Tuesday federal headlines – December 15, 2015

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive.

• The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate is using a potential five-year, $20 million contract vehicle to encourage technology startups and small businesses to compete for government contracts. The first round of contracts are looking for vendors who can improve situational awareness and security measures for protecting the Internet of Things. The goal of the Innovation Other Transaction Solicitation is to help companies who have typically never worked with the government consider DHS as a viable customer. (DHS)

• The Environmental Protection Agency broke the law with a social media campaign on the Clean Water Rule, using “covert propaganda” and violating a grassroots lobbying prohibition. This is according to the Government Accountability Office, which says it found EPA improperly promoted messages not clearly marked as from the agency and linked to environmental action group webpages lobbying members of Congress to support legislation. Both acts are prohibited in the agency’s appropriation acts for 2014 and 2015. (GAO)

• The Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has awarded $33 million in funds to 12 project teams to develop technologies that coordinate load and generation on the grid to create a virtual energy storage system. DOE said the projects are part of ARPA-E’s Network Optimized Distributed Energy Systems initiative, which aims to create a new approach to management of the two-way flow of power to and from homes and businesses that consume and deliver electricity back to the grid. This program hopes to improve the “resiliency, security and flexibility” of the U.S. power grid.  (ARPA-E)

•  Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work tells industry it needs to invest in autonomous systems and artificial intelligence or be left behind. Work said the Defense Department will be investing $15-17 billion into its third offset strategy in fiscal 2017. Autonomous systems and AI are big parts of the offset strategy, which is aimed at keeping the U.S. military technologically superior to its adversaries. Work SAID the United States needs to invest in technologies now that Russia and China are becoming bigger world powers. (FCW)

• The FAA’s Enterprise Services Center is looking to change the way it provides IT shared services to other agencies. FAA issued a request for information recently seeking industry input into whether it could move a host of services to a performance based contract. ESC currently provides these services through a labor hours type of contract. ESC said the RFI will help it better understand the potential benefits and risks of using a performance-based contract in a fee-for-service, IT services environment. (FBO)

• An ongoing legal battle is continuing in Oakland, California between the Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs and Larnie Macasieb, whose husband died after he sustained a serious injury working at an Oakland postal facility. NBC News reports Macasieb’s attorneys said the U.S. Postal Service has the burden of proving her husband’s injuries were not work-related. But the government ruled that, because no one saw what happened, there is no way to know how Sam Macasieb sustained his injury. Macasieb has had both of her claims denied so far, but her attorneys say they will appeal again. (NBC Bay Area)

• The Defense Department wants to change the way it incentivizes industry to meet its contracting needs. A new guidance is forthcoming from the Director of Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy Claire Grady. She said the goal is to ensure industry makes a profit while at the same time aligning that amount with the Pentagon’s expectations. She said the contract-type guide will emphasize using incentive contracting that sets reasonably high but achievable expectations and awards vendors for meeting and exceeding them. The guidance should be finalized before the end of the year.

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