The White House and leading House members found a happy medium when it comes to promoting and funding agency IT modernization efforts, but whether or not this compromise comes to fruition may just come down to the will of a few senators.

The full House is expected to pass Rep. Will Hurd’s (R-Texas) Modernization Government Technology Act, which the Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved Sept. 15, as early as Tuesday.

Senators on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Appropriations committees are far from agreeable on the bill’s approach of creating working capital funds in each agency specifically for IT modernization, and creating a centralized pot of money owned by the Office of Management and Budget and managed by the General Services Administration.

Multiple industry and Hill sources said there are some who are wary of creating another working capital fund, given so many already exist across the government.

According to the White House budget request for fiscal 2017, 17 agencies currently have this type of funding mechanism. For instance, the Commerce Department has working capital funds at the headquarters level, the Census Bureau and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Additionally, the Environmental Protection Agency, GSA and the departments of Justice, Treasury, State, Labor, Transportation and Interior are among the agencies with working capital funds.

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Like your toothbrush or air filter in your furnace or even the oil in your car, federal policy needs to be replaced once in a while too.

The Office of Management and Budget is taking on this sometimes herculean effort. The administration already updated the 16-year-old Circular A-130 in July. There’s discussion about some of the identity management and access control guidance from the mid-2000s needing to be refreshed. Cybersecurity guidance is constantly changed and modified to meet the ever-evolving threats.

And then there is privacy. It’s been 11 years since OMB last addressed the role of the chief privacy officer. Back in 2005, OMB released M-05-08, Designation of Senior Agency Officials for Privacy, in February.

Back then, the idea of having chief privacy officers (CPO) in every agency was been a point of contention. OMB under the President George W. Bush administration didn’t want a CPO in every agency. Some lawmakers did, pushing a provision in the 2005 appropriations bill, requiring agencies to name chief privacy officers and perform a number of privacy oversight functions, according to a story I wrote back in 2005. Other lawmakers and the administration pushed to repeal the provision.

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Agencies are looking at a deadline of less than four months to implement the cybersecurity program known as EINSTEIN 3-Accelerated (E3A).

The Homeland Security Department says the government is making progress toward that Dec. 18 target, with about 66 percent of all large agencies using the software to detect and block cyber attacks.

But a recent letter to the IRS from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, calls into question whether every agency really can or will meet the spirit and intent of the effort.

Johnson wrote to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen on Aug. 8 asking for answers after a recent briefing from DHS about the status of the EINSTEIN implementation effort across all of government.

What Johnson said DHS told the committee is alarming, to say the least.

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The concept of parity is often about talked in professional and collegiate sports as if it’s good for the league and for competition. But parity is rarely talked about the ultra-competitive world of federal procurement outside of maybe socioeconomic programs for small and disadvantaged businesses.

That’s why the General Services Administration’s proposed rule on Aug. 8 is both so interesting and important.

GSA proposed to change its internal acquisition regulations to let agencies develop task orders under the schedules program to include other direct costs (ODCs) or order level materials (OLMs).

“Currently, most commercial indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts provide the flexibility to easily acquire order-level materials; however the FSS program does not. This proposed rule aims to create parity between the FSS program and other commercial IDIQs while also ensuring an appropriate set of controls or safeguards are put in place,” GSA wrote in the proposed rule. “Providing the same flexibilities in the FSS program that are currently authorized for commercial IDIQ vehicles will help to reduce contract duplication and the associated administrative costs and inefficiencies for agencies. Simultaneously, it will reduce transaction costs for contractors, including small businesses, by eliminating the need for FSS contract holders to compete for and enter into additional contracts for this ancillary work.”

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It seems my story on the recent cybersecurity award from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services ruffled a few feathers.

CMS officials were unhappy with the way my source portrayed the $67.6 million contract award, especially around the source’s belief that the award appeared to go to the lowest bidder.

CMS responded to my questions, so in the interest of balanced reporting, here is what they said.

CMS said it rated the winning vendor Iron Vine’s “experience and technical merit — and overall quote“ at the highest levels.

“The request for quotes (RFQ) stated that CMS would select a company that would provide CMS the greatest confidence that it will best meet or exceed the requirements at a fair and reasonable price,” the CMS spokesman said.

CMS said the $67.6 million price tag also was consistent with the other two current contracts that this new contract is replacing.

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The Labor Department and the General Services Administration are losing key executives.

Dawn Leaf, the Labor Department’s chief information officer, is hanging up her IT shingle after more than 17 years in government, including the last four leading the agency’s IT efforts.

MaryAnn Monroe, the director of customer experience and chief of staff for public experience/USAGov in the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Service (TTS) is leaving the government to join the private sector.

Monroe announced on Sept. 2 that she would join e-Gain, a cloud provider of omni-channel customer engagement solutions, as director of customer success for federal.

Leaf’s decision to retire is a little surprising given how much success she’s had in transforming Labor IT infrastructure.

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Congress is rejecting most of the White House’s push for funding to create digital services offices in every agency for a second year in a row.

A review of the fiscal 2017 spending bills finds lawmakers are not funding nor publicly supporting the creation of these offices.

But the fact that the Obama administration isn’t getting traction in Congress for digital services is actually to be expected if history tells us anything.

There are a lot of similarities between digital services today and e-government in the early 2000s during President George W. Bush’s administration.

Back in 2001, the White House committed to spending $100 million over three years on e-government to make services more citizen-centric and accessible.

Sounds similar to what President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget request said about digital services: requesting $105 million to seed digital services teams across the largest agencies to “increase oversight and accountability for IT spending, improve IT procurement, and improve agency cybersecurity and cyber readiness.”

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While Congress has remained basically unaccommodating in funding digital services, lawmakers came out strongly in favor of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act). No surprise since Congress actually passed this bill versus digital services being an administration request.

But what’s ironic is how the two initiatives work closely together. Data runs so much of the design and understanding of what citizens want and how agencies can improve services.

As you may remember, Congress passed and the President signed the DATA Act into law in 2014. It requires agencies to standardize the way the government shares its spending information, making it more transparent to other agencies and to the public. The Office of Management and Budget and the Treasury Department are spearheading the full implementation of the law, set for May 2017.

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Another reason Congress should get on board with the IT Modernization Fund or the MOVE-IT Act: The cost of technology per federal employee on average is more than $39,000. Yes you read that correctly, the government spends per worker on average the same as if you bought a new Cadillac XT5 or a Lexus RC 200t or a Volvo XC70.

Shawn McCarthy, the research director IDC Government, collected the data and did the math to find once he removed the education and government sectors, the average industry spends four times less than the federal government for IT per employee based on 2013 dollars.

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Just as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are ramping up for the 2017 open enrollment under the Affordable Care Act, a contract award for cybersecurity services is causing a bit of a stir in the federal community.

Multiple sources confirm that CMS awarded Iron Vine Security a $67.6 million contract to provide information security and privacy support services.

According to the award announcement obtained by Federal News Radio, CMS chose Iron Vine, a small firm in Washington, D.C., from 11 bids for the request for quote under GSA’s Schedule 70 as a small business set-aside.

One industry source, who requested anonymity in order to talk about the award that CMS has not yet announced, said they believe the agency is taking a huge risk. The source, whose company didn’t bid on the project, said it appears CMS took a lowest price, technically acceptable (LPTA) approach to a complex cyber environment.

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