The General Services Administration first brought up the concept of having an “unpriced” schedule a year or so ago.

The idea is to evaluate vendors for their capabilities, past performance and overall skillsets, and not on their prices. And then let the price competition happen at the task order level.

This concept would be a huge change in the federal market where price has always been a factor in the evaluations of bids.

But the recent success of governmentwide multiple award contracts such as OASIS, and the acceptance of a similar approach for the recent $11.5 billion Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS) procurement and the soon-to-be released solicitation for Alliant 2, there is a growing recognition that this may be the future of federal contracting for multiple award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity vehicles.

By the way, GSA is expected to release the Alliant 2 request for proposals on or about June 20. GSA released a pre-solicitation notice on June 3. But the coverage of that is for another week’s notebook.

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1987 — that was the first time the Office of Personnel Management tried to update its retirement systems.

Over the last 29 years, there has been failure after wrong turn, after change of direction, after smart pauses to reassess the path forward, after new strategy, after failure, after… well, you get it. Federal retirement counselors and OPM’s folks in Boyers, Pennsylvania, where the retirement processing office works, continue to wait for modern technology. And federal retirees and soon-to-be retirees continue to hope and pray their paper files make it to the right person for processing. Right now, the retirement backlog stands at just over 14,000 as of May 2016.

So when OPM announced it was hiring a new chief information officer and one of its top priorities would be to modernize the systems that process federal employee retirements, the surprise on the press call was audible.

“I think it will be a reinvention of the system and really bring it into a much more modern and automated age with more automation, process and access to our client base,” said Clif Triplett, OPM’s senior cyber and information technology adviser at OPM, during a conference call with reporters on June 1. “Today the system is quite a number of years old, significantly riddled with manual processes. Actually, the number of systems they have would probably be almost shocking in the limited number they have and how much they have to do manually. Our history is paper documents. We want to move to a digital age so the interaction with the retirees, the processing of the change requests and the calculation of benefits and such, I think we will start almost from scratch, looking at the process and how automation can streamline it, make the government more efficient and deliver a much higher level and superior quality of service to our constituency.”

Triplett’s optimism and can-do attitude is exactly what this project needs.

But it’s not new. We’ve heard this type of excitement and optimism before.

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The General Services Administration is leaving dozens of vendors under Schedule 75 for offices supplies in the cold with the news that it doesn’t plan on accepting new offers or renewing current schedule holders’ contracts for at least another nine months, and probably more like 12 months.

Large and small companies alike are facing the loss of their schedule contracts as many are coming to the end of their evergreen 20-year contract. And some, such as 3M, will be without a spot on schedule, which brought in $518 million in sales in fiscal 2015, altogether for several years to come.

3M saw its Schedule 75 contract expired Feb. 28. While large business has received almost no sales through the schedule over the last few years, it’s an example of the increasingly shrinking industrial base agencies have to choose from.

On the other hand, the largest small-business vendor under Schedule 75, ABM Federal Sales — which brought in $311 million in revenue from sales under Schedule 75 since it started federal business — saw its contract expire in April. ABM holds a spot on the Office Supplies strategic sourcing contract, known as OS3, so it’s not cut out of the market altogether.

In all, GSA’s multiple award schedule portal shows nine companies had expired contracts under Schedule 75 in 2015 with another 11 are scheduled to end in 2016, five more in 2017 and eight more in 2018.

“There is a concern that if it takes GSA another year or two to open up Schedule 75, it’s going to take businesses off the schedule, especially if they can’t reapply,” said Michelle Hermelee, president BH Sky Associates LLC, a consultancy that helps companies manage their GSA schedule contracts. “I suggest to our clients that they get involved, talk to the acquisition folks, voice their comments and concerns. Vendors also can be proactive and do some of the necessary requirements that are pretty common or standard across all schedules so they are ready when it does open, not starting from beginning.”

But it’s more than sheer numbers — the delay in reopening the schedule is impacting many vendors who have been doing business with agencies for decades.

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The Education Department didn’t wait long to find a new chief information officer. Just three months after embattled CIO Danny Harris decided to retire, Education named Jason Gray as its new highest ranking IT executive.

In an email to staff obtained by Federal News Radio, James Cole, Education’s general counsel who is delegated the duties of the deputy secretary, said Gray joined the agency May 31.

“Jason brings years of experience in the planning, development, delivery, and monitoring of technical solutions that address the needs of his customers in support of their mission,” Cole wrote. “While Jason has significant experience leading IT organizations, it is his strong track record of creating and maintaining a positive work environment that promotes open communication and high ethical standards that makes him the right choice to lead OCIO.”

Gray comes to Education after spending the last 17 months as the Transportation Department’s associate CIO for IT policy and oversight.

In that role, Gray helped oversee department policy, governance and compliance in managing DoT’s $3.5 billion IT budget.

Cole said while at DoT, Gray led the implementation of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA).

Since Harris left, Ken Moore has been acting CIO.

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The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee garnered a lot of national media attention from its “discovery” of computer systems that are four or five decades old and still running critical functions in the Defense Department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and several other agencies.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the committee, held up an 8½ inch floppy disk, similar to the one DoD uses to with its 53-year-old Strategic Automated Command and Control System, as exhibit A of the problem nearly every agency is facing.

Chaffetz also said according to best estimates, the government as a whole uses 930 million lines of code using more than 70 legacy programming languages, including more than 155 million lines of COBOL and more than 135 million lines of Fortran.

While the hearing produced good theater and a lot of shocked comments from “Joe and Jane citizen,” the discussion actually did two other more important things. First, Chaffetz and the other committee members furthered the case for the $3.1 billion IT Modernization Fund the White House is pushing.

But maybe more importantly, the hearing showed just how much of a tangled, knotty mess agency systems are in and why the advances in using agile or iterative development is the only way to untie these stubborn knots.

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The summer of 2016 will be known from this point forward as the “summer of the billion dollar IT contract.”

The number of large, multiple-award technology contracts agencies are recompeting or launching, and expected to award is extraordinary.

While many could easily argue this five-year event started last fall with the release of several requests for proposals (RFPs), the activity level will get hot and heavy as agencies make awards and unsuccessful bidders file protests.

Let’s start with the four-year saga that is the Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS). The $11.5 billion contract that the General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management awarded to 109 large and small businesses is under protest — no surprise here.

The Government Accountability Office says 11 large firms and 15 small firms submitted complaints about GSA’s process.

GAO has 100 days to decide, which places decisions somewhere in the late August to early September timeframe, based on when the vendor filed its protest.

In the meantime, the contract is on hold, according to a GSA spokesperson.

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The annual gathering of federal IT executives in Cambridge, Maryland, commonly known as the Management of Change conference sponsored by ACT-IAC, provided several memorable, newsworthy moments this year.

Usually with the run-up to an election and this being the last year of an administration, expectations for news were low. But here are some of the more interesting tidbits that rose to the top.

Name a federal CISO already

At the session on the Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP), federal chief information officers and chief information security officers seem to be ready for the federal CISO.

Mark Kneidinger, the Homeland Security Department’s director of Federal Network Resilience, said the federal CISO would unite the community and provide leadership. He said the fact the federal CISO will be a career position also would ensure continuity with the programs so they don’t lose momentum.

Joe Klimavicz, the Justice Department CIO, said helping agency CISOs prioritize which tools to focus on would be helpful.

“CISOs want all the cyber tools out there and haven’t seen a bad one, and then they go to the service delivery groups and want those tools implemented as soon as possible,” he said. “But you have to prioritize because we have to make sure we can roll out a tool without a huge labor tail to it. Money isn’t as hard as the staffing to implement, train and use some of the tools.”

So what is the status of the federal CISO? It’s hard to say. Several sources say the Office of Management and Budget has been interviewing candidates.

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When the General Services Administration’s 18F organization announced it was taking on the long-standing challenge of identity authentication and credentialing for government services, my first thought was “here we go again.”

Another group thinking they could find the answer to a challenge that three other attempts before them struggled to come up with.

It’s not a matter of building the killer app for citizens, and eventually businesses and other government organizations, to securely log into federal services, but it’s building an online approach that people trust, find easy to use and recognizes and uses existing private sector practices.

Through Login dot gov, 18F plans to build a platform for users who need to log in to government services. They say they plan to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Office of Management and Budget and GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service.

“Every consumer-facing service the government offers will benefit from this platform, enhancing the privacy and security of online interactions for the public and for agencies,” 18F wrote in its blog post. “To build this login platform, we’re using modern, user-friendly, strong authentication and effective identity proofing technology. This new platform will leverage the extensive lessons we’ve gained from agency efforts in the past, including lessons learned from our counterparts in the UK who built GOV.UK Verify.”

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House lawmakers are making good on their promise to haul up federal chief information officers to ensure they are meeting the spirit and intent of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA).

The second report card day for most agencies showed slight improvements across most agencies.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s scorecard showed on the surface that the Commerce Department remains the standout among all agencies, and NASA has the biggest gap to make up.

But dig a little deeper in what the CIOs from Commerce, NASA, the Energy Department and the Labor Department told members of the subcommittees on IT and Government Operations and you’ll find real change happening.

Last week’s hearing was the first update on agency progress to reform how they manage and buy IT since November.

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The Office of Management and Budget may be getting its chance publicly to make its case for the $3.1 billion IT Modernization Fund.

And by many accounts, the May 25 hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is going to be a huge opportunity for administration officials to explain in straightforward terms why this initial seed fund is so important from a cybersecurity and from a delivery of services to citizens perspective.

This opportunity comes as the fund doubters and pessimists are growing in number.

Over the last few weeks, several people have brought up to me whether I think the fund is dead on arrival, on life support or just getting started. At best, many government observers are split: it’s either on life support or has an outside chance of getting approved.

If you’ve heard Tony Scott, the federal chief information officer, speak recently, he will tell you there is progress on Capitol Hill. He will tell you about the meetings with lawmakers and how well they are going. Scott is expected to testify at the May 25 hearing.

The problem is evidence of those meetings is hard to find.

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