Here’s a new term for you to learn: Agilefall.

It’s the place where many agencies live as they take on digital transformation. You see, Agilefall is that station between agile software development and waterfall development.

“We see far more examples of agencies where they are trying to straddle both worlds and haven’t made the leap to full on agile,” said Chris Cairns, a partner at Skylight Digital, former Presidential Innovation Fellow and co-founder of the 18F digital services group at the General Services Administration. “When you see solicitations are still very schedule- and cost-driven with 5% or 10% variance requirements, configuration management plans and all those things that scream of IT development lifecycles, then you know the agency hasn’t made the move to agile.”

Agilefall is probably a more exact term than what gets thrown around across the government where programs and projects say they are deep into the agile methodology or using dev/sec/ops, but are really stuck in some ways in the old methodology that has shown time and again it doesn’t work for IT projects.

“When you talk about digital transformation, you have to change the way you think and work. You need to work with people and companies that represent those ideas. I think industry is adjusting too,” Cairns said. “I’ve become a big believer that metrics are more important than ever. Companies who are high performing deploy frequently, ship code all the time and have a low change error rate. They have good automated testing, and their user satisfaction is really high because they are developing capabilities that users want and need.”

It’s difficult to get a real sense of just how much agilefall is happening across government. The only recent data comes from the December 2019 Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), which grades agencies on their use of agile or dev/sec/ops or incremental development. The Federal IT Dashboard used to provide this information, but it’s been a year or more since the Office of Management and Budget took it down.

The FITARA 9.0 scorecard gave 10 agencies an “A” grade, while three received “F” grades in what it calls incremental development.

But Cairns said even the FITARA grades don’t necessarily show agencies have fully moved to agile development because to earn a high grade agencies just have to show they planned to deliver functionality every six months and use an iterative development methodology.

“Doing agile is different than being agile and embodying the principles of agile development,” he said. “That’s why it’s hard to say what is the adoption rate across government. We see a lot of usage of agile in the language in solicitations, but if you read them closely, you can pick up whether they truly get it or not. They may say we do agile, but you have to maintain a year-long Microsoft project schedule. That is agilefall.”

Cairns and other experts are quick to point out that even agilefall or delivering capabilities every six months is better than the waterfall method that proved broken time and again over the last two decades.

Spending on agile over $4 billion

And agencies are spending money to continue to transform their development approaches. Bloomberg Government reported in December that agencies spent $4.4 billion to develop new or to customize software applications in fiscal 2018, which was a 7% increase over 2017.

The good news is the pandemic emergency is providing agencies the ability to demonstrate that agile isn’t just a new coat of paint on top of their waterfall processes.

Take the Education Department’s Impact Aid Grant System (IAGS), which provides grants to school systems if they can’t raise funds another way such as through property taxes.

Jason Taliaferro, the project manager, said over the last three years the project has moved toward modernization by putting applications in the cloud and implementing agile development.

“Our sprints are typically two-week cycles, which is how long it takes for us to take new development from creating a ticket to production. Sometimes it’s quicker if it’s just a bug fix or something similar,” Taliaferro said during a recent AFCEA Bethesda webinar. “Using agile has allowed us to respond quicker to needs. It’s been huge for us. It used to take months to make changes.”

Taliaferro added IAGS is using a low-code platform to expedite the changes and address customer needs in near real-time.

The General Services Administration and the Small Business Administration also are experiencing similar success with the move to agile

Judith Zawatsky, the assistant commissioner of the Office of Systems Management in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said they have 12 agile teams developing new and upgrading acquisition systems.

“We have been able to move from 10-week cycles to 2-week cycles,” she said. “Those deployments are not necessarily what the user sees. A lot of them are on the back end. We are trying to build a viable user experience that can put in alpha testing before roll out to large group.”

5 days to roll out loan application

For SBA, the pandemic emergency and the hundreds of billions of dollars it received under the stimulus bills showed how it’s benefiting from agile.

Guy Cavallo, the deputy chief information officer at SBA, said the agency created a new loan processing application in the cloud for the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) programs in five days.

“Normally we have a two-week sprint, but we didn’t have that luxury this time,” he said. “We built the application in the cloud and that also allowed our security team to work with our development team. We want to make sure security is always involved from day one. Because we are in the cloud and are able to leverage cyber tools, we are able to shorten that development cycle. Instead of humans looking at monitors, we have cloud artificial intelligence and machine learning tools looking at how the code is being used and developed.”

Like the Education Department, SBA also has been on a three-year modernization journey that set the stage for developing a new application in five days.

Read more: Technology News

Cavallo said the pandemic emergency also helped SBA accelerate the wider implementation of a new customer service data hub.

“The agency had been very siloed so two years ago we laid out a roadmap to break apart those siloes. We saw a lot of commonality across programs so we started to move smaller offices into this central data program,” he said. “When the pandemic hit, we accelerated that effort. The office of disaster assistance was getting a lot of emails, over 1 million and there was no way to manage it. In about a week, we moved them into our customer service case management system that uses automatic routing. So now managers can see the backlog and reassign staff. We hoped we’d be here in two years, but we are here now. We had laid the groundwork that allowed us to move quickly and the disaster situation forced us to come up with solution. We now can have smaller offices jump on more easily because we have the bigger offices on the platform.”

Skylight’s Cairns said the examples from the SBA, GSA and the Education Department as well as many others show how it’s as much about the process as it’s about the leadership and mindset.

“With the COVID-19 emergency, I think the government has seen the benefit of working in an agile way. Now it’s about how to make it the standard and not the exception,” he said.

That seems to be a common refrain across the federal market, see the change, be the change and live the change that rose from the tragedy of the pandemic.

Over the last decade, no federal technology program has been more maligned than the Federal Risk Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). It embodies the old adage of being the program industry, Congress and agencies alike “love to hate.”

Maybe this is why FedRAMP also embodies the characteristics that many other federal programs should emulate? It’s not afraid of change and enthusiastically looks to improve.

The latest example is the new Agency Liaison Program, which FedRAMP’s program management office launched in late May.

“The Agency Liaison Program is designed to transform the way FedRAMP informs and collaborates with federal agencies. Agencies play an important role in the success of FedRAMP and through this Agency Liaison Program, the PMO will provide support through a ‘train-the-trainer’ model for liaisons to share knowledge and resources about the authorization process to others in their agency,” said Ryan Hoesing, FedRAMP customer success manager, in an email to Federal News Network. “Through this program we are building a community to enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing across the government, with more than 30 agencies participating at this time. Agency security practitioners were selected by their leadership to serve as the FedRAMP Liaison.”

The idea of the liaison program came from the ideation challenge FedRAMP held last summer. It was one of several the program management office is implementing from that crowdsource effort. And the use of the challenge and other actions are part of why FedRAMP, while frustrating to some, retains the respect and admiration from many in the federal community.

“This initiative has garnered support from agency chief information security officer who helped identify personnel and ensures agencies have a FedRAMP expert on staff,” Hoesing said. “One of FedRAMP’s guiding principles is ‘do once, use many,’ and the program is designed to help agencies and industry be more efficient in their cloud adoption efforts. Agencies were looking for more support and resources as they modernized — and the PMO answered the call by establishing this governmentwide community with our agency partners. The Agency Liaison Program also establishes a formal feedback mechanism to enable continuous process improvement as the program rolls out new initiatives.”

Continuous process improvement has been a hallmark of the FedRAMP program. While far from perfect, the cloud security program has evolved over the last decade, adding initiatives such as the FedRAMP Tailored and Accelerated processes.

“FedRAMP is already seeing an impact of implementing ideas and working towards these objectives,” said Ashley Mahan, FedRAMP director, in an email to Federal News Network. “In fiscal 2019, the program authorized 45 new products, and as of June 2020, FedRAMP has already authorized 47 new products. With over a quarter left in the fiscal year, a large cloud product pipeline, increased agency participation and collaboration, the program expects to finish the year strong.”

Mahan said the PMO continues to focus across four strategic areas:

• Incorporating automation into the authorization process;
• Growing the FedRAMP marketplace;
• Providing more learning opportunities to the FedRAMP community;
• Simplifying the program/processes.

She said FedRAMP decided on these four areas, in part, because of  “the ideation challenge and participating in working groups with agencies and industry, in an effort to increase authorization speed and implement process efficiencies to boost agency acceptance and reciprocity of FedRAMP authorizations.”

Ideation Challenge  identified needs

The Ideation Challenge focused on improving the FedRAMP process and its customer experience.

Zachary Baldwin, the FedRAMP program manager for strategy, innovation, and technology, said the submissions identified a need for a consistent approach to FedRAMP authorizations across agencies, improved communication through a centralized point of contact for the PMO and cloud service providers and a simplified training mechanisms for agency stakeholders through a “train the trainer” model. This last one led to the Agency Liaison program.

“The PMO also identified other program goals, faster authorization timelines through training and more streamlined communication, increased authorizations within agencies and more efficient deployment of resources through a centralized point of contact and opportunities for agencies and bureaus to collaborate and share best practices,” he said.

Since the Ideation Challenge, Mahan said FedRAMP has developed initiatives to add automation to reviewing security documentation. This included a new effort with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and industry on a standardized machine-readable language, called Open Security Control Assessment Language (OSCAL).

She said the goal is to facilitate and incorporate automation into the authorization process.

“FedRAMP templates and security baselines are being developed in OSCAL and draft versions have been released on GitHub for public comment,” Mahan said. “OSCAL will allow cloud service providers (CSPs) to automate security package creation and the streamline package reviews by leveraging automated validation and checks.”

Read more: Technology News

Additionally, the PMO also is redesigning its digital presence to help agencies and industry through the FedRAMP process and create a simplified virtual view into the program.

Mahan said her office created new avenues for stakeholders to interact with the program.

“We held our first-ever Joint Authorization Board (JAB) Interact event, an annual meeting focused on fostering an atmosphere of collaboration between FedRAMP technical representatives (TRs) and CSPs that are in process with or authorized by the JAB,” she said. “We also held our first technical exchange meeting where we convened a small set of interested technical experts to discuss draft guidance surrounding container security. We have more initiatives planned for this year as we seek to enhance our virtual footprint.”

And finally, Mahan said FedRAMP recently released a quick guide for agencies that outlines how to reuse a security package, provided further clarity and updated the JAB prioritization process guide, and released seven lessons learned for small businesses and start-ups that were provided by small businesses and startups.

Agencies spent more on procurement in fiscal 2019 than in any of the previous 10 years.

And no surprise, agency pending on multiple award contracts for IT and services spiked last year.

Now that all of the 2019 numbers are final, the predictions of a banner year for contractors and agencies when it came to buying products and services came true.

The Government Accountability Office found agencies spent $584 billion on procurement last year, up $20 billion over 2018 and more than $120 billion since 2015.

Bloomberg Government reported that agencies spent $448 billion on procurement in 2014 and a six-year low of $442 billion in 2015.

The Defense Department accounted for $381 billion while civilian agencies spent $205 billion.

Of that, GAO said agencies procured 83.5% of all contracts competitively, up from 64.4% in 2015. DoD continues to struggle with competition as GAO found the Pentagon’s rate dropped to 53.8% in 2019 from 55.4% in 2015.

The majority of contracts continue to be fixed price, while cost reimbursement type contracts make up just under 32% of all deals.

Agencies continue to spend more on services than products across the government with the civilian side seeing almost an $8 billion year-over-year increase and DoD realizing an $11 billion year-over-year increase.

Given the increase in overall spending, it’s no surprise multiple award contracts saw their best years ever.

BGov reported about one of every $4 went through a multiple award contract. The research firm found agencies spent $140 billion in 2019 up from $134 billion in 2018.

Here are some other interesting data points from BGov’s research:

• While MAC spending obligations increased in 2019, their share of overall government spending remained at about 23%.
• DoD’s MAC spending is increasing more than civilian; the Pentagon spent $84 billion through multiple award contracts last year, up from $61 billion in 2016. Civilian agencies spent $74 billion in 2019, which is up from $50 billion in 2016.
• The top markets for MAC spending in 2019 are IT at $38 billion and professional services at $35 billion.

Reminds me of why we need to reform multiple award contracting across the government. Let competition happen at the task order level since agencies are spending more and more money there anyways.

E-commerce platform paradox

Four months later and the lack of clarity about how President Donald Trump’s executive order, that attempts to crack down on counterfeit products on e-commerce platforms and the General Services Administration’s e-commerce platform effort fit together, remains disconcerting.

There has been no guidance, no details and no public discussions since January when the White House and the Department of Homeland Security outlined the actions agencies should take to protect intellectual property and the supply chain. At the same time, GSA continues to move forward with its proof-of-concept with a goal of making it easier for federal contracting officers to buy commercial products from what some estimate is a $6 billion market.

After a short pause when the coronavirus pandemic emergency started, GSA expects to make an award later this summer to launch the three-year pilot.

This is why the Coalition for Government Procurement is raising these concerns for a second time. After an initial letter to Peter Navarro, the assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing policy, in February, CGP is writing to GSA asking for more clarity.

Read more: Contracting News

“Coalition member concerns included the inappropriate access to, and use of, platform supplier transactional and other proprietary data and the risk giving inordinate market power of platform providers by placing them in the position of gate keepers to the federal marketplace,” wrote Tom Sisti, executive vice president and general counsel at CGP, in the May 22 letter to Laura Stanton, GSA’s acting assistant commissioner for category management. “Further, the Coalition expressed concerns that the absence of a requirement for platform providers to identify accurately the country of origin of products offered for sale on their platforms, coupled with the failure to hold platform providers accountable for compliance with the Trade Agreements Act (TAA), risked subjecting the government market and government systems to products of unknown integrity.”

Sisti said it is clear that there are several contradictions between the e-marketplace acquisition and DHS recommendations, which the agency released shortly before the president signed the executive order in January. In the letter, CGP outlines at least nine of these contradictions, including:

• The solicitation does not provide for significantly enhanced vetting of third-party sellers beyond certain existing, specified government requirements, such as AbilityOne, Section 889 and a ban on Kaspersky.
• Regarding rapid notice and takedown procedures, GSA only identified as an objective (not a requirement) the ability to remove from the platform those vendors who are suspended or debarred, as well as products that are essentially the same as AbilityOne.
• Regarding pre-sale identification of third-party sellers, GSA only requires this information to be provided to the government as a monthly transactional data extract after the purchase.
• Regarding clearly identifiable country of origin disclosures, the government requires such disclosures if available from the vendor and normally provided to buyers in alignment with the e-marketplace’s commercial practices.

“[W]e ask whether and how the e-marketplace solicitation will be amended to include specific requirements that address each of the best practices identified in the report,” Sisti wrote. “While the latest version of the solicitation asks that e-marketplace platform providers describe their commercial practices in many of these areas, we do not find that this approach is sufficient to protect federal buyers from purchasing counterfeit and gray market products. [T]hese best practices have not been addressed in the current solicitation, and thus, in the interest of maintaining the integrity of the contracting process, the Coalition believes that the changes should be released for public comment, and the solicitation timeframe amended accordingly.”

GSA already amended the solicitation at least once. The question is whether it’s too late in the process as it gets closer to award to amend it again.

Either way, CGP’s concerns about the differing paths of the White House and GSA must be addressed if the e-marketplace initiative is to have any impact to solve the problems lawmakers believe existed.

Diana Gowen, the long-time federal telecommunications expert, passed away on Thursday after a long battle with cancer.

Gowen was the senior vice president and general manager of MetTel’s federal practice for the past four-and-a-half years and held leadership positions with major telecommunications companies including CenturyLink Federal, Qwest Government Services, MCI Government Services and AT&T Commercial Markets.

“It is with great sadness that we say farewell to our friend and colleague, Diana Gowen, a remarkably strong and revered veteran of government telecommunications,” said Marshall Aronow, the MetTel CEO, in a statement. “Since joining our team in 2015, Diana began building MetTel’s federal practice – bringing with her a reputation for only ‘making promises you can keep’ and a leadership style that brought out the best in those around her. We are honored that Diana chose to be a part of MetTel and we extend our deepest sympathies to her family.”

Gowen played a role in every major federal telecommunications effort over the last 30 years from FTS to Networx to the current Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions program.

She was known for her candidness and honest assessments of federal efforts. She was always accessible to the press, spoke often in the federal community and brought a level of realism to the public telecommunications discussion that was rarely seen among vendors.

Gowen earned her Bachelor of Science degree in business and math, and later a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Maryland.

She received the lifetime achievement award in 2018 from the American Business Awards.

“Surrounding yourself with good people is half the battle, because it takes a village to be successful in this marketplace,” said Gowen when she received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.

Thank you Diana for your service to the community, the nation and we wish her family peace and hope they can take solace in her tremendous impact on all of us.

Long-time procurement exec retires

Timothy Shaughnessy, a senior program analyst for procurement at the IRS, retired on May 29 after 33 years of federal service.

Shaughnessy has been with the IRS since November 2017 and before that he worked at the Department of Homeland Security’s procurement office for almost seven years.

“He is a driven and passionate professional, with a staggeringly quick intellect and insatiable desire to complete whatever task he sets himself to,” said Harrison Smith, the IRS’s deputy chief procurement officer, in a post on LinkedIn. “For those of you who know Tim, this is a day of mixed emotion — we are certainly sad to see him go, but his family is such a constant source of joy for him, and we are so thankful to them for sharing Tim with us over the years.”

Shaughnessy helped lead several key initiatives at the IRS including most recently the Pilot IRS program, which aims to develop emerging technology projects through incremental funding, and the Treasurywide Data Governance and Analytics (DGA) Initiative.

Additionally, he helped promote the testing of robotics process automation (RPA) at the IRS to do contractor responsibility determinations.

“Timothy Shaughnessy is one of the most passionate, gifted and dependable colleagues I’ve ever known. Over the past six years at IRS and DHS, I can’t count how many times Tim launched a key initiative, tackled a challenge or resolved a crisis when we were in need,” said Mitchell Winans, a special assistant in the IRS’s Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, in a LinkedIn post. “He is an incredible workhorse and team player that never lost sight of his priorities, and always reminded us of the importance of family and friends.”

Shaughnessy retired from the Air Force, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel, before joining the IRS the first time in 2010.

It’s been awhile since I’ve jumped back on my soap box, but after the latest news of protests delaying yet another large multiple award, governmentwide contract, it’s time to bring back the call for competition at the task order level.

The General Services Administration’s Second Generation IT (2GIT) services is facing four new bid protests making 13 overall since the agency launched the effort more than a year ago.

At the same time, GSA is facing more pressure to make a decision about the Alliant 2 small business vehicle that has been on hold for more than a year and in the works for almost five years. GSA officials have said multiple times over the past few weeks that a new information about Alliant 2 small business would be forthcoming “soon,” which in government talk means anywhere from one day to six months.

These are just two of latest examples of why large multiple award contracts should just make getting on the vehicle as easy as possible and then let the real competition happen at the task order level.

Instead, agencies are dragged down by an acquisition model that is well past its prime and no longer meets the needs of today’s marketplace for many reasons.

“Multiple award contracts certainly still serve an important purpose, but it’s time to have a more fundamental rethinking about how we engage them,” said Joe Jordan, a former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and now CEO of Actuparo. “I spent quite a bit of time through strategic sourcing trying to figure out ways to leverage buying power at the contract level, and probably the biggest two takeaways were better pricing is not going to happen if you are not bringing dollars to the table when you are engaging the contract, and to retain many of these principles, pricing is determined at the task order level anyways so what is the point of spending years and years and millions of dollars of administration costs to set up these GWACs based on prices?”

Award-protest cycle continues

Take 2GIT — GSA and the Air Force are trying to replace the popular NETCENTS-2 IT products contract. GSA awarded 75 vendors, including 56 small firms, a spot on the $5.5 billion blanket purchase agreement contract in November.

After a series of protests, GSA pulled the awards back, took corrective action by amending the solicitation to change its evaluation approach, but didn’t request revised offers. Then, GSA made new awards to companies including DH Technologies, Sterling Computers, World Wide Technology, Govplace, M2 Technology, PCMG, New Tech and CDW-Government.

Read more: Reporter’s Notebook

By May 1, three unsuccessful bidders filed four protests. Red River Technology filed two protests —one on the changes GSA made to the solicitation and one for the award decision.

Force 3, which won a spot under the initial 2GIT awards, and Blue Tech filed protests about GSA’s award decision.

Shift over to the Alliant 2 Small Business contract and the situation becomes even more frustrating.

GSA in February 2018 made awards to 81 small businesses only to pull them back more than a year later. The agency took corrective action and accepted revised bids in August. Here we are in May, and no decision yet.

One industry expert, who requested anonymity so as not to harm their relationships with GSA, said the delays with Alliant Small Business 2 isn’t because of a lack of support for these companies.

“It’s big into the legal industrial complex and I’m sure GSA’s acquisition folks are trying. But the issues are complex and they are probably getting tangled up by GSA’s keystone cop of the legal department,” the expert said. “Too often lawyers become de facto management and start creating management positions instead of helping management build decisions based on risk.”

The expert said reviewing these large multiple award contracts in a consistent manner takes time and with lawyers watching over you, creates further delays.

Time-to-market takes too long

So what is stopping GSA from just setting the bar low enough to ensure no fake or severely unqualified companies get on the vehicle?

There doesn’t seem much . The Air Force with NetCents and the Navy with Seaport-e proved this approach works by having hundreds of companies and watching the competition at the task order level.  And given the success of both contracts, it doesn’t seem having hundreds or thousand of contractors is slowing down task order awards, like some have proposed as a reason for why “you just can’t let everyone on” a multiple award contract. Yes, too much competition is a problem.

Former OFPP Administrator Jordan said the current “time-to-market” for a lot of the large contracts is too long and could stifle agency technology innovation.

Read more: Contracting News

Again back to Alliant 2 Small Business, the contract requirements and bids are from late 2015 or early 2016, meaning things like artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics process automation were barely under discussion let alone in widespread use as they are today. To GSA’s credit, program managers have learned how to better ensure vehicles remain relevant in terms of technology offerings. But these now become a series of modifications after the awards are made, again creating more delays for agencies and vendors.

Jordan also gave GSA kudos for adding on-ramps to these large vehicles to keep enough vendors in the mix and ensure innovation is available.

“There is not a ton of discussion about whether this approach and the way we construct contracts make sense for the ever-evolving world,” he said. “We’ve spent too much time, and that includes my own past efforts, saying there are too many GWACs selling the same stuff and we need to reduce the number, and not enough time spent on what is the problem we are trying to solve. We have to take the time to look for a new solution for this issue.”

The irony of both of these procurements is the Office of Management and Budget “designated” Alliant 2 Small Business a “best-in-class” vehicle and I’m sure 2GIT wasn’t far from the same designation. Yet, here we are stuck in the morass of protests and delays because GSA or the rules or someone believes competition is best not at the task order level but during the construction of the contract.

GSA proposed legislative changes

The idea of moving competition to the task order level is not new by any means.

GSA submitted legislative proposals to make it easier to have competition at task order level, staring back in 2014 or so, according to the industry expert. And Administrator Emily Murphy made it one of  her initiatives during her confirmation hearing.

In the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, lawmakers added a provision that let’s GSA create an unpriced schedule, recognizing competition happens at the task order level.

Roger Waldron, the president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, wrote in his most recent blog that it’s been almost two years since Congress passed the provision, and as GSA reforms the schedules program, it should implement the idea known as unpriced schedules.

It’s clear this idea of driving competition at the task order level isn’t so far out. So what’s stopping GSA and other agencies from getting out of this protest, delay, protest cycle?

You tell me?

Over the last 25 years, during the era of the governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC) and governmentwide multiple award contracts (MACs) it’s difficult to remember the last time when one of those vehicles hit its total dollar ceiling.

Not Alliant at $50 billion. Not Networx at $20 billion. Not even Veterans Technology Services (VETS) GWAC at $5 billion.

But for the General Services Administration’s 8(a) STARS II program, it’s a different story. Not only did GSA announce the popular small business contract hit its $15 billion ceiling, it did so nearly 16 months before the contract’s sunset date of Aug. 30, 2021.

While it would be easy to see the bright side of this predicament because 8(a) STARS II was so popular that agencies awarded task orders at faster rates than predicted, the unfortunate truth is this is not a good news story for many small businesses.

“We were awarded a spot on the 8(a) STARS II program two years ago, during an on-ramp and now about 25% of our revenue come from 8(a) STARS,” said Stephanie Wilson, the chief operation officer of NetImpact Strategies in Falls Church, Virginia. “The biggest impact are the contracts already marketed to STARS. Now customers need to regroup and figure out what to do.”

Samar Ghadry, the executive vice president and co-founder of Powertek, which is part of Small Business Administration approved mentor/protégé joint venture with Alesig called 3Vesta under 8(a) STARS II, said about 55% of the 3vesta’s revenue comes through the vehicle. For 2020, the partnership expected about 35% to 40% of its revenue to come through STARS.

“Some of our customers were unaware that STARS II has reached its contract ceiling. We let them know what other prime contract vehicles are available and specifically recommended our ITES-3S 8(a) track since it is similar to the STARS II contract and have an 8(a) and small business tracks and can be used by all civilian and Defense Department agencies,” Ghadry said in an email to Federal News Network. “This is going to have a negative impact on most 8(a) companies and will limit our abilities to pursue new business and/or bid on our recompetes.”

To be clear, GSA has not completely closed down 8(a) STARS II. The agency issued a memo on April 6 detailing the process by which a customer agency can use the contract if the GSA contracting officer issues a control number for the task order.

“Control numbers are unique to a requirement and may not be transferred. At this time CNs will only be issued for requirements expected to be awarded in fiscal 2020,” stated the memo, which Federal News Network obtained. “There is no guarantee that the 8(a) STARS II contract will be available for use; therefore, NO new request for proposals/quotes (RFPs/RFQs) may be issued and NO new task order awards without first obtaining pre-approval and receiving an assigned CN. Additionally, NO new modifications may be issued against an existing task order that will increase the estimated order value without first obtaining pre-approval and receiving an assigned CN.”

Bill Zielinski, the assistant commissioner for the Office of Information Technology Category (ITC) in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said in an email statement that the control number process is to ensure 8(a) STARS II doesn’t exceed its ceiling.

“Task orders issued prior to April 6, 2020 may continue and options to those task orders that do not increase the total estimated value may be exercised,” he said.

Raising the ceiling is one option

One option to fix this situation is for GSA to modify 8(a) STARS II by raising its ceiling, say by another $5-to-$7 billion. The other is to fast track the 8(a) STARS III vehicle. GSA issued the draft solicitation last summer.

“GSA is exploring its options regarding the 8(a) STARS II GWAC; however, at this time, there is no guarantee of additional contract value being made available. In the interim, agencies should contact GSA regarding short term options such as VETS and the GSA Schedule,” Zielinski said. “GSA intends to issue the solicitation for 8(a) STARS III in fiscal 2020. GSA has developed an aggressive solicitation and evaluation timeline to award 8(a) STARS III as soon as possible.”

John Shoraka, a former associate administrator of government contracting and business development at SBA and now co-founder and managing director of GovContractPros, said the fact that GSA let the 8(a) STARS II contract hit its ceiling is an example of poor planning.

“Hitting the ceiling without even having a solicitation out creates an issue for buying agencies and 8(a) firms, especially incumbents who have graduated from the program; being on 8(a) STARS allows a graduated 8(a) to continue to receive task orders even after it graduates, this allows an 8(a) ‘a smooth landing’ post graduation,” he said in an email. “Incumbents will have a challenge with expiring requirements currently issued under STARS II. If GSA will not approve a new task order, the buying agency will have no options except to go directly to the 8(a) firm, which may not be possible if it is a graduated 8(a), or to go to a best in class vehicle, with no guarantees that the incumbent will be on that vehicle.”

A GSA spokesperson added, “In light of the current situation, GSA is looking at different options for a path forward with respect to STARS II. We want to ensure we’re being a good partner to the 8(a) community and are doing what we can to support them during this time. We also understand STARS II is a flexible and high-performing contract that federal agencies need now more than ever as agencies navigate new ways of providing employee and citizen services. STARS II is doing a lot of good and important work for industry and government during the pandemic and we’re exploring available options to ensure that can continue.”

The National Institutes of Health’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) is actively stepping up its marketing campaign to let agency customers know there are other options to 8(a) STARS II.

NITAAC issued a release saying it has taken steps to assure its $20 billion Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners 3 (CIO-SP3) small business GWAC is accepting task orders and available to assist federal agencies in meeting their socioeconomic goals.

“The inability to use 8(a) STARS II, may leave many agencies wondering how they can still meet their socioeconomic goals, as every federal agency with procurement authority is responsible for helping achieve federal governmentwide small business procurement goals,” said Keith Johnson, lead contracting officer for CIO-SP3, CIO-SP3 Small Business and the upcoming CIO-SP4. “Each agency must provide the maximum practicable opportunity to small businesses to win awards. Rest assured, NITAAC is here to help to ensure agencies’ IT missions are accomplished.”

Customers need a Plan B

But for 8(a) companies who had been working for months or years with customer agencies to put work on STARS II, moving to NITAAC or another existing contract isn’t always easy.

NetImpact Strategies Wilson said she has customers who liked STARS so much they haven’t or didn’t use other 8(a) or small business vehicles.

“Our customers are trying to figure out what to do, and part of it is me trying to explain to them their options,” Wilson said. “Customers don’t always understand this because their contracts departments are not telling them that 8(a) STARS II reached its ceiling so I’m delivering that message to the program side. They are then trying to coordinate and find out if they have a control number.”

3Vesta’s Ghadry said the joint venture is redirecting its efforts their other contracting vehicles such as the Army’s ITES-3S 8(a) track.

“We would love to hear from GSA on their plan for continuing to provide access to the STARS II vehicle until the end of the period of performance or until the STARS III contract is awarded.  This vehicle has been very successful and many companies such as Powertek and 3Vesta have benefited from and has been a favorite from many of our customers,” she said.

Wilson seconded Ghadry’s claim that 8(a) STARS II has been a successful program.

“This GWAC for small businesses is critical and we’ve invested lot of money to on-ramp after we had capability to do so. Obviously we have marketed to our customers at a very rapid pace and we’ve done well,” she said. “8(a) STARS will have a $10 million impact on our bottom line in 2020. This vehicle is fastest way to get services moving in the federal government bar none.”

Given the popularity and success of 8(a) STARS II, it’s unclear why it seemed like a surprise to GSA that the vehicle reached its ceiling so early and why the agency wasn’t better prepared with a modification as the obligations peaked in 2019.

Over the last six weeks, the General Services Administration has demonstrated what the future of federal hiring could look like.

Since late March, GSA has hired more than 100 new employees virtually.

“We were able to establish their accounts, configure their devices and ship them to their homes. They were able to take virtual oaths and do their online paperwork and start on day one just as if they were in the office,” said Beth Killoran, the deputy chief information officer at GSA, during a recent COVID-19 town hall webinar sponsored by ACT-IAC.  “We were really fortunate to have a lot of things in place and we really only had to tweak around the edges and add a couple of new processes or modify them where something had required in person prior to coronavirus.”

GSA’s example of changing its approach to hiring and onboarding can’t just a one-off in the federal sector, but it’s something that experts say should be, really has to be, the norm.

“The hiring process hasn’t changed in a long time. There are still regulations in place that dictate the framework by which they go about doing this. And over the years, a lot of agency efforts moved away from paper to electronic, but the world has changed over the last 20 years in terms of the technology at their disposal and the government should be looking at leveraging that technology going forward,” said Steve Maier, president of Management Concepts, in an interview with Federal News Network. “Some agencies remain paper-based and others have moved along to using advance capabilities and technology, and are showing, if applied correctly, technology can improve the efficiency of the hiring effort on the agency side to get the job done, process more candidates and do more interviews. It will take some burden of interaction out of the picture.”

Agencies such as the Small Business Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Veterans Affairs and others face the double edge challenge of needing to hiring employees quickly to help meet the requirements of the stimulus law but must work through the arduous federal hiring process.

In March, OPM said the time to hire an employee from first application to getting them fully onboarded was 98 days, down from 105.8 days in 2016 and 2017.

More agility needed

That remains way too long when agencies must fill job openings to process loans or provide medical care today.

“The coronavirus pandemic is shining the light on chronic problems with the federal hiring process,” said Linda Rix, co-CEO of Avue Technologies, in an interview. “Because it’s generally convoluted, difficult and it reduces the level of agility the federal government needs right now. We are seeing a brighter light shining on the hiring process and its difficulties, and now more than ever we need more agility in the process.”

OPM has tried to address the lack of agility issuing several memos to try to bring the time to hire down and reduce the burden.

Read more: Workforce News

It’s unclear if those efforts are having an impact.

For the last six to seven weeks, individuals have started an average of 340,000 applications on USAJobs.gov each week, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Overall, applications on the job site are up 2% today compared to this time last year, Anthony Marucci, an OPM spokesman, said in an email to Federal News Network.

To date there are 502 coronavirus-related announcements on USAJobs.gov, which have more than 161,000 applications. Agencies can fill multiple positions through one posting, so the number of needed new hires is likely larger.

“What we are seeing is a stress point on the hiring process, applicant assessments and getting information to hiring managers,” Rix said. “Probably the one area that will become more stressed is once a selection has been made because how fast can we onboard the people that we need. That onboarding process includes how do you provision employees and what assets they need like laptops and cell phones as well as an email address and access to the agency’s network and the other elements that make it possible for them to start working and work remotely?”

This is why GSA’s experience and initial success is such an important line in the sand.

It’s unclear how many other agencies are following suit.

The Department of Homeland Security, for instance, issued new guidance for issuing electronic credentials so new employees can gain network access. But details about how hiring is evolving is hard to come by.

Improve end-to-end recruiting

Industry experts say if GSA, DHS and others can make these shifts permanent, it will bring the government much closer to how the private sector already works and open the door to a whole new perspective.

“In the works well before COVID-19, OPM started offering modern, video interviewing and assessment services in 2019. In October, OPM issued guidance urging agencies to adopt commercial best practices and use the technologies,” said Joe Paiva, vice president of HireVue and a former CIO at the International Trade Administration, in an interview. “Uptake was slow at first. However, one large agency with more than a dozen subordinate organizations did start using video interviewing and assessments that same year. Their goals at the time (pre-COVID) were simply to increase the candidate pool in order to attract more and better talent, and save money in the process. When COVID-19 restrictions hit, these early adopters looked like clairvoyants. Their agencies’ hiring programs never missed a beat. Another large component in a different department didn’t have anything in place before COVID-19, but as soon as they heard about the OPM services, they asked for a pilot and had already performed 30-plus secure and structured remote interviews, and started candidate evaluations within a week of their original request.”

Read more: Reporter’s Notebook

John Bersentes, the regional sales manager for federal at Cornerstone OnDemand, added the coronavirus emergency gives agencies not only the opportunity to change their approach, but also their messaging that makes up the end-to-end recruiting process.

“They have to think about work streams and flows, and how to create an engaging candidate experience,” he said. “It has to be something recruiters have to embrace. It can lead to cutting the time to hire, improving the quality of candidates and keeping the retention rate high.”

Bersentes said there are several examples of agencies taking small steps toward this modernized process. He said some are using Microsoft Teams to conduct virtual interviews, and the intelligence community uses video interviews and other tools to help make hiring decisions.

In fact, Ron Sanders, a former chief human capital officer for intelligence community and currently chairman of the Federal Salary Council, said these virtual hiring fairs have been successful over the last decade, bringing in more than 3,500 candidates annually.

3D tours of agency campuses

He said the IC agencies do some advanced vetting of candidates and then give those who meet the initial requirements an invitation code for the hiring fair.

During the fair, the IC agencies offer a 3D campus tour, set up booths to let the candidates meet recruiters and conduct interviews using avatars.

“Agencies have direct hire authority, though it rarely results in on-the-spot offers,” Sanders said. “The candidates are testing the agencies to see what kind of technology they have, and they want to work for a place that has really good technology.”

Sanders and other experts say this type of approach opens the door to candidates not just in one geographical region, but those across the country.

“This shows there are ways to do this in the brave new world,” Sanders said.

Paiva said agencies need to consider five critical elements as they move toward a modern, online hiring process:

• Predictive validity: The most important measure of any hiring process is whether or not it actually has any predictive value with regards to whether or not a candidate will be successful in the position.
• Transparency and candidate experience: Commercial organizations invest heavily in developing pools of potential candidates by building their brand as employers of choice and providing all applicants with a candidate experience that will lead to them either applying to another position at a later date, remaining a loyal customer or both.
• Security, privacy and records retention: Whether agencies store it or not, video interviewing and assessment services capture facial images, voice profiles and other PII of members of the general public.
• Candidate pools and efficiency: When agencies artificially limit the number of applicants for a position (by limiting how long it is posted on USAJobs), they effectively eliminate many of the best possible candidates. By limiting the posting time, agencies limit their pool to people who are already “in the system” and so anxious to leave their current job that they apply for every job that pops up on USAJobs.
• Diversity: Diversity isn’t about numbers, but the numbers tell a story. At the total employee level, the government basically equally and fair representation across most segments of the population.

Avue’s Rix said there are cloud-based technologies that agencies could implement easily enough to get them to be more agile and address may of the shortcomings of the current approach.

Read more: Technology News

“One thing agencies need is a robust technology platform that can handle high volumes of applications from over thousands of locations at the same time. The technology also has to have embedded in it digital signature capability, move people forward without traditional labor and time associated with trying to dot all ‘Is’ and cross all the ‘Ts,’ electronically, include better artificial intelligence processes and can be easily scaled when the demand is high and peaking,” she said. “The second thing agencies need to do is let go of those elements of the hiring process that should be stripped away, don’t add value and are not necessarily reliant on any regulatory requirement. Third, they need to get use to delegating a lot of the gate keeping processes because it stops management from acting quickly. They have to understand hiring is a business process and not a regulatory issue.”

Bill Taylor, a senior solutions architect for Cornerstone OnDemand, added the current technologies offer almost the same experience as in-person interviews so there is less and less reason for agencies not to take advantage of them and the coronavirus pandemic only shines a brighter light on this fact.

“You can mimic physical process that we go through from the speed to hire standpoint where instead of booking a room, arranging schedules and applicants having to drive in, now it can be a much more efficient process,” he said. “You still can get a sense of the candidate and what they are capable of. Things like did they wear a tie and shirt versus did they show up in T-shirt? There are many ways that the virtual experience can give you additional information about the candidate so you can make a good decision.”

In the end, the goal is to get to that good decision effectively so you can fill those open positions with quality employees.

In the almost seven years since the Department of Homeland Security launched the signature initiative to raise all cyber boats, the focus mainly has been on the 24 CFO Act civilian agencies.

The 75 small and micro agencies weren’t ignored, but it was clear the continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM) program would address cybersecurity gaps among the largest agencies first.

Well, it’s the little guys’ turn, now.

The General Services Administration, acting as the procurement arm for CDM, awarded CGI-Federal a $276 million contract to provide those 75 small and micro agencies — think Consumer Product Safety Commission or the Merit Systems Protection Board or the U.S. Institute of Peace — a host of services including a cyber catalog and a shared services platform.

In the solicitation, released in November, GSA and DHS say the goal is for the vendor to modernize version 1 of the shared services platform and add more capabilities including network security management and data protection management to go with the current set of services that include asset management and identity and access management.

“The shared services catalog (SSC) will also require the contractor to develop innovative solutions to the CDM capabilities that prioritize cloud native and hosted service solutions,” the solicitation stated. “The SSC will be a continuously curated list that is intended to grow and change with the threat and technology landscape.”

Two years in the making

The Defend F task order — in CDM parlance — has been in the works for the better part of two years.

DHS has not left small and micro agencies out to dry with CDM capabilities.

Kevin Cox, the CDM program manager for DHS, said in early March that 36 small and micro agencies are using version 1 of the shared services platform.

“We’ve made good strides with our existing shared services platform,” he said. “The idea here is we deployed the asset management capabilities and the identity and access management capabilities to these agencies, and rather than each of them have their own individual dashboards, we created a shared service platform in the cloud where all the sensor data reports up. That shared service platform in the cloud is multi-tenant so each agency has their own dashboard. They can see their own data and the model works the same way where that data gets summarized up to the federal dashboard.”

Cox said the new task order will give these small and micro agencies new and different cybersecurity tools and services that meets their needs more specific to their environment and the risks they face.

“We will be able to provide more services in the cloud under that new platform so agencies will have more tools at their disposal in regards to the own dashboard to better visualize and analyze their data,” he said. “The new dashboard will give them better value for their data and manage their risk better.”

CGI-Federal has been one of the biggest winners under the CDM program. This is its third major task order win. The others included a 2016 award for identity management services through the credential management task order, which was worth $102 million.

In 2018, GSA and DHS awarded CGI-Federal a $530 million contract to under the Alliant governmentwide contract for five agencies — the departments of Commerce, Justice, Labor, State and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

CGI says in its release that the new shared services platform will provide non-CFO Act agencies access to the same cybersecurity tools as their larger, cabinet-level counterparts.

Industry sources say the award to CGI-Federal could be delayed if one of the unsuccessful bidders — likely ManTech — file a protest with the Government Accountability Office. As of May 3, GAO’s docket didn’t show any complaints on this solicitation.

New CDM dashboard on tap

The award for the shared services platform kicked off a busy spring and summer for CDM.

Judy Baltensperger, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CDM dashboard project manager, said during a recent webinar sponsored by FCW, that the initial version of the new governmentwide dashboard should be ready in the spring.

That coincides with a new data management strategy for cyber data going through the dashboard.

“With data quality, we’ve found some stability and readiness challenges, and interoperability issues and governance with agencies,” Baltensperger said. “Additionally our master device record logic happens at the integration layer so that’s why we need clear data requirements to do business logic and ensure consistency across the dashboard.”

She said the goal of the data efforts is to make sure the right people have the right data to make the appropriate risk management decisions. That means, Baltensperger said, agencies have to start with common data schema and dictionary to enhance the data sets and feed the predictive analytics tools in the new dashboard.

“We want to present the layout of an agency’s environment so as we collect more data, we can understand the critical flows and help identify when there is a problem and what action should be taken,” she said. “Agencies have different risk appetites so it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.”

DHS expects all agencies to have the new dashboard by the fall.

“The dashboard team provided a calculator so the Defend integrators can size the implementation of the new dashboard appropriately for two capabilities,” Baltensperger said. “They also need to identify the volume of data, how many nodes are in the Elastic cloud enterprise. These will include the management node at each agency and then additional data nodes. We’ve built and prototyped the dashboard in the cloud. The federal dashboard will be in cloud, and we are hearing several agencies would like to go to the cloud.”

The easy headline and story would be about how the General Services Administration is missing out on potentially saving $1.1 billion under the multiple awards schedule program.

The agency’s inspector general released its annual review of 130 pre-award audits of new or renewed schedule contracts. In the report, auditors say they recommended price and discount adjustments that could total huge savings.

“By not effectively using all of the negotiation tools available, contracting officers are failing to leverage the government’s purchasing power,” the report states. “While we recognize that negotiations may not always yield the full amount of cost savings identified in our pre-award audit reports, FAS’ general disregard of pre-award audit results wasted our audit resources and forfeited opportunities to save over $900 million in taxpayer dollars.”

But that would be the easy way to read the audit and write an attention grabbing headline.

The use of pre-award audits and this annual report requires a deeper look into why GSA is “leaving” so much money on the table and causing such a caustic response from the IG.

Experts say that while pre-award audits are helpful, but may not tell the entire story. They say the IG looks mainly at the “list” price of a product or service, but only in a post-award audit can an auditor truly understand what price the agency really paid.

“The potential savings identified in the memorandum arise from an analysis of a single data point.  A holistic, end-to-end review of the pricing process would better assess the total acquisition cost, including costs to GSA, the IG, and industry in collecting, organizing, reviewing, and analyzing the pricing and sales information subject to audit,” said Roger Waldron, the president of the Coalition for Government Procurement and a former GSA executive. “The recurring administrative infrastructure costs associated with the schedules audit process also should be considered. For example, according to our estimates, the costs associated with the schedule pricing compliance and reporting requirements cost industry over $1 billion annually. One has to ask whether these administrative costs/burdens reduce access to commercial innovation? I believe the answer is yes.”

Deeper discounts at task order level?

Larry Allen, managing director of the federal market access practice at BDO, said while the IG has an important role to play in conducting pre-award audits, many times the contracting officer or agency customer receives a significant discount off at the task order level.

“A fairer analysis would be to do some digging and see what agencies paid at the task order level to determine to what degree there may have been savings. You can’t assume if you gave that deeper discount at contract level there would be similar discounting at task level. At some point, a discount is a discount,” Allen said. “There could be more accuracy if the IG looked at the prices paid at the task order level because what they are doing is a classic apples-to-oranges comparison. The contract level price is not the price agencies actually pay at the transaction level.”

Read more: Reporter’s Notebook

The IG looked at contracts over a three-year period between 2016 and 2019.

“We reviewed documents for contracts awarded during the review period to determine what contracting officers were using for the basis of their negotiations,” the report states. “We identified numerous instances where contracting officers relied on faulty pricing tools or unverified information, rather than pre-award audit results, to make pricing determinations. For example, on a  projected $2.3 billion contract, we found the proposed contract rates were overstated by an  average of 31%, but the contracting officer negotiated a mere 1% discount  improvement from the proposed rates based on an unsupported price analysis, which negated potential cost savings of $124.7 million. Moreover, we found that FAS accepted the contractor’s proposed pricing on contracts, resulting in $262 million in forfeited savings.”

An IG spokesman disputed the fact that auditors were making an apples-to-oranges comparison.

“Our analysis captures what commercial customers are paying for orders comparable to government task orders and takes into account discounts at the task order level. So the $1.1 billion savings is an estimate of what Schedule customers could actually realize,” the spokesman said. “Moreover, we know that agencies do indeed rely on the schedule price, because the FAR does not require them to negotiate additional discounts until the simplified acquisition threshold of $150,000 is reached.”

At the same time, GSA and the IG have been working together to make improvements to schedule contracts. A GSA official said the Federal Acquisition Service and the IG formed a working group in 2018 to improve the value of pre-award audits. The working group helped develop new policy, established performance metrics that are reviewed quarterly, which led to a 22% improvement in audit timeliness, and more than 2,100 hours of training for the acquisition workforce.

The official added FAS looks forward to continuing to partner with the GSA IG on maximizing effective use of contract audits.

Additionally, the IG conducted a strong majority of the audits — as much as 88% — before the change in policy. And there are another 46 audits conducted during that time period that were not listed in the report and included no cost savings or avoidance recommendations.

The GSA official also said FAS uses the pre-award audits  regularly to save money, including 54% of the audits identified in the report that led to a recovery of $8 million.

Time to complete audit takes too long

Allen said the IG’s timing around doing the audits and getting the results to contracting officers also causes challenges.

He said many times contracting officers receive the pre-award audits after signing the schedule contract because waiting for the analysis was taking too long.

“There have been a number of anecdotal cases where audits were completed after the award has been made,” Allen said. “The issue is audits need to be done in a timely manner, and are only useful before the award is made. The IG wants to reopen negotiations, and the company isn’t excited about it.”

Read more: Acquisition News

A GSA official confirmed that IG audits took longer than expected. In fiscal 2019, the official said IG office took, on average, 483 days to conduct an audit , which left contracting officers  without adequate time to negotiate with schedule vendors and that effected the ability of customer agencies to procure goods and services.

Another big problem with the reviews is a potential conflict of interest that comes with these audits.

“During my career at GSA, I worked closely with the IG, and I appreciate its oversight role as a key feature of our system. It promotes accountability and stewardship of the public fisc,” Waldron said. “Here, however, the memorandum highlights an issue observed by stakeholders across the procurement community, namely, that the IG is providing operational support to contracting officers on the front end and oversight reviews of the contacting process on the back end. It is an apparent organizational conflict of interest because the IG is reviewing transactions/fact patterns in which it was a directly involved at the outset. Under the Federal Acquisition Regulations, the government would prohibit a vendor from performing these conflicting roles.”

DoD could be a good example

A good example of this separation of duties is at the Defense Department where the Defense Contract Audit Agency performs reviews and the inspector general offers opinions and recommendations based those and other analyses.

It would make sense for GSA and its IG to create either a similar model or focus more on task order level audits to get a better sense of the real and potential savings the schedules bring to the market.

Two recent studies found agencies are paying less through the schedules than through commercial sites.

The CGP analyzed 744 AbilityOne products on GSA Advantage and on a platform run by Amazon under a pilot program. CGP found 741 out of 744 items on GSA Advantage had better prices as compared to the AbilityOne and Amazon site. Even when CGP accounted for minimum order quantities required under the government’s buying platform, GSA Advantage still provides agencies with a better deal 72% of the time and prices were lower 56% lower on Advantage as compared to the Amazon pilot.

The December 2017 study by Air Force Capts. Holland Canter and Tabitha Gomez at the Naval Postgraduate School provided similar findings as the CGP report.

Canter and Gomez looked at an Air Force pilot with Amazon and GSA Advantage for credit card purchases.

Canter and Gomez found “of 300 vendors that offered the 60 compared items, GSA Advantage offered the lowest price 80 percent of the time (241 times out of 300). Although GSA Advantage offered the lowest price more frequently, every item had a minimum order requirement. Amazon Business did not have any stated minimum order requirements for any items that we examined.”

Seems like the IG has a good model to follow for future evaluations of what agencies pay for schedule products and services.

Ridesharing companies Uber and Lyft, and their drivers particularly, are taking a big financial hit — much as 80% according to some estimates — during the coronavirus pandemic. But when things return to normal, the two gig economy giants are primed to take advantage of a five-year blanket purchase agreement with a $810 million ceiling to transport federal employees.

Uber and Lyft were the two winners of the General Services Administration’s latest contract, which for a 2% fee any agency can use.

“Improving the rideshare reporting process also is a unique opportunity. GSA’s new governmentwide Rideshare/Ride-hail BPAs modernizes official travel and will make it easier, and cheaper, to use rideshare services for official travel. No new apps to download – and no paper receipts to lose. Plus, auto billing to travelers GSA SmartPay travel cards earn agency rebates,” wrote Charlotte Phelan, the Federal Acquisition Service’s assistant commissioner for travel, transportation and logistics, in an April 10 blog post. “Most importantly, it will be easier for agencies to report Transportation Network Companies (TNC) expenses as required by the Modernizing Government Travel Act.”

GSA wouldn’t say if other ridesharing companies bid on the contract due to the award still being within the 10-day protest window. But given GSA blogged about the awards and was happy to provide answers to questions, it would be easy to surmise that it received only two bids.

Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed the “other” MGT Act in May 2017 to give agencies statutory authority to use ridesharing and other gig economy services. It also required GSA to develop regulations and for agencies to report data back to GSA on how much they are using these services.

The bill came nearly a year after GSA had updated the federal travel regulations to give federal employees the needed approval to use Uber or Lyft.

The BPA is the third step in bringing major changes to how GSA and other agencies manage fleets of cars.

A few years ago GSA told me they spent about $1 billion a year on buying and maintaining a fleet of automobiles for secretaries, deputy secretaries and others to use at their beckon call. Phelan, who didn’t put a price tag on managing the fleet, said GSA oversees more than 221,000 cars and trucks.

But connecting the rideshare applications to the government purchase card and to back-end reporting systems may give GSA and other agencies reason to reduce the size of their fleets. Yes, some political appointees will need their own cars for safety and convenience reasons, but the majority of those who enjoy the perks of having a car service may be encouraged to just use the app.

I’ve seen this already starting to happen, sharing taxis or Uber/Lyft with certain CIOs or acquisition executives as we are heading to the same back-to-back events.

There are even some who actually walk from one hotel or conference center to the next, blending into the public with few passersbys knowing the power and authority they hold.

Growth of ridesharing is real

The growth of Uber and Lyft in the federal sector is clear with agencies spending approximately $162 million in fiscal 2018, according to the request for proposals GSA issued in October.

“GSA’s market research identified the need for a streamlined rideshare/ride-hail services acquisition strategy, which would consolidate the government’s purchase instead of one-off purchases by individual agencies,” said a GSA spokesperson in an email to Federal News Network. “This solution supports category management by improving spend under management, policy reporting compliance and leveraging the government’s buying power.”

GSA said in the solicitation that in the Washington, D.C. area alone, employees took over 1 million trips using ridesharing applications in 2018, by far the most of any of the top 50 locations where employees travel regularly.

Under the BPA, agencies will receive a 2% to 4% discount from normal pricing as well as the waiving of technology fees charged to use back-office vendor data and reporting capabilities. Whether that is built into the discounts or is on top of the 2% to 4% discount is unclear.

But here’s the rub: GSA is charging a 2% fee to use the BPA, so it’s yet to be determined if agencies are getting that much, if any, of a benefit from using the contract.

GSA says the 2% fee is to provide “a fully commercial and centrally managed capability, as GSA will manage the vendor performance on behalf of all agencies. Federal agencies will use the commercial rideshare/ride-hail apps. Lyft and Uber will have account setup teams to assist with the launch of these programs,” the spokesperson said.

Creating a BPA and dealing with the back office record keeping is a good idea, but there will be some agencies who question whether the discounts are enough to warrant paying for the fee to use the contract. The BPA doesn’t dissuade Uber or Lyft from setting up individual contracts or accounts with agencies, who can then track the use through the government purchase card.

When in-person meetings and conference begin again, it will be interesting to see if GSA’s BPA is more like Alliant 2 or 8(a) Stars, or does it fall into the category of good idea that never worked well like the email-as-a-service or agile multiple award contracts.