The government can move closer to a bring-your-own device environment for smartphones, laptops and tablets on the heels of an important decision by the Government Accountability Office.

GAO ruled on Feb. 19 that the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s voluntary BYOD program for its employees doesn’t violate any appropriations or gift laws, and the agency can provide technical support to its workers.

“CPSC’s voluntary BYOD program is neither an augmentation of appropriations nor a gift, and CPSC may use appropriated funds to support the program,” GAO said in its ruling. “As indicated, an agency’s compliance with the miscellaneous receipts statute is but one of the many relevant considerations applicable to a program such as that contemplated by CPSC.”

Over the last four years, the question about whether agencies could move to a bring-your-own device environment has been the topic of many conferences, vendor white papers and a host of news articles.

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Danny Harris decided he had enough of the berating from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and he joined a growing list of long-time federal employees who decided to retire instead of face more aggravation.

Harris came under intense, and probably well-deserved, scrutiny earlier this month for some of his non-federal government related activities. He said they were hobbies, while lawmakers and the agency’s inspector general said they were outside businesses, which Harris pursued on government time. Lawmakers also were less than happy with Harris’s efforts to protect the data and systems run by the Department of Education. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chairman of the committee, said Education is putting the data of more than 139 million Americans at risk.

In a note to staff on Feb. 19, Harris said he will pursue other opportunities and his last day will be Feb. 29.

“I have had what I consider a dream career, full of both accomplishments and failures. The vast majority of my accomplishments actually came at the hands of many of you,” Harris wrote in the note obtained by Federal News Radio. “And I will forever be grateful for the tremendous support you have provided me. In contrast, I would not trade my failures for they truly allowed me to grow to become the executive I am today. I hope that you feel I am leaving OCIO in a better place than it was when I arrived. If not, I hope you at least know that this was my intent and I did everything in my power to achieve this goal.”

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Federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott has been promising for the better part of the last year that he would address the growing gulf between how much money agencies are spending on legacy systems and how much they are spending on new or modernized systems. The latest figures show about 76 percent of the $88 billion federal IT budget is spent on operations and maintenance of older systems, while 24 percent is spent on development, modernization and enhancement (DME) of technology systems.

President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget request sent to Congress on Feb. 9 offered a major change in the approach to moving the pendulum back to spending on modernized systems in the form of a $3.1 billion IT Modernization Fund that the General Services Administration would run.

While Congress and the administration debate whether or not to create the fund, agencies still face a huge gap in how best to modernize their technology infrastructure, systems and applications. Among their biggest challenges are the need for dedicated funding, improved skillsets of the federal workforce, having access and confidence in the appropriate contracting approaches, and, maybe most of all, a refreshed definition of what is a legacy system.

There is a growing question whether O&M and DME need to be redefined in the new cloud and agile environments.

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Two initiatives to bring a higher level of security to the cloud are coming together at one time.

The Defense Department and the Federal Risk Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) are on similar glide paths heading toward a set of high baseline standards, and a set of cloud service providers ready to meet those needs.

Matt Goodrich, the FedRAMP director, said the Joint Authorization Board (JAB), made up of the chief information officers from the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and the General Services Administration, are reviewing comments on the high baseline and expect to finalize the standards in the coming month.

At the same time, FedRAMP is piloting the high security standards with a few vendors and with agencies, such as DoD or DHS, that have systems that need more security.

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Usually when an agency cancels a request for quotes under a multiple award contract, it’s not worth a notebook mention. Hundreds or thousands of contracts are awarded and probably just as many others are canceled or postponed every week throughout the federal government, but one recent RFQ from the General Services Administration caught my attention.

An industry friend highlighted not only the frustration with the cancellation, but GSA’s inability to put this contract in place after 18 months of work despite the important role the support services that are part of the contract play in many of the administration’s management agenda initiatives.

So a little background first: The RFQ is for data analytics services in support of the Office of Governmentwide Policy (OGP) and the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCSIT).

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Over the last year or so, the rumor mill about whether Charlie Armstrong, the Customs and Border Protection chief information officer, would retire has come and gone. Well, as of Feb. 4, Armstrong finally made it official, calling it a career after almost 32 years in government.

Armstrong had been assistant commissioner for the Office of Information and Technology and CIO for CBP since June 2008. He oversaw software development, infrastructure services and support, tactical communications, the laboratory system and research and development functions, and IT modernization initiatives supporting CBP’s core business processes. Armstrong also oversaw CBP’s efforts as the Department of Homeland Security steward for network services.

During his time at CBP, Armstrong moved the agency toward a modernized IT infrastructure. He implemented server virtualization and moved some of the agency’s applications to the cloud, including email and big data tools. He also focused on getting mobile capabilities to patrol officers in the field, such as fingerprint scanners or license plate readers.

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Agency chief information officers need to take special notice about the grilling their colleague Danny Harris from the Education Department took from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Feb. 2. Not so much for the questions about his ethics or even the systemic cybersecurity troubles Education has had for almost a decade, but rather because lawmakers specifically tied Harris’ bonus to his performance around the agency’s cybersecurity.

This was one of the few times in recent memory when members of Congress questioned how a senior executive could have received any sort of bonus when his agency’s Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) scores were failing, and progress on the administration’s cyber sprint was less than adequate.

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The Homeland Security Department lost two senior IT officials over the last month.

Greg Capella became the deputy director of the Commerce Department’s National Technical Information Service (NTIS) after working at DHS since 2009.

Capella served as the deputy executive director and acting executive director of the Enterprise System Development Office of the Office of the Chief Information Officer. He replaced Keith Trippie at DHS, who left in 2013. Rob Palmer, the acting deputy executive director, likely will become the acting executive director.

As deputy director of NTIS, Capella will help run an organization that says it’s the largest central resource for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering and business-related information, with approximately 3 million publications covering over 350 subject areas.

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The Office of Federal Procurement Policy’s solution to stop the proliferation of duplicative multiple award contracts has been far from successful.

Agencies may be putting business cases on the OMB Max platform so others can review and comment, but few, if any, actually have been stopped.

So Anne Rung, OFPP administrator, is doing something about it.

Rung said she plans to modify that 2011 guidance from her predecessor Dan Gordon, requiring a business case for any multiple award contract worth more than $50 million.

“My predecessor Dan Gordon deserves a lot of credit for beginning the business case process in recognition there was a lot of duplication and agencies weren’t aware when a contract existed already so they were going out open market, and we would argue that it was driving greater inefficiencies in the marketplace,” Rung said Jan. 27, during a conference call with reporters. “Over the years, it’s been successful in shedding light on existing contracts, but we recognize that we are now at a point where we want to take it to the next level. We need to be able to take some actions based on the information we are receiving and truly drive more dollars to existing governmentwide solutions.”

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The National Security Agency gets a lot of praise and criticism for how it meets its mission.

But the one area that most people may hear about, but not truly understand, is the dedication of its people.

NSA employees are among the most loyal in government. The evidence is clear as Adm. Mike Rogers, NSA’s director and the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, pointed out recently.

“Our retention is phenomenal. In 2015, our overall retention was 96.7 percent. We lost less than 5 percent of our workforce. That includes people who just decided they just wanted to do something else and people who had been with us for 30 or 40 years and decided they were ready to retire and go do something else,” Rogers said during a speech at the Atlantic Council on Jan. 21 in Washington. “So unlike my tech-sector friends, and I’ve had this conversation with them because I asked them, we are all trying to go after the same people, all trying to generate a technical agile workforce, what works for you guys? They are somewhat amazed when I tell them our model is you stay with us for a long time. And yet the way that we can stay technically proficient, on the cutting edge, is we like to build teams or we bring together both those who are very experienced and have been with us a very long time with junior people who are just joining the organization, who come at it with a very different perspective sometimes. So it’s our ability to create that team across the spectrum, that’s the sweet spot for us.”

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