The $6 billion blanket purchase agreement for the continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM) program is heading into the home stretch with less than 18 months left on the initial deal.

The General Services Administration and the Homeland Security Department continue to send signals of how they will move forward after that initial BPA expires in August 2018.

The latest indication came in the form of a request for information (RFI) to GSA Alliant Small Business contract holders on March 6.

GSA is asking small firms to provide details across seven broad CDM capabilities, including:

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The original group of disruptors at the General Services Administration’s 18F is getting smaller by the month. Hillary Hartley, the deputy executive director and creative director, is leaving a few months before her term was to expire.

In an email to staff obtained by Federal News Radio, Hartley said her last official day is April 7.

“This has been the best job I’ve ever had, with the best group of people I’ve ever known,” Hartley said in the email to staff. “Four years ago, we had dreams that felt noble, but kind of impossible, and it is only because of you (and our amazing #alumni) that is now a reality.”

GSA’s 18F organization provides digital and consulting services to federal, state and local governments to help those entities focus on user needs and take advantage of iterative or agile development.

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Online scams are as old as the internet. The Nigerian businessman seeking money from their victims so they can transfer money back to them from a non-existent bank, or the fake emails from a scammer pretending to represent a government agency telling you about a problem are among the most famous ones.

With the rise of social media — whether LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram — a new way to find out information about a federal employee or military service member is easier than ever.

This is why the Army released one of the most fascinating requests for information in recent times.
The Army is looking for help from a vendor to find, monitor and get rid of imposter social media accounts.

Among the capabilities the Army is looking for a vendor to provide are “an existing commercially available, user-friendly, web-based solution to monitor and mitigate imposter profiles on social media platforms. A solution that is automated and secure (not susceptible to hacking). The ability to query at a minimum, but not limited to the following social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Skype, Instagram and YouTube as well as the ability to include new/additional social media networks as they arise.”

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The future of the Obama administration’s category management initiative remains unknown. Several federal officials involved in category management have told me they have received good feedback from Trump administration transition team and special advisers so far in the first few months of the transition and presidency. But others, particularly in industry, say they are hearing major changes are on the way for this and several procurement initiatives of the prior administration.

Keep in mind it has been four months since comments were due on the proposed category management circular. One source told me recently the circular is basically on hold until more political appointees are in place.

One thing is certain no matter what happens to category management, small businesses have a lot of anxiety about the future of federal procurement.

Bob Derby, vice president of strategic communications for LeapFrog Solutions, a small women-owned firm, said category management is “big and scary.”

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The Defense Department may have hit upon an acquisition innovation that is slowly drifting to the civilian world.

Since 2012, the Pentagon has been taking a SAW — services acquisition workshop — to procurements worth more than $1 billion.

Ken Brennan, the deputy director for services acquisition in DoD’s Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy office, said the success of this effort that brings together all the stakeholders of an acquisition, from technology, to financial, to mission, to lawyers, is leading DoD to consider lowering the threshold for requiring the use of SAWs.

The 2012 memo mandates the SAW for $1 billion and encourages the military to use the process for any services acquisition worth more than $100 million. (more…)

The federal IT and cyber community lost one of its own last week. Howard Schmidt, the first cyber czar for President Barack Obama and a special advisor for cybersecurity under the President George W. Bush administration, passed away March 2 at his home in Muskego, Wisconsin.

Schmidt, 67, lost his battle with cancer. Memorial services will be held March 10 at Becker-Ritter Funeral Home: 14074 West North Avenue, Brookfield, Wisconsin 53005.
All those who are planning to attend please RSVP via email to SCHMIDTMEMORIAL@gmail.com.
Any personal pictures and stories are greatly welcomed at SCHMIDTMEMORIAL@gmail.com.

Schmidt’s impact on federal cybersecurity and on the people who are a part of it today remains strong and clear.

“Howard was a pioneer in cybersecurity, and one of the first to recognize that this was not a government or an industry challenge, but rather a shared challenge — one that required active collaboration and cooperation between the public and private sectors,” said Jeremy Grant, a managing director at the Chertoff Group and a former head of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “His years of service in government and industry — and more importantly, his dedication to making cyberspace more trustworthy for everybody — is something that we all benefit from today.”

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Patience is hard sometimes. This is especially true with a new administration, as we all are waiting for some signals or idea of what the new management agenda will look like.

There have been a few clues, such as the hiring freeze and the draft executive order on approaches to reorganizing agencies.

President Donald Trump will send his fiscal 2018 budget request to Congress around March 13, so that will offer a few more details.

In the meantime, here is a tidbit we recently learned: Linda Springer is working at the Office of Management and Budget as the senior adviser to the director for management.

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House and Senate staff members working for committees overseeing federal cybersecurity efforts are placing a bigger focus on the makeup and training of agency workforces this year.

Both the House Homeland Security Committee and the House and Senate intelligence committees want more action from agencies in how they hire and train their workforces to deal with cybersecurity.

And the oversight is for good reason. As Bill Evanina, the national counterintelligence executive, told me recently, 90 percent of all successful hacks are because of spear phishing, and federal employees are more at risk from clicking on links than from sophisticated attacks.

This is why, over the last few years, lawmakers have required agencies to understand the makeup of their workforces and have given DHS more authorities to hire qualified cyber employees.

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The Office of Personnel Management’s National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) is almost five months old and already embroiled in its first bid protest.

OPM awarded Primus Solutions $117 million contract on Jan. 23 to provide investigative support services.

Two unsuccessful bidders submitted protests to the Government Accountability Office. Maximus Federal Services and Next Tier Concepts filed complaints with GAO on Feb. 13. Both companies are alleging OPM’s evaluation of their proposals was flawed.

A Maximus spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on ongoing protests.

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By 2018, the General Services Administration will have paid Dun & Bradstreet more than $131 million over the last eight years for access and use of the Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS).

DUNS helps more than 39 agencies uniquely identify contractors with which it does business, according to a November 2016 Congressional Research Service report obtained by the Federation of American Scientists. The 2010 deal also includes access to seven types of software products and 14 data products that enable the government to use the proprietary numbering system for a variety of acquisition-related functions.

This may be the last time D&B receives this type of contract from the government.

GSA added another piece to this two-plus year effort for the government to stop using DUNS after more than 25 years.

GSA released a request for information Feb. 10 asking for details on other possible options to DUNS.

The agency is asking vendors to answer 20 questions about the three components of entity validation services, including core validation, additional services and a method to determine unique assignment.

Responses to the RFI are due March 13.

“GSA is realizing the current situation is untenable,” said Hudson Hollister, founder and executive director of the Data Coalition and an outspoken critic of the continued use of DUNS by agencies. “There are alternatives that do not require proprietary products to run whole systems of identifying federal contractors. Not only are proprietary identifying codes unnecessary and no longer sensible, with priority identification codes, the system is paid for by the users of the data so that means citizens, researchers and others. They have to pay for every use over and over instead of making payments for the one-time use.”

Hollister and others, such as Sean Moulton, open government program manager at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), have been pushing GSA to change a practice that began in the early-1990s.

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