to crack down on counterfeit products coming into the American supply chain.

The Army will launch an initial deployment of its contract writing system in February with expanded roll outs scheduled for June. The Navy, meanwhile, will test its electronic procurement system this summer and plans to increase the number of sites in late 2020.

The Army has used authorities from Congress to pay bonuses to service members with specific cyber skills and it now is looking for ways to incentivize civilian workers to stay.

The General Services Administration’s senior procurement executive Jeff Koses sent to industry for comments a draft acquisition letter detailing how buying consumption based cloud services could work.

DISA is moving toward iterative or agile approaches to acquisition and projects in order to avoid planning and implementation mistakes of the past.

Kelly Morrison, a senior advisor at USAID, and Mona Siddiqui, the HHS CDO, are among several federal technology executives who are moving to the private sector in early 2020.

Jennie Main, the CMS chief operating officer, and Rajiv Uppal, the CMS CIO, in separate panels detailed how the agency is retraining employees and focusing more on collaboration and customer needs.

Federal cyber experts say the Homeland Security Department’s draft TIC 3.0 implementation guidance is well thought out and gives agencies the necessary leeway to find a secure way to the cloud.

The 2020 Defense authorization bill includes almost 1,800 pages and we found several important and interesting provisions that you should know about ranging from military cyber advisers to the possible return of lead system integrators.

DISA, GSA and industry issues dominated the 10 most read Reporter’s Notebook stories in 2019. The common theme across many of the stories is how agencies are setting the table for bigger changes in 2020.