Hubbard Radio Washington DC, LLC. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
Small firms already have taken a disproportionate hit from DoD's pullback in 2013 spending, Pentagon officials say. Military acquisition leaders worry the sudden cuts will bankrupt small businesses that provide one-of-a-kind capabilities.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is concerned new regulations may make whistleblowers even more reluctant to report tax fraud to the IRS. OMB Controller Danny Werfel says $85 billion in cuts under sequestration would hurt every state. Maj. Gen. Brett Williams says the U.S. Cyber Command is trying to figure how to normalize operations alongside air, land and sea capabilities. Lynn Singleton, director of environmental services at Lockheed Martin, talks about helping agencies move their email to the cloud. Dr. Milton Corn explains why The National Library of Medicine is monitoring social media.
President Obama's recent executive order directing that cyber threat information be shared more broadly with the private sector risks making the data less useful to the intelligence agencies that gather and process it. But the risk is worth the potential reward.
As the Navy scours its IT systems to determine exactly what it owns, it's discovered it operates double the data centers and tens of thousands of servers and applications more than it previously thought. The findings come more than a decade after the Navy implemented its Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, which was supposed to reduce the number of disparate systems run by the agency and eliminate stovepipes. All told, Navy's IT budget could be as much as $4 billion more than it initially thought.
Senior administration officials say the Executive Order is not a replacement for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation, but the start of a new conversation for how best to protect the nation's critical infrastructure. NIST released an RFI Tuesday as part of its effort to create a voluntary, flexible framework. And DHS will expand the number of companies the government shares classified and unclassified cyber threat information with through the Defense Industrial Base pilot.
As sequestration draws nearer, contractor groups have pointed to alarming studies that show the 9 percent in across-the-board Defense cuts would throw at least 1 million people out of work and potentially cripple the defense and aerospace industries. But in a new report, the Center for International Policy, a nonprofit group which advocates reducing military spending, presented evidence that far fewer defense-sector jobs would be lost than industry has claimed and that defense companies would likely be able to absorb the defense cuts.
In an analysis prepared for the American Federation of Government Employees, contracting expert Charles Tiefer said that agency managers have a number of tools at their disposal to legally scale back service-contract spending and that doing so would be preferable to federal furloughs.
Declining federal spending, evolving customer requirements related to the changed threat environment and the increase of competition from nontraditional defense contractors, such as Accenture, Dell and Apple are just a few of the issues on the horizon, according to an analysis from Booz and Company.
Michael Tinsley, CEO of NeoSystems Corp., tells The Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Emily Kopp, there's little contractors can do to influence agencies facing impending sequestration beyond maintaining good communications and weathering the storm.
Robert Litan discusses a Bloomberg Government study about rule-making in the Obama administration. Michael Tinsley, CEO of NeoSystems Corp., offers insight on how furloughs might affect federal contractors. Procurement attorney Joe Petrillo weighs in on a a 2012 Supreme Court case that could come back to bite federal agencies facing budget cuts under sequestration. Gregory Wilshusen discusses a new GAO report on how prepared agencies are to fend of online assaults. John Palguta of the Partnership for Public Service talks about sequestration and the threat of furloughs.
At an industry sponsored event, GSA tried to clarify its plans for the multi-billion dollar governmentwide contract, which will let agencies buy complex services from one place. Questions about how OASIS fits with the administration's strategic sourcing initiative and the expectation for price standardization were among the biggest areas of concern from companies.
The Presidential Innovation Fellows Program and SBA launch RFP-EZ to make finding and bidding on Web and digital services contracts worth $150,000 or less easier. The team of three found the six-month project also could test out tools for contracting officers to write better RFPs.
The Commerce Department issued a request-for-information asking for input from vendors around 11 cyber capabilities.
Guidance from the administration on what steps federal agencies should take to prepare for potential across-the-board budget cuts has set off a war of words between federal-employee unions and industry groups. The American Federation of Government Employees says guidance exempts contractors at the expense of federal employees, but industry groups say the criticism is misguided.