The government’s actions against Kaspersky Lab is a de facto debarment. Let’s just call it like it is. The government gave Kaspersky Lab the federal procurement version of the death penalty.

And the lack of due process for the company should be alarming for every federal contractor. In fact, the entire episode should be a big, flashing, warning light for other companies, as the actions taken by the government are highly unusual, severe and unexplainable, according to cyber and legal experts.

Additionally, the lack of transparency on the evidence of a connection between Kaspersky Lab and the Russian government for this de facto debarment from the General Services Administration or anyone in the intelligence community is just as disconcerting.

Federal procurement lawyers and federal cyber experts both say there seems to be no good reason for GSA to have kicked Kaspersky off the schedules program, and now for lawmakers to aggressively question agency use of their software. The latest comes from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who added a provision to the National Defense Authorization bill that would prohibit any agency from using Kaspersky Lab hardware, software or services whether directly or indirectly through a subcontractor or third party.

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With all of the rising concerns about the future of cyber diplomacy at the State Department, there is new hope that the agency is finally getting its internal IT security processes aligned to be more effective.

State quietly launched a new Cyber and Technology Security (CTS) directorate, which falls within the Diplomatic Security Service.

“CTS facilitates the conduct of global diplomacy by protecting life, property, and information with advanced cybersecurity programs and risk-managed technology innovation,” a State Department spokeswoman said. “CTS provides advanced cyber threat analysis, incident detection and response, cyber investigative support and emerging technology solutions.”

So what does that exactly mean?

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The award of the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) telecommunications contract to 10 vendors sounded the starting gun of what traditionally has been an arduous, costly and sometimes contemptuous transition process to a new governmentwide contract.

Even though the General Services Administration has been providing telecommunications services to other federal agencies for 50-plus years, transitioning from one contract to the next has rarely gone as expected.

“I think everyone is drawing a deep breath, but the real work is about to start. Agencies, the companies and GSA will be real busy,” said Bob Woods,  president of Topside Consulting and a former GSA official who worked on the FTS 2000 contract and has followed the federal telecommunications market for 25 years. “I think as people go through these competitions, they learn something from it, and while I know the fear of transition is a natural thing, you have to manage that fear. Yes, agencies will have their challenges, but the real challenge will be to keep it moving and making progress. Like the others before, EIS will have its difficult moments.”

This is why Bill Zelinski, the deputy assistant commissioner for the Federal Acquisition Service’s IT category management at GSA, has been calling the EIS awards a “race to the beginning,” as in the beginning of the journey.

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Sonny Bhagowalia, the Treasury Department’s chief information officer since October 2014, has been moved out of his position and put on detail to the Bureau of Fiscal Service.

A Treasury spokeswoman confirmed Bhagowalia’s new position and said he will “focus on a series of important cybersecurity and technology projects” at the bureau.

In the meantime, Eric Olson, the deputy CIO, will serve as acting CIO, the spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman did not say how long Bhagowalia’s detail would last and didn’t respond to an email asking for clarification.

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Like the famous 1970s commercial where the owl asks how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll lollipop, we may never know how much the government spends on technology.

The fiscal 2018 estimate is $90 billion. But the Office of American Innovation lead and assistant to the president for strategic initiatives Chris Liddell said on July 20 that number could be more like $200 billion.

This unknown, as well as many other mysteries of federal IT, such as the longstanding question about what outcomes are agencies getting for this rate of spending and how to move to a consumption model for cloud computing when no one is quite sure of who is using what, are driving the government’s move to technology business management (TBM) standards.

Liddell, who kicked off a TBM summit at the White House, said the Trump administration’s goal to modernize, better secure and reduce spending on technology will be anchored by these standards.

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If you didn’t hear collective echoes of shock and confusion that reverberated through much of the federal contractor community on Friday, then you were on vacation or locked in a soundproof room working on a proposal.

The General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service continued its personnel overhaul with four contracting officers who basically developed, owned and managed the popular OASIS multiple award contract for professional services for the past few years deciding to move to the FedSIM program.

In a blog post, Tiffany Hixson, GSA’s assistant commissioner for the Professional Services and Human Categories in FAS, announced that Todd Richards, the program manager of the One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS); Valerie Bindel, a senior contracting officer working on OASIS Small Business; Tommy Thomas, a procurement contracting officer; and Catherine Renfro, a contract specialist; would join FedSIM on July 24.

But while movement on a large, successful contract isn’t necessarily unusual or unexpected, industry sources say this time it’s far from business as usual.

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The details behind the power struggle at the General Services Administration to create the Technology Transformation Service by using the multi-billion dollar Acquisition Services Fund (ASF) is salacious and stunning in many ways.

The accusations of veiled threats, the strong consideration by former GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth to remove the top two executives of the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) and almost the blind support of the 18F digital services organization by a host of Obama administration appointees despite repeated warnings about their consistent breaking of financial and acquisition regulations and laws makes for a great read.

But in the end, the inspector general’s newly released report detailing this three-year dispute will end up being more of a history lesson than a situation where there are real consequences for Turner Roth and other senior GSA officials.

Nearly every one of the main characters have left GSA. Turner Roth left in January at the end of the Obama administration and is now a senior advisor at WSP USA, a global engineering and professional services organization.

An email to Turner Roth was not immediately returned. She told Federal News Radio last week that the IG’s findings were “wrong and disappointing.”

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In a rocky FITARA sea of red and yellow “Fs” and “Ds,” the U.S. Agency for International Development stood out like a lighthouse.

USAID became the first agency earlier this month to receive an “A” on the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

While most agencies stagnated, USAID lifted its grades from a “D” to an “A+” over the last six months.
The fourth scorecard, released by the committee on June 13, showed agency progress in reforming technology management and oversight hit a wall while the overall scores of 20 of 24 agencies stayed the same or dropped since December.

“Here’s an agency that began at a fairly low score and decided, do you know what, we can’t settle for that. What did they do? They reached out to GAO and said ‘what can we do to improve our performance?’ They listened to advice and they implemented it. And they now have the highest score and the greatest progress of a federal agency, AID,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the subcommittee on government operations and a co-author of FITARA, at the June 13 hearing. “When some agencies say it’s too complicated, etc. AID has proved that is not true. If there is the political will. If there is the managerial desire to self-improve and to come into the 21st century, you will have congressional support, you will have GAO support and you will have a nice grade.”

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The Obama administration’s push over the last eight years to inject more competition into the federal procurement process seems to have resulted in two major changes across the vendor community that are only now becoming clear.

First, the incumbent win rate dramatically dropped over the last year.

Second, contractors diversified into other markets, including state and local and commercial sectors, at a more aggressive rate than in the recent past to deal with the shrinking federal procurement pie.

“This gives a strong indication that competition is increasing and possibly driving down pricing and profit percentages on federal contracts,” stated the 2016 federal contractor survey sponsored by Grant Thornton released on May 30. “Companies should be looking at their current pricing techniques to determine if adjustments are necessary to win greater percentages of proposals.”

Rich LaFleur, a partner Grant Thornton and co-leader of the government contracts industry practice, said in an interview with Federal News Radio, the win rate for incumbents dropped to 54 percent in 2016 from 75 percent in 2015.

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The Department of Housing and Urban Development and an Agriculture Department bureau have new chief information officers. The Energy Department is getting closer to filling their top IT executive spot with someone from the Longhorn state.

Three prominent former federal CIOs also have new roles.

The end of June is a busy time for people news in the federal community.

Let’s start off with the newcomers:

Johnson Joy joins HUD as its new CIO, bringing more than two decades of experience in the IT field.
He comes to HUD after running J3 Global Inc., a IT and management consulting firm in Houston, Texas, the agency confirmed to Federal News Radio.

Joy earned a Master’s in Information Systems from Steven’s Institute of Technology, and a bachelors and master’s degrees in physics from Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala, South India.

Joy replaces Rafael Diaz, who left in January after serving just over two years.

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