Contractors worry e-commerce portals could create ‘parallel compliance’ models

The General Services Administration is continuing with plans to create e-commerce portals for federal procurement, hosting its second town hall meeting with industry stakeholders late last week.

And while those stakeholders expressed overall support for the initiative, some were concerned that the policy GSA is designing could create a diverging compliance structure from its multiple award contracts, which could cause some tough choices for businesses.

The agency is in the middle of a three-phase plan to craft a system of portals that will allow officials to capitalize on the potential cost savings of buying from competitive e-commerce retailers like Amazon and others.

The first phase included several recommendations to Congress, among them, raising the threshold for micropurchases in the portals from the current levels of $10,000 for civilian agencies and $5,000 for the Department of Defense to $25,000 overall.

GSA officials said raising the micropurchase threshold would allow agencies to effectively buy through the portals using commercial practices as part of a simplified acquisition process while also addressing federal buying requirements, like considering AbilityOne and designated small business contractors for procurements.

But the concern among some in the contracting realm is that the move would create two “parallel” systems of compliance forcing companies to weigh the costs of navigating both.

“It really is a big deal for companies because they have to make decisions about compliance requirements,” said Roger Waldron, president of Coalition for Government Procurement. “So if there are compliance requirements in one channel and they don’t exist in another channel, do they stay in the channel where they have compliance requirements and increase costs and lower margins? They are going to be making those kinds of business decisions ultimately.”

When asked in the Thursday meeting about the possible impact of creating differing compliance systems for e-commerce and traditional multiple-award contracts, GSA officials said they are still weighing how to design the policies for the portals and would be testing the new micropurchase threshold in a proof of concept pilot sometime next year.

“We are still trying to determine if this is more of an [indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity] type of relationship or is this something else,” said Jeffery Koses, senior procurement official in GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy. “It’s a fair question. I don’t know if we have all of the answers at this point.”

Matthew Blum, associate administrator for the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Office of Management and Budget, said contractors selling on GSA’s contract schedules today are already familiar with the complexity of multiple regulations affecting business. But the pilot could spotlight the need for more consistent acquisition rules.

“This could become a very powerful pilot,” he said. “This proof of concept work that we do in this space to demonstrate — along with some of the feedback that you give us on the inconsistencies with customer and commercial practice — that if we use this successfully, the benefits and efficiencies that could come from making changes in this pilot, this helps us and hardens us to move forward with our existing program so we have consistency and our rules are more geared toward the nature of what we are buying.”

Waldron told FedScoop that he supports GSA’s open and transparent process in trying to craft the e-commerce portals, but some of the proposed micropurchase changes could easily be extended to existing contract vehicles.

“Right now, it seems to me, that there are opportunities as parts of GSA to streamline what they already have,” he said. “There’s really no reason why they couldn’t be asking for an increase in the micropurchase threshold for pre-existing contracts, multiple award contracts, as well as initiative if you want to push spend under management and using preexisting contract vehicles.”

Waldron added that there remains a lot of complexity to sort out regarding the role of third-party suppliers selling on an e-commerce platform, the role of platforms that serve as providers and suppliers and how the e-commerce contracts will comply with the Trade Agreements Act requirements.

“There are all kinds of those moving parts on the parallel universe piece [to be addressed],” he said.

GSA recently issued two requests for information seeking input from industry on the regulations needed for suppliers and providers.

Pentagon puts ‘cloud initiative’ under new CIO Dana Deasy’s leadership

New Defense Department CIO Dana Deasy will be leading the Pentagon’s “cloud initiative” from here on out.

That’s the statement Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan issued Monday afternoon, calling the DOD cloud initiative “part of a larger effort to modernize information technology across the DOD enterprise.”

Deasy, who’s been the department’s CIO since May, replaces Chief Management Officer Jay Gibson at the head of the program, effective June 22.

“Under Deasy’s leadership, the department will gradually consolidate its disparate networks, data centers and cloud efforts to manage them at the enterprise level,” the statement says. It continues, “Different DOD components manage many of the department’s networks, data centers and clouds. Consolidating these disparate efforts at the enterprise level will enable the CIO to provide greater security and ensure greater reliability of the department’s digital infrastructure, while achieving cost savings.”

Shanahan’s statement, however, makes no specific reference to the multibillion-dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud program — a dubious move given the incredible interest around the contract that’s been at the center of the Pentagon’s newfound cloud strategy since late last year. The final solicitation for that contract was due sometime in May and is still missing in action.

DOD’s Cloud Executive Steering Group began under the leadership of Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, as the central effort to reform the department’s enterprise cloud strategy. Shanahan then transferred the reins to Gibson in January, at the time adding acting CIO Essye Miller to the steering group. It’s unclear if this model will remain under Deasy’s leadership of the cloud initiative.

Deasy joined the Pentagon after spending a handful of years as CIO of JPMorgan Chase. According to the Wall Street Journal, Deasy led JPMorgan’s move to the public cloud. He left the Fortune Top 50 company late last year. In one of his first public speaking engagements as DOD CIO, Deasy called the cloud age of IT “a brilliant opportunity to re-engineer.”

“Cloud allows you to do amazing things you simply haven’t been able to do historically — the idea of just self-healing, awareness, the attributions of being able to get more services on the fly,” he said. “It gives us as IT professionals a whole new way to operate our estate and build the future of how we want IT to run.”

As for JEDI, the public is waiting with baited breath for any word on when the solicitation will hit the street. DOD had hoped to award a single contract to a commercial cloud provider in September. That will likely be pushed back now with the delayed release of the solicitation. It’s unclear if Deasy’s new leadership of the initiative will change the acquisition strategy at all.

The proposed JEDI contract, as it is, has ruffled quite a few feathers in the cloud industry with DOD’s decision to use a single award acquisition for what could be up to a 10-year contract. Despite pushback from vendors and questioning from Congress, the JEDI team has maintained that it will make a single award.

Not every vendor feels a single award is a bad idea, however. Teresa Carlson, head of public sector Amazon Web Services, told FedScoop in an exclusive interview that “a single award with one cloud” is a good idea “for now.”

Obama acquisition chief: The future of procurement is all about the customer

Anne Rung can’t help but marvel at the way the government is approaching technology and how to leverage it for citizen services.

A former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy during the Obama administration, Rung was one of the key champions of using category management in government, saving the government more than $2 billion by streamlining its acquisition policies.

As the General Services Administration evolves its plans to craft a system that allows agencies to buy directly from e-commerce companies, Rung — who is now Amazon Business’ government sector director — said the direction the government is headed greatly mirrors that of her current employer: a customer-focused enterprise driven built on data-backed infrastructure.

“I haven’t been tracking category management that closely since I left, but I assume that it has evolved or will evolve as they gain greater insights and learn from how it’s being implemented and get feedback from the customers,” she told FedScoop last week. “But I could see it evolving to thinking about best-in-class solutions and solutions could be the use of an online marketplace like Amazon Business.”

That reflects a lot of what federal leaders have focused on in the Trump administration’s approach to providing citizen services, as well as how GSA plans to craft portals agencies will use to procure goods and services from e-retail companies like Amazon.

“I’ve been impressed with how it has transformed the conversation around government procurement,” Rung said of the e-commerce portal plan. “Two years ago we weren’t even talking about the use of an online marketplace and the use of those technologies to help governments with their purchasing requirements.”

But because companies have already developed some of the customer-facing features that the government both wants to streamline acquisition and seeks to emulate in its new user-centered approach — including digital tools that help make it easier for small businesses to sell to the government through Amazon’s portals and provide better spending transparency — Rung said she applauds GSA’s engagement with industry on how to design its e-commerce portals.

“I’ve been really impressed with how [GSA] has established formal and informal channels to gather that input,” she said. “They’ve had a really open-door policy in listening to industry and welcoming them into their agency to talk to them. We’ve been impressed with both GSA and [the Office of Management and Budget’s] outreach to industry and willingness to listen.”

Armed now with a wealth of both public and private sector insight, Rung said her advice to the next OFPP administrator is the same advice she’s observed on her current job.

“I would advise them to start with the customers,” she said. “I would advise them to reach out to federal buyers — civilian, defense, small agencies and large agencies — and really talk to them about what are your challenges, what are your pain points? But I would also view the customers as federal suppliers. I would have lots of conversations with federal suppliers about how they access the marketplace, what their challenges are, what they want to see in a sort of modified, new, streamlined federal marketplace. Fortunately, the new administrator comes in with a super-talented, super-smart group of people that have been there a long time.”

DOT launches Challenge.gov prize competition, part of broader safety data initiative

The Department of Transportation is expanding its ongoing traffic safety data initiative by launching a prize competition on Challenge.gov.

The challenge, called Solving for Safety, seeks new data visualization tools that can “reveal insights into serious crashes and improve understanding of transportation safety.” DOT is calling on “solvers” from tech companies, research firms, academic institutions and more to build tools that can both analyze data for unseen patterns and visualize model simulations in service of the creation of better policy.

“Recent innovations in data analytics and visualization tools give us the potential to understand risk at the system level, and to develop tools and discover insights that will lead to new, life-saving strategies that address injuries and fatalities on our roadways,” Under Secretary for Policy Derek Kan said in a statement.

In addition to solvers, the challenge calls for participation from “challenge innovation agents” — companies and organizations in the transportation safety space who can provide “real-world knowledge, guidance, insight, issues, and data to Solvers.”

Potential focus points for challenge solvers include protecting the safety of non-motorized road users like pedestrians and cyclists; educating particularly risky road users, like young drivers or drowsy drivers; and better understanding what differentiates a near-miss from a crash at “conflict points” like intersections and railroad crossings.

The challenge will be run in three stages, with prizes totaling $350,000.

This competition is the newest piece of DOT’s Safety Data Initiative, launched in January, which set out a department strategy of using big data to make American highways safer. There were 37,461 motor vehicle crash fatalities in 2016, a 5.6 percent increase over the previous year. The Safety Data Initiative also includes two data pilots, including one with the navigation app Waze where DOT crash data is being integrated with crowdsourced hazard data in the app to see if this information can be used to predict likely future accidents.

Rep. Stefanik chats with industry on how DOD can leverage AI

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., hosted a group of the tech leaders in a closed-door session Thursday centering on the benefits and best practices of adopting artificial intelligence and how they could apply to national defense.

The session — which included representatives from companies like Pilot.ai, FireEye, Accenture, and the Boston Consulting Group — focused on the strategies industry is using to best capitalize on AI technologies, officials said, and how they may translate to ongoing projects within the Department of Defense.

“We have seen progress in Department of Defense artificial intelligence pilot programs, but now we must scale to success,” Stefanik said in a statement. “Yesterday was a good next step in identifying where corollary successes exist within the commercial sector and artificial intelligence solutions have already demonstrated quantifiable results.”

AI and its applications have been of particular interest to Stefanik. The chairwoman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities introduced legislation in March to create an independent commission to examine AI advances and provide recommendations on how to apply the technology to the federal government, especially in national security applications.

AI was also one of the technologies identified in FedScoop’s Emerging Tech 2018 list.

But the DOD’s use of AI and machine learning have also courted controversy. Google has worked with the Air Force on an initiative called Project Maven that uses AI to help optimize the analysis of full-motion video surveillance, but announced recently that it has declined to pursue another contract after several employees resigned in protest.

Stefanik pointed to Project Maven specifically as one positive example of how the DOD leveraging AI technology and its potential applications. By engaging industry, she hopes to better utilize AI for defense.

“Over the last year, we have explored technology issues that could drastically change the way wars are fought, impacting not only our national security, but our economic security as well,” she said. “We are encouraged by the Department’s aggressive efforts with Project Maven, and are interested in exploring other applications of AI that combine the strengths of government, industry and academia to forge strong and lasting public-private partnerships.”

Q&A: Teresa Carlson on AWS’s push for the JEDI contract — and why a single award ‘is a good thing’

Ever since the Department of Defense announced its intention to acquire a commercial cloud solution, Amazon Web Services has been commonly cited as the likely frontrunner to lead the Pentagon away from its Cold War-era IT infrastructure and into the 21st century.

Given its experience hosting classified data for the intelligence community and being the only commercial cloud provider with an authorization to host the most sensitive defense information, there’s no doubt AWS will make a strong case for why it should win the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, estimated to be worth $10 billion.

But the DOD hasn’t even issued a final request for proposals. So it’s probably premature to think about any company as the winner. At least that’s the thinking of Teresa Carlson, head of AWS’ public sector business.

In the middle of a 14,000-person AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C., Carlson gave FedScoop an exclusive look into her thinking behind the landmark contract, why a single award is the best option and how AWS will “compete to win,” as well as how cloud is maturing on the civilian side of the federal government and much more.

Editor’s note: The transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

FedScoop: AWS has been positioned by the public as a front-runner for the Defense Department’s JEDI contract. There’s not even a final solicitation out for that, but what’s your take on the contract and Amazon’s push as a leading contender?

Teresa Carlson: Well, first of all, we’re very excited about it, because we’ve been working with DOD since day one of being here, and really trying to educate them over time on what cloud computing is and what that journey can be like.

In terms of where do we think we stand, obviously as AWS in general, we had a six-year head start on all the other vendors just because we sort of are the cloud computing company that no one even thought would work in government. So we’ve been here now almost eight years, very dedicated, which I think shows from our work with GovCloud, which we launched in August of 2011, to our work with the intelligence community with our secret and top secret clouds. So I think it’s a natural fit for us to be able to support and work with the Department of Defense.

What we’ve always said is we think competition is a really good thing — it keeps the market healthy, it pushes innovation of other companies to move faster, and then the third thing, it allows for choice. And choice is always a good thing.

But I think for this particular contract, for this particular customer, whatever choice they make, single vendor or multi-vendor, we really don’t care, because we’ll work with them either way. We’re just so excited that they’re getting going. And they need to move, they need a sense of urgency, because they’ve got to get past these World War II sort of applications they’ve been driving.”

FS: But what do you think is better for DOD at this point — a single cloud or a multi-cloud environment?

TC: We believe for them at this point in time, a single cloud is a good thing — a single award with one cloud for now. And primarily for a couple reasons. One is today they just really don’t have the experience that they need with cloud computing, and there’s still a lot of cloud-washing going on where people say they’re cloud and they claim to have cloud capabilities, but if you sort of look under the cover, they’re not true cloud computing, how we define it. The second thing is, it could mask security issues if you’re trying to work within a multi-cloud environment. And they’re so large, that they really need to learn and get experience and build these capabilities. And then in the fullness of time, they could have multiple clouds that they’re working with and probably will.

We’re ready for the final RFP, we’re excited for the DOD to be moving in some way, shape or form. And I think they put a line in the sand that says, “We’re going now.” So we’re like, “OK, let’s go, we’re ready to go with you.” And we’ll see what happens.

But it’s a little funny to me, because how can we be the vendor of choice when we don’t even know what [the final solicitation] looks like? But we’ll compete, obviously, and we’ll compete to win. And we hope we are the winner. But no matter what DOD chooses in this contract, we will be there with them along the journey to help them with their mission and their warfighters.

FS: You mentioned the work AWS has done with the IC. How has that proved, perhaps as a sort of proof of concept for this JEDI contract, that commercial cloud is secure enough for very sensitive data? Many agencies still seem hesitant that that’s the case.

TC: Clearly you’ve heard from our customers they don’t feel [cloud is less secure]. And there’s a variety of reasons. One is, think about where a lot of the vulnerabilities are in terms of how the infrastructure is set up. We take away the need for them to do their own patching. We take away the need for them if a server goes down — they don’t worry about that. They’re just scaling as they need to scale. Their security and compliance controls that they deem needed or necessary, we build into that infrastructure. … [It takes] the human factor out of all that.

What the intelligence community has figured out is that with cloud computing, they can literally accredit their workloads much faster and then move faster at the application level. And that’s exactly what, I think, DOD will see when they get moving. Right now, it’s a little bit of an unknown to them, how they’ll do it. But they can learn through other customers, like the intelligence community, how to make it happen faster.

FS: So you think it can serve as a blueprint for the DOD’s JEDI work?

TC: I do, because if you think about it, the intelligence community and the Department of Defense have to work closely through groups like the National Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others … they have to be able to share and maneuver together around the world. Actually, just like I think many of the federal agencies can work and share best practices together. That needs to be done anyway. … We have a saying: “There’s no compression algorithm like experience.” There really is not.

FS: On the other side of government, the civilian side, it’s hit-or-miss on how cloud is maturing. I’d like to get your take on how cloud in the civilian agencies is maturing and what you think needs to be done. What do you see as the big barriers?

TC: I really think it’s things like acquisition — it’s a big barrier for some of them still. They don’t know how to write a good cloud contract. There’s great examples out there. And even within an agency, you’ll see some doing a really great job and others sort of just struggling a bit more. So I think we’ve go to work on that, this sort of cloud acquisition workforce. And we’ve talked a lot about that with Congress and others the need for that.

And I believe the other area is the compliance and accreditation part. It was really sort of new for me — you wouldn’t think it would be — but in the last two days I’ve heard a lot from my partners that they are really struggling with getting the compliance and accreditation through. And I asked why, and they said because they don’t know how to do it — they literally don’t have the skills, because they’re used to the old model. And that tells me we need to get more engaged at the agency level helping them. But that’s not the AWS part — that’s ready. It’s their application that they’re building on top of it, because they just don’t have that experience. So we need to do more training and education and help them with better “how to.” And then we gotta get GSA really involved in this process. They did a great job on FedRAMP, and we’re big fans of it. I just think it’s being used very differently all over the U.S. government.

FS: Is there any place you see cloud being done right that others can learn from?

TC: I still think, the early days of customers, we have HHS that has a lot of workloads with us. They were the ones that helped us get through FedRAMP. And then of course NASA is continuing to do amazing stuff… And then I would tell you some of the customers like the SEC, like FINRA, like the IC, and then DOD is starting to do some workloads. There are some pockets where they do some really good things. At VA and now DHS has some really good workloads. But it’s in pockets.

Here’s the difference: I see them expanding the type of workloads they’re doing. They’re becoming more mission-critical versus that website-hosting, a little bit of data storage — they’re really becoming more thoughtful. The other area of change I’ve seen is that instead of just lifting and shifting a workload, many of them are learning that you don’t have to throw away all the data that you had in your data centers and tools. You can take advantage of that while you build applications in the cloud and then have a new application, but still take advantage of that data as you begin to migrate and move things over. So we’re seeing them build net-new applications versus just trying to lift-and-shift an old one.”

FS: What’s your advice to agencies who are lagging?

TC: It might sound simple, but it’s “get going.” In cloud, one of the biggest mistakes I see is where they over-consult on something… They’ll overthink it. And what we’ve seen is the most successful commercial enterprises and the most successful government enterprises happen when they just put a line in the sand and they say, “We’re going to migrate…we’re going to do it.” And they sort of dive in, and you see this step-change in them.

You have so many naysayers still that if you don’t demonstrate that it can be done and how it can be done and the impact of it being done, then people will sometimes just not move — they’ll just sit there.

FS: GovCloud East is going to launch later this year. What will that mean for federal agencies?

TC: It’s what they asked for from us. We built it because they said they need disaster recovery [DR] and backup capabilities … they said “If we’re going to move this to the cloud, we need DR and [continuous operations] capabilities.” So we heard that. This will be for a lot of those very large workloads — now this is going to give them that DR, that backup they really want and need. And also it gives them a new location, they can make a choice if they don’t need a lot of DR, or that’s not a requirement, they can make a decision: Is your workload better on the East Coast or is it better on the West Coast?

OSTP forms new subcommittee to focus on quantum technology

The White House honed its focus on quantum information science Friday, forming a new subcommittee tasked with coordinating a national agenda on the role of the emerging technology.

Officials said the Office of Science and Technology Policy will charter a QIS subcommittee within the National Science and Technology Council to help dovetail quantum technology initiatives across the federal government.

“Quantum information science has the potential to revolutionize all manner of industries, open up new fields of discovery and accelerate scientific breakthroughs,” said Michael Kratsios, deputy assistant to the president for technology policy, in a statement. “Now is the time to build upon and expand that leadership if we are going to realize the true potential of this technology, which will be critical to our future economic growth and national security.”

The move is similar to an anticipated bill from House Science, Space and Technology Committee chair Lamar Smith, R-Texas, that he said would coordinate disparate public and private sector research on quantum technologies.

The White House subcommittee will be chaired by experts from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and Jacob Taylor, OSTP’s assistant director for QIS.

The departments of Agriculture, Defense, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior and State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, NASA and the National Security Agency also would reportedly have representation on the subcommittee.

Officials said the new panel’s goal will be to create a national agenda on QIS, address U.S. economic and national security implications from the technology and coordinate federal policy.

The incipient potential of the quantum computing has drawn a lot of attention recently, mostly because its processors work with quantum bits, or qubits, that exist as both a one and a zero at the same time, providing significantly more computing power than current technology and posing a threat to modern cryptography systems.

Congressional leaders have also turned their focus to quantum tech’s potential, especially as nations like China and Russia have invested heavily in it, signaling a potential new global arms race.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., recently introduced legislation directing the Department of Defense to form a Quantum Computing Research Consortium to address the development of quantum communication and quantum computing technology.

The QIS subcommittee will next meet on June 28, officials said in a statement.

The outlook is bright for startups that want to work with government, startups say

Good news for startups wishing to work with the federal government: The federal government wants the same thing.

On a panel at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit on Thursday, representatives from a number of startup companies working with the government agreed that agencies are exhibiting more interest in tech companies in Silicon Valley — and across the country — than they have in recent years past.

Peter Dixon, CEO and founder of Second Front Systems, identified a historical ebb and flow to the relationship between the government and the tech sector. Within the national security area specifically, he argued, when the military closed bases in Silicon Valley a lot of the helpful “connective tissue” between the two coasts disappeared.

“But lately I think the U.S. government has kind of realized that,” he said, citing programs like the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) as a play to rebuild that connective tissue.

Andy Bair, a partner at the venture capital firm Sway Ventures, agreed. “In the last several years, certainly the U.S. government, particularly more so the national security community … have begun to see, I think, a real need to integrate innovation,” he said. And there’s an attempt, he added, to meld this interest with necessary acquisition tools.

“The government is trying to become more nimble,” Varun Vira, COO at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, said.

The panel didn’t address the high-profile ways in which a divide between Silicon Valley and the federal government, especially the DoD, has emerged in recent weeks — Google’s decision to end its engagement with the Air Force’s Project Maven artificial intelligence initiative, or the Microsoft employees who are currently protesting the company’s contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The panel also didn’t focus much on the quagmire of federal acquisitions, a topic that’s often a sticking point for discussions involving tech startups and the government. “We all know the process of working with the government … can be very challenging,” panel moderator Candice Charlton, business development manager for VC and startups at AWS, said by way of kicking off the conversation. “Let’s talk about what is working.”

Panelists did, however, allude to some of the less-than-ideal pieces of working with the government — long procurement cycles, confusing acquisition rules and more — in their advice to other startups wishing to enter that world. Choose good partners, they said, appreciate the mission, don’t get discouraged and, whatever you do, practice patience.

GSA schedules reform could reduce contracts for suppliers, acquisition chief says

While the General Services Administration moves ahead with its plans to create e-commerce portals for agencies to buy goods and services from, it’s also progressing on a plan to reform its multiple award contracts, better known as schedules.

Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Alan Thomas told attendees at a town hall meeting Thursday on GSA’s Commercial Platform Initiative that his team is exploring a number of initiatives, including reducing the number of contract schedules to make it easier for agencies to procure services and supplies and contractors to sell them.

“We’re thinking about consolidating programs, possibly having just a single contract for a supplier on the schedules program,” he said. “We think that makes some sense and would reduce the burden on industry.”

GSA’s Schedules program oversees a number of the agency’s long-term contract vehicles for products and services categorized into distinct Special Item Numbers that other agencies order from. The program generated more than $23 billion in fiscal 2016, according to agency figures, including $10.9 billion from IT Schedule 70.

GSA Administrator Emily Murphy previously alluded to reform of the schedules program last month as a part of her plan to reduce duplication in acquisition operations.

Thomas said that by possibly developing single, supplier-based contracts, it could streamline the documentation that contractors would need to provide for their services.

“There are many companies that are managing multiple schedules in many different contract offices,” Thomas said. “We think it makes it a little bit easier for customers to know where to buy.”

As an example, Thomas said that some agencies could be looking for IT systems and support services from a contractor that offered both, but as it is now, they have to procure them from separate contracts. He said that FAS is looking at maybe combining both offerings under a “technology” grouping, but said “we’re not there yet.”

Thomas said FAS is also working on other projects this summer, such as streamlining the negotiations process for commercial supplier agreements and pilot programs for greater transparency on post-contract award information.

GSA is also continuing work on the second phase of its e-commerce plan to create portals to sell goods and services to federal agencies online with increased competition.

IT modernization plays central role in Trump government reorganization plan

Like the President’s Management Agenda released earlier this year, the Trump administration’s long-awaited governmentwide reform and reorganization plan, released Thursday, promotes the use of modern technology to improve service delivery as a central tenet in the 21st century federal government.

“Government in the 21st Century is fundamentally a services business, and modern information technology should be at the heart of the U.S. Government service delivery model,” the plan says within the first few lines of its introduction. “And yet, today’s Executive Branch is still aligned to the stove-piped organizational constructs of the 20th Century, which in many cases have grown inefficient and out of-date. Consequently, the public and our workforce are frustrated with Government’s ability to deliver its mission in an effective, efficient, and secure way.”

The Office of Management and Budget plan delivers 32 governmentwide reorganization proposals, as well as a host of agency-specific reforms that it hopes can “build productive, bipartisan dialogue around realigning the Federal Government mission delivery model to make sense in the 21st Century.”

“Our Founders conceived a remarkably durable governing framework and Constitution that allows Government institutions the flexibility to evolve to meet the needs of the American people. However, our current Government bureaucracy is not keeping pace in the Digital Age,” OMB Deputy Director for Management Margaret Weichert said in a statement. “This Administration understands the American people are frustrated by Government inefficiency and the challenges of navigating the Federal system. Today’s reform proposal outlines the President’s vision to streamline agencies, remove duplication, and alleviate burden for all Americans.”

Weichert’s boss, Director Mick Mulvaney, called the plan, formally titled “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century — Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations,” the administration’s best effort yet “to drain the swamp.”

Some proposals — like the call to merge the departments of Labor and Education into one or to move Office of Personnel Management policy functions into the Executive Office of the President — will likely get the most attention for political reasons. But the handful IT broad modernization-focused proposals, many of which aren’t new, will play a major role as well, as the White House harks back to a time when the U.S. was the outright leader in innovation.

“Our Nation is used to leading the world in technology innovation and service delivery and at one time, the U.S. Government catalyzed that innovation,” it says. “As such, the Administration is investing in deep-seated transformation that begins with the President’s Management Agenda and extends through the recommendations for Executive Branch organizational reform.”

At the agency level, the plan also calls for IT modernization across government, specifically at the departments of State, Transportation, Veterans Affairs and more.

For now, this plan is just that — a plan. Many of the specific actions would require congressional approval. And history shows that often, reorganization and reform plans don’t make it past Congress.

Here’s a run down of the governmentwide reforms in which IT modernization will play a major role:

Federal cybersecurity workforce shortage

Buried toward the end of the list of governmentwide proposals, the plan calls for a “unified cyber workforce capability across the civilian enterprise” to help solve a personnel shortage.

“The Administration will work towards a standardized approach to Federal cybersecurity personnel, ensuring Government-wide visibility into talent gaps, as well as unified solutions to fill those gaps in a timely and prioritized manner,” it says.

This is nothing surprising, given OPM’s recent efforts — as well as those from the prior administration — to wrap its arms around talent gaps. Despite those efforts, the Government Accountability Office said recently that the executive branch is doing a poor job of this.

“While the cybersecurity workforce shortage has been a known challenge for Federal agencies, no other Administration has taken a whole-of-Government approach to fixing it,” the plan says. “OMB and DHS look forward to solving this major challenge through smart analysis and creative solutions.”

The GEAR Center

This is a new one. The plan calls for a “Government Effectiveness Advanced Research (GEAR) Center as a public-private partnership to help the Government respond to innovative technologies, business practices, and research findings that present opportunities to improve mission delivery, services to citizens, and stewardship of public resources.”

This center, it goes on to say, would provide “the opportunity to not only catch up to where the private sector services and capabilities are today, but to lay the groundwork for where Government operations and services need to be in five, 10, or 20 years or more by bringing together researchers, academics, non-profits, and private industry to inform leaders in the Federal Government of the future delivery models for programs and services that meet the needs of the American public.”

Fully paperless by 2023?

The plan calls for agencies to go fully digital by Dec. 21, 2022. It would require the National Archives and Records Administration to stop accepting paper files by that date.

“This would improve agencies’ efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness to citizens by converting paper-based processes to electronic workflows, expanding online services, and enhancing management of Government records, data, and information,” the plan reads.

It cites the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration as two agencies already leading the way in the move to digital record-keeping.

CX like the private sector

The administration wants to establish “a Government-wide customer experience improvement capability to partner with Federal agencies to help them provide a modern, streamlined, and customer-centric experience for citizens, businesses, and other customers, comparable to leading private sector organizations.”

Basing its proposal on the success of teams like 18F and the U.S. Digital Service, the administration wants to tackle customer experience (CX) challenges “throughout the Government.”

“To get started, this capability and relevant agencies will conduct research to identify the most significant opportunities for customer-centric change, develop customer journey maps which cross organizational silos, and then develop action plans to execute service improvements,” the plan says. “As needed, agencies would partner with USDS and GSA’s Technology Transformation Service to enhance their digital services. One particular area of focus would likely be the creation of user-focused Digital Front Doors — rebuilding Government web properties to focus less on Government structure and more on user experience.”

Modernizing the FSA IT systems

The plan calls for delivery of “a modernized, innovative, and integrated architecture” and for Federal Student Aid called the “Next Generation (Next Gen) Financial Services Environment.”

“Next Gen will save taxpayers millions of dollars and will create an improved, world-class customer experience for FSA’s more than 42 million customers, while creating a more agile and streamlined operating model,” it says.

The administration first detailed this transformation last fall.

NBIB to DOD

Finally, the proposal calls for OPM to send the National Background Investigations Bureau to the Defense Department to perform security clearances for the government, a move that’s been in the works for more than a year. Doing so, it says, would “achieve an efficient, effective, fiscally viable, and secure operation that meets all agencies’ needs.”