Early-adopter agencies of the bring-your-own-device idea are blazing their own trail through the security, privacy and policy challenges of personally-owned devices on government networks.
The General Services Administration is offering buyouts and early retirements to 1,022 employees. The employees have until July 20 to apply and must separate from service between Aug. 3 and Sept. 30.
Two new bills advance to the Congress floor in regards to the 2010 GSA Scandal. These bills, if affirmed, will hold executives accountable for misappropriations of funding, and also necessitate agencies to provide rundowns for all conferences spending.
The government is investigating allegations against Symplicity Corp. for allegedly accessing without permission the internal networks of two competitors in the education sector. Symplicity, which runs three governmentwide websites, denies any wrongdoing and calls the government's search warrant a one-sided justification for the investigation. Experts say the company could face suspension from new federal procurements.
CWTSatoTravel objected to the $1.4 billion E- Travel award going to Concur Technologies. SAIC protested DISA's $4.6 billion award for the Global Information Grid management services to Lockheed Martin. Both protestors are the incumbent contractors.
The Financial Services and General Government spending bill seeks to cut $2 billion from the president's request. The bill says nothing about granting feds a pay raise in 2013. The House committee follows the lead of Senate appropriators, which also remained silent on the issue.
Lawmakers at a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held at the Georgetown Heating Plant, blasted the General Services Administration for its handling of excess federal properties.
Joseph Petrillo, a federal contract attorney with Petrillo and Powell, agreed with a recent report that bid protests help to keep the federal government honest. Unfortunately, the 2,000 or so annual bid protests are just a drop in the bucket of the millions of possible protestable contract actions out there.
Avinash Kar of the Natural Resources Defense Council discusses an FDA decision on cattle feeding processes. Attorney Joseph Petrillo offers his perspective on burgeoning bid protests. GAO's Bill Woods talks about GSA's reliance on "dun" numbers. Jamison Cush discusses Microsoft's new tablet device. Charles Scoville works with amputee veterans.
On the In Depth show blog, you can listen to the interviews, find more information about the guests on the show each day and links to additional resources.
GSA, Commerce and others are using supply chain management techniques to buy smarter and more efficiently. Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Steve Kempf said a recent survey of their contractors will help influence the next generation of schedules.
Some small businesses are calling into question the benefits of the Obama administration's strategic sourcing initiative. They say the agencies are mandating the use of the office supplies BPA and putting more than 500 Schedule 75 holders at risk of losing their business. GSA, which runs Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative (FSSI), said there still are plenty of sales to go around as the BPA accounts for less than half of the $1.4 billion office supplies market.
Agency introduces the new Demand Based Model that will focus resources on the products and services agencies need and want the most. GSA plans on closing two schedules and parts of 14 others to new offerors. GSA also will cut vendors who do little or no business on the schedule to help reduce administrative costs.
NARFE president Joseph Beaudoin and Federal Times reporters Stephen Losey and Sean Reilly join host Mike Causey to talk about a wide variety of issues affecting federal workers. June 6, 2012
The program launches initial operating capability today. GSA expects the first set of provisionally approved cloud service providers to be ready in December. In the meantime, agencies are holding vendors accountable for coming very close to FedRAMP standards.