Three memos trying to bust contracting myths weren’t enough. Neither was a proposed rule in the Federal Acquisition Regulations.

But maybe, just maybe, the Homeland Security Department has found a break in the wire that has stopped the government and industry from effectively talking about, sharing and solving problems.

DHS is about to hold its fourth Reverse Industry Day on June 28 in Washington, D.C. as part of its Acquisition Innovation in Motion (AIiM) initiative.

“I wanted to get the government in the audience and industry up [on stage] sharing their perspective. What drives them? What motivates them? How do they view our solicitations? Not for the purposes of critiquing, but for our learning, so we could understand their perspective, we could put ourselves in industry’s shoes and have a better conversation. We are making that progress,” said Soraya Correa, the chief procurement officer at DHS, during the recent ACT-IAC Management of Change conference. “I now have program managers who pick up the phone and say, ‘I’m not real sure. I think we should talk to industry, but I don’t have a solicitation. Can we do that?’ That’s a great question. I’m like, ‘Yes, let’s go. Let’s have a conversation.’ You don’t need a piece of paper, and in fact, you are better off, because there is nothing to protest.”

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The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s fourth hearing focusing on the implementation of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) revealed few details on why most agency grades stagnated or sagged.

Even the guests of the committee, Beth Killoran, the chief information officer of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Sheila Conley, the deputy CFO of HHS, didn’t face stiff questioning about why their grade has remained a D-minus the last two quarters.

But like the last few FITARA oversight hearings, there is plenty for CIOs, CFOs and other agency leaders to read between the lines.

Here are my three takeaways from the FITARA 4.0 hearing:

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Efforts to stop the proliferation of multiple award contracts have found limited success. Data from Bloomberg Government shows that while the number of MACs governmentwide — Defense Department and civilian agencies — have dropped since 2012, there still are more than 2,600.

The total number of MACs have dropped by 239 in the five years since the Office of Management and Budget implemented the requirement to submit a business case for any new multiple award contract that will be worth more than $50 million over the life of the vehicle.

The 8 percent reduction comes as spending on MACs increased by $5 billion in 2016, as compared to 2015. Bloomberg Government reported in April that spending on these contract vehicles increased to $111 billion last fiscal year from $106 billion the year before.

Bloomberg Government compiled a list of all multiple award contracts across the government over the last five years.

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The top two leaders of the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration have resigned.

Tom Sharpe, the FAS Commissioner, and Kevin Youel Page, the deputy FAS Commissioner, told staff June 12 that they are leaving their respective positions.

Sharpe said in an email to staff, which Federal News Radio obtained, that he will retire from federal service on June 24 and pursue other opportunities.

Youel Page said in an email to staff, which Federal News Radio also obtained, that his last day will be June 24.

Both resignations come in the wake of GSA’s decision to merge the Technology Transformation Service (TTS) into FAS and make the commissioner’s job a political one instead of career. (more…)

The decision by the General Services Administration to merge the Technology Transformation Service into the Federal Acquisition Service shocked much of the federal community.

From those observers who have been following GSA for decades, to the employees, to even some in the White House, the news on June 7 was truly unexpected.

In case you weren’t paying attention last week, GSA announced its experiment with a third service was ending, TTS would now be a part of FAS and the commissioner would be a political position instead of a career one. GSA launched TTS in May 2016, meaning the third service lasted a little over a year.

Several GSA sources described the feeling of the TTS staff and others as a “punch to the gut,” or “no one had any idea this was happening,” and “this dropped like a big bomb.”

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Nine months after we asked in this space if the agile craze is taking the government by storm, the data and actions continue to show a lack of coordinated contracting approach leading to a bunch of one-off contracts.

Over at the Homeland Security Department is the most obvious example of this growing challenge.

In late April, the Transportation Security Administration awarded Accenture a $64 million contract for the EAGLE II multiple award contract vehicle  to transform more than 70 applications into a modern architecture.

About a month later, DHS’s procurement office bailed on setting up its $1.5 billion small-business contract vehicle for agile services after two rounds of awards and two rounds of protests. DHS told the Government Accountability Office it didn’t have the expertise to fix the procurement and would develop a new acquisition approach in 2018.

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The Homeland Security Department has had a rough couple of weeks around procurement. But despite losing a bid protest for a $1.6 billion cloud computing vehicle and having to cancel its $1.5 billion contract for agile development services, DHS certainly can take solace in the fact that its efforts around strategic sourcing and category management are among the best in government.

The agency’s growing and broad acceptance of the concepts behind category management is leading to a type of efficiency rarely seen in government. So much so that, DHS should be a model for how strategic sourcing works within an agency rather than the governmentwide approach that has struggled.

Jaclyn Smith, the director of the Strategic Sourcing Program Office in the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer at DHS, said the agency has 83 contract vehicles and 26 others in development under its category management program.

Smith, speaking at an AFFIRM panel back in April, said she had to build credibility with the contracting officers and mission areas so they know the goal wasn’t to take money away, but let them move funds from buying common goods and services to mission areas.

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If the Homeland Security Department’s decision to cancel its $1.5 billion contract for agile services wasn’t shocking enough, the details of the missteps and problems the agency detailed in its “motion to dismiss” left long-time federal procurement attorneys and vendors with their collective mouths agape.

DHS filed the “motion to dismiss” with the Government Accountability Office on May 26, saying it was canceling the small business procurement known as Flexible Agile Support for the Homeland (FLASH) and thus ending the six-month series of awards and protests over the contract vehicle.

“DHS has determined that cancellation of the FLASH solicitation, HSHQDC-16-R-00118, is the only viable option to address the many issues that DHS has identified as problems with the requirement and the record,” DHS lawyers wrote to GAO in the document, which Federal News Radio obtained. “The integrity of the procurement process will be served by this cancellation.”

Barbara Kinosky, managing partner with Centre Law and Consulting LLC, said she was “floored” by DHS’s honesty and the level of detail it provided.

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The first guidance related to the cybersecurity executive order signed by President Donald Trump in May is filled with four deadlines between now and August. Agencies have their marching orders for how to report cyber metrics to the governmentwide Cyberscope platform, for how to develop and submit their risk assessment and for how to create an action plan to implement the cybersecurity framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

But if you read between the lines of the May 19 memo from Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, there is a golden opportunity for federal chief information officers and chief information security officers (CISOs).

CIOs and CISOs can either make this a compliance effort, or take the bull by the horns, offer an honest assessment of their cyber posture and expect help from OMB. And OMB better not shrink.

“This memo and executive order is a gift for us to take a hard look at what we need,” said one agency CISO, who requested anonymity because they didn’t get permission to talk to the media. “CISOs need to take a hard look, paint as accurate of a picture as they can of the conditions and take advantage of this opportunity to get healthy.”

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There may be an answer to the long-running debate about whether to split U.S. Cyber Command from the National Security Agency and where does the civilian sector fit in to the offensive side of the cyber equation.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, offered an idea at a recent hearing with Adm. Mike Rogers, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of NSA, that seems to have real legs.

McCain suggested that the Coast Guard could be a model for how cybersecurity is organized in the federal government.

“That Coast Guard has an interesting mix of authorities that may be just as applicable in cyberspace as they are in territorial waters. They’re both an agency within the Department of Homeland Security as well as a branch of the armed services. They can operate both within the United States and internationally and can seamlessly transition from law enforcement to military authorities,” McCain said at the May 9 hearing. “A cyber analog to the Coast Guard could be a powerful tool for addressing gaps that impede our existing organizational structure. It could also serve as a much-needed cyber first response team responsible for immediate triage and handoff to the appropriate federal entity for further response, remediation, or law enforcement action.”

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