The New Year always brings that fresh smell of a new budget proposal. Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan announced via Twitter that President Barack Obama would submit his fiscal 2017 budget to Congress on Feb. 9.

And budget planning also means my favorite time of the year — the IT passback.

Unfortunately for me — and maybe fortunately for agencies — OMB decided to make the IT passback pretty much a non-issue for 2016.

Multiple agency CIOs told me the passback included no new governmentwide technology initiatives or new deadlines for existing initiatives.

“It was really quiet,” said one CIO, who requested anonymity in order to talk about pre-decisional budget information. “It surprised me a little bit, especially with all the cybersecurity and other challenges we are facing.”

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If you are looking for the Office of Management and Budget’s IT policy plans for 2016 and the IT passback disappointed you, see my earlier notebook entry, the really interesting future-cast came from the fiscal 2015 4th quarter update of the Smarter IT Delivery cross-agency priority (CAP) goal on Performance.gov.

Over the next few months, OMB plans to release two new policies — one on data center optimization, and another on open source policy.

OMB says, along with the Digital Services Playbook, the policy “will support improved access to customer software code developed for the federal government.”

The data center policy, which we first reported back in November, will address this challenge in two ways: first it will offer a more specific definition of what a data center is. Second, OMB will set both agency-specific and governmentwide goals for reducing and optimizing data centers. Federal CIO Tony Scott said in November the total number of data centers is at more than 11,700.

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As Inside the Reporter’s Notebook enters its third year, it’s always good to look back on which edition was most popular and which stories struck a chord. Here’s a list of the top 10, including my comments and thoughts on the top five.

1. The Office of Personnel Management’s troubles with its Employee Express system received the most readers by far. It came during the height of Open Season, and was based on a tip from a reader (hint, hint).
2. Another OPM-related story provided fodder for a June edition. The lead story was my four takeaways from the three hearings and seven hours of testimony about the massive OPM cyber breach. House lawmakers are considering more hearings in the coming month or so.
3. It’s unclear which story carried this edition, but changes to cloud computing services and the Defense Department and General Services Administration teaming up on a $1 billion contract drew on a lot of hot-button issues in 2015.
4. This report hit upon the love of gossip in the federal community with the shuffling of chairs in agency chief information officer circles. NASA, Energy and Commerce all saw changes with their IT executives. The notebook also included stories on GSA streamlining schedules and a bid protest decision that could have a major impact on mergers and acquisitions.
5. This edition was probably the one I was most proud of for the breadth and depth of the stories we try to capture each week in the notebook. The FCC story on its move to the cloud probably helped propel the notebook into the top five of the year, but the State Department cyber playbook and the two other cyber stories also were popular.
6. Talking is hard.
7. Cyber dashboards
8. DoD teaching Pentagon offices how to share.
9. Real insight into how much ground agencies needed to make up around cyber.
10. GSA schedule consolidation begins, and IoT buzz tamped down.

That’s the top 10 for the year. Check out my colleague Jared Serbu’s top DoD notebooks of the year as well.

Let us know what you think of the notebook, how it can be improved or changed to be more valuable, and of course, if you have any tips.

Even before agencies have finalized how they will implement the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, two lawmakers are pushing for more.

Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) introduced the Making Electronic Government Accountable by Yielding Tangible Efficiencies (MEGABYTE) Act of 2015 to reform the government’s management of IT software licenses.

While FITARA was much broader, Cassidy and Peters believe the government could save $4 billion a year by better managing licenses.

“Billions of taxpayer dollars could be saved if federal agencies keep track of what software they buy. It’s irresponsible they don’t do so already,” said Cassidy in a Dec. 7 release. “Tax dollars could be better used on our troops and our classrooms, not redundant software licenses.” (more…)

A recent tweet by Michael O’Rielly, a Federal Communications Commission commissioner, congratulating the agency on moving to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), got me thinking, whatever happened to that effort?

Took good bit but @FCC now fully IPv6 compliant (see https://t.co/KpLVEgS8um). FCC must continue lead on tech by example. Congrats @fcc_cio

— Mike O’Rielly (@mikeofcc) December 7, 2015

Where do agencies stand a decade after the White House first called on agencies to adopt this more secure protocol?

It was so important, at one time, that the Office of Management and Budget issued two memos requiring agencies to move to the more secure, better protocol on the network backbone. The CIO Council also stood up a working group, issued how-to guides, and there were the assorted conferences, talks and lunches about the importance of IPv6.

The first time OMB mandated agencies move was in 2005, giving them a 2008 deadline. Then two years after most agencies missed the 2008 deadline, OMB came up with two more deadlines: By 2012, agencies must upgrade public or external facing services and services; and by 2014, they must upgrade internal client applications that communicate with public services or support enterprise networks. (more…)

With all apologies to President Ronald Reagan’s historic 1987 speech in West Berlin, the General Services Administration should take page from Dutch and open up its e-Buy program to the public.

GSA hides task orders behind its version of a “pay wall” — vendors must spend upwards of $25,000 to get on a schedule contract and see what they are missing.

GSA took an initial step in June when it made older task orders available to federal agencies.

Tom Sharpe, Federal Acquisition Service commissioner, said in July GSA would open up e-Buy to the general public by the end of the year.

Well, here we are, almost to the end of the year and progress has slowed.

So Mr. Sharpe, it’s time to open e-Buy to the public once and for all. (more…)

Maybe it’s time for agencies and industry to get some professional help.

Someone who could help each party communicate about their fears, needs and, maybe most of all, assist them in listening to the other side.

A year into Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator Anne Rung’s vision of where she wants to take federal procurement during her tenure, industry and government communication continues to struggle.

Rung made improving contractor and agency communication a central theme in her Dec. 4, 2014 memo detailing her plans. (more…)

The Homeland Security Department is taking a different, and maybe somewhat surprising path, for its latest task order under the continuous diagnostic and mitigation (CDM) program.

The General Services Administration, which is acting as the procurement arm for the CDM program, and DHS released task order 2F under the Alliant governmentwide acquisition contract instead of through the program’s $6 billion blanket purchase agreement (BPA) awarded in August 2013 to 17 vendors. The previous five task orders have come under the BPA. GSA awarded contracts to Knowledge Consulting Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, HP Enterprise Services and Northrop Grumman.

The RFP is for continuous monitoring-as-a-service (CMaaS) for 41 small and micro agencies ranging from the Consumer Product Safety Commission to the Federal Trade Commission to the Postal Regulatory Commission. (more…)

It’s rare we get to mention the Supreme Court and federal contracting in the same breath. But an interesting case is before the nine justices and it could have a wide-ranging impact on the agencies.

First the background: The case started with Kingdomware Technologies, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business providing government and commercial clients with Web, client, network and mobile applications, about three years ago protesting an award by VA.

According to the USASpending.gov site, Kingdowmware has about 47 contracts worth about $812,000 from an assortment of agencies including the departments of Defense, Justice and Health and Human Services as well as the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration. (more…)

The results from the White House’s mandated 90-day review of the federal security clearance process should be ready in the coming weeks based on signals from the Office of Personnel Management.

OPM released a request for proposal last month for a workforce planning study of its Federal Investigative Services (FIS) ahead of any review findings.

“While the Suitability and Security Performance Accountability Council’s review recommendations are not yet known, the review will likely suggest programmatic and organizational changes to the FIS program,” the task orders stated. “In preparation for these changes, OPM’s Workforce Planning study will assess how OPM’s Executive Offices and Administrative and Management Programs would be directly and indirectly impacted, both operationally and financially. The study will also include workload, staffing, and organizational restructuring / redesign recommendations at different staff reduction and/or augmentation levels. Lastly, the study may include process analysis and improvement recommendations.” (more…)