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Business to start on GSA’s Alliant 2 contracts in July following protests

Following a Court of Federal Claims ruling rejecting five contractors’ post-award protests, the General Services Administration’s $50-billion Alliant 2 IT services contract will officially begin accepting task orders July 1.

The contract will move forward with its five-year base period starting next month, followed by a five-year option that could start in 2023, John Cavadias, Alliant 2’s lead contract officer, said in a post on GSA’s Interact page.

“We look forward to supporting the IT needs of all federal government agencies by providing a Best in Class contract vehicle to meet their requirements,” he said. “We are also very eager to work with our Alliant 2 industry partners to provide exceptional support across the United States government.”

The unrestricted version of the IT contract was originally awarded to 61 contractors in November, but it was held up by protests from five contractors over disputes in source selection.

After the Government Accountability Office dismissed the protests in December, the contractors took the issue to the Court of Federal Claims later that month. The federal court ruled against the contractors, allowing the Alliant 2 to move forward.

The ruling does not affect Alliant 2’s $15-billion Small Business contract, which was awarded in February and has seen its own contract protests.

GSA officials previously expressed their hopes that in crafting the Alliant 2 contract with transparency in mind, protests could be avoided.

“We spent an extraordinary amount of time in the front-end of this process, working with our industry partners, as well as agencies, teasing out what we believe are a strong set of requirements and putting in place an assessment methodology,” said Bill Zielinski, deputy assistant commissioner for IT category management operations. “So we are comfortable that we followed a fair and strong process.”

Suzette Kent: Data science talent will be the next big need for agencies

For all of the recent focus on the cybersecurity talent shortages in the federal government, Suzette Kent said Wednesday that agencies will soon be battling for another in-demand skill set to help fuel its technology transformation: data science.

While the workforce transformation and IT modernization goals of the President’s Management Agenda are essential, they are undergirded by agencies’ ability to analyze troves of government data, the federal CIO said at the Data Coalition’s Data Demo Day.

“Right now, we’re just starting to see data science and analytics jobs pop up across the government,” Kent said. “But we have to evolve roles for data scientists in deep learning development [and] inquiry designers. As we move down this path that is wholly data-driven, we need different types of capabilities in our workforce.”

Because of the growth of data analytics technologies, Kent said there is an increased demand across the public and private sectors for the talent that can capitalize on data management.

“I recently talked with the leadership of a learning-tech firm when I was out on the West Coast, and they noted that data skills are starting to equal, and sometimes surpass, their demand for cyber skills,” she said. “That’s something really important that we have to pay attention to. Another company focused on [artificial intelligence] shared that they went from a handful of data labelers to over 1,500 in the course of 24 months.”

The growing demand for data science talent in the private sector has been a continuing trend of late. The 2017 Harvey Nash / KPMG CIO Survey found big data and analytic skills to be the most sought after for three consecutive years.

And though the PMA emphasizes the roles of AI, machine learning and other technologies to help drive efficiency in federal operations, Kent said that those have to be built on a bedrock of strong data backed by common standards.

As part of the PMA’s focus on data transformation, Kent said she will work with federal partners on two “work streams” consisting of creating a long-term strategy and developing incubators to deliver practical solutions.

“The second work stream particularly, the incubator, assesses solutions that are very specific to use cases so that we can prove some of those things that I mentioned around shared principles, views on architectures and structures, the debate [on] what can be made public and how and what is the best mechanism for that,” she said. “Those are the things that are going to build the first rung of the ladder that we are going to continue to climb.”

Kent said the White House would be releasing more information next week about the next steps of its data strategy as part of the PMA’s plan to measure progress through quarterly goals.

Agencies excited about the potential for increased counter-drone authority for national security

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are really excited about the possibility of being able to seize control of, or otherwise disable, malicious drones in American airspace.

Representatives from both agencies, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration, spoke strongly in favor of new legislation that would grant the agencies these powers at a Senate hearing Wednesday. But while the room was friendly, the bill isn’t without its critics.

The Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018, introduced last month by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., is a bipartisan bill that would “authorize personnel of the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice” to take a number of actions to “mitigate the threat that an unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft poses to the safety or security of a covered facility or asset” as defined by the DHS secretary or attorney general.

These actions include monitoring and tracking unmanned aircraft, warning the operator of said aircraft and, if necessary, advancing to “disrupt control” of the aircraft. The bill, as currently written, grants officials the option to “use reasonable force to disable, damage, or destroy” a threatening drone.

This is not a capability that DHS or DOJ officers currently possess. “We have no authorities to counter these drones,” Johnson said, in his opening remarks. He kicked off the hearing with a YouTube video that shows an Islamic State drone dropping a bomb on a target with impressive accuracy. “It looks like something out of our Defense Department,” Johnson said. “It’s frightening.”

In Johnson’s estimation, similar capacity could easily be used in a domestic terror attack. “We should thank our lucky stars that we haven’t seen a real tragic incident,” Johnson said.

Johnson and his colleagues want to get out in front of the threat by giving DHS and DOJ the authority to counter drones without fear of liability. And the agencies, unsurprisingly, are very much in support of this.

“The FBI is concerned that criminals and terrorists will exploit UAS in ways that pose a serious threat to the safety of the American people,” FBI Deputy Assistant Director Scott Brunner said in his testimony. “At present, the FBI and our federal partners have very limited authority to counter this new threat. Potential conflicts in federal criminal law limit the use of technologies that would enable the FBI to detect or, if necessary, to mitigate UAS that threaten critical facilities and assets. Absent legislative action, the FBI is unable to effectively protect the U.S. from this growing threat.”

The bill at hand, Brunner said, is a step in the right direction.

DHS Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis David J. Glawe echoed this sentiment. “This threat is real,” he said. And as drones get cheaper and more accessible, it will only be more important for security officials to have the authority to defend against the bad ones. “This bill is a very strong first step,” Glawe added.

Many of the authorities granted by the bill are similar to capabilities the Defense Department has to protect its own assets— the bill would translate these to the national security space.

The FAA also spoke in support of the legislation.

“The FAA supports our national security partners in DHS and the Department of Justice gaining this authority,” Deputy Associate Administrator for Security and Hazardous Materials Safety Angela Stubblefield said in her closing remarks. “There’s a lot to be learned about how to properly use it in the national airspace and in civil environments, and this authority will give us the opportunity to move further down that road.”

Despite the convivial atmosphere in the hearing room, the bill is not completely uncontroversial. There were several allusions to opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union during the course of the hearing — the group wrote a letter officially opposing the legislation on the grounds that it is too broad and lacks appropriate privacy protections.

“The bill amounts to an enormous unchecked grant of authority to the government to forcefully remove drones from the sky in nebulous security circumstances,” the letter reads.

Johnson called the contents of a letter “completely unjustifiable criticism,” saying the authorities the bill would grant are actually “minimal.”

The hearing Wednesday was a public version of a classified hearing held Tuesday — Johnson admitted he’s always wary of holding public hearings on national security topics because “I really don’t want to give the bad guys any ideas.”

The goal from here, Johnson said, is to get the Preventing Emerging Threats Act tacked onto the 2019 defense authorization bill. There’s currently no House version of the legislation.

The benefits of high-performance, hyperconverged infrastructure for IT modernization

As agencies consider expanding into the cloud and refreshing their infrastructure, reducing costs most often drives their decisions. However, agility and the ability to speed up response time to changing conditions may prove to be the greater benefit, says Lee Caswell in a new FedScoop podcast.

Caswell, vice president of products, storage and availability at VMware, says that agencies looking to update data centers and IT systems have a unique opportunity to capitalize on several benefits that come with adopting today’s hyperconverged infrastructure.

Hyperconvergence combines storage, computing and networking into an integrated, software-centric architecture in ways that reduce data center complexity and increase scalability and security.

With the advancement of hyperconverged technology, organizations can afford to utilize a data center approach that in the past was only available to the largest agencies with the highest budget, Lee says.

“Harnessing the power of data is an important aspect into this digital transformation,” chimes in Melvin Greer, chief data scientist for the Americas at Intel, who also joined the FedScoop podcast.

Agencies are giving more consideration to data science and artificial intelligence in modernization efforts. Moving to hyperconverged infrastructure, and integrating all flash technology, would give organizations the high-performance infrastructure needed to balance mixed workloads.

Greer explains, “the need to train algorithms and provide better insight, using all of the data that the federal government is a steward of, requires a high performance, low-cost, hybrid-cloud infrastructure for computing storage.”

Greer asserts that chief data officers are key to helping their agencies look for ways to harness the power of their data and artificial intelligence. Agency leaders should lean on their expertise to improve operational performance.

For IT departments thinking about how to re-architect a modern data center, Lee encourages CIOs to take advantage of a normal server-refresh cycle to move from a virtual server with a shared storage environment to a hyperconverged environment.

Agencies that can “take the opportunity to upgrade your CPUs, flash memory, and with hyperconverged software … can now build out a persistent store of virtual servers with embedded scale-out architecture,” Greer says.

Having an on-premises environment that can expand into the public cloud is a great opportunity, and agencies should about how to use hyperconvergence as a tool for this change, he added.

Read more about hyperconverged infrastructure solutions.

This podcast was produced by FedScoop and underwritten by VMware, Intel and Carahsoft.

Senate NDAA gives marching orders for Pentagon’s JEDI cloud

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with information about the House’s defense spending bill.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, like its counterpart in the House, has set some requirements in its version of the 2019 defense authorization bill for the Defense Department’s massive acquisition of commercial cloud services, hoping to see the department get its ducks in a row for a smooth migration.

Whereas the the 2019 House National Defense Authorization Act threatens funding of the Pentagon’s multibillion-dollar Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure commercial cloud acquisition without proper reporting on the acquisition, the Senate’s draft bill is much more supportive of the contract — foremost requiring the department take the necessary steps, like adding “advanced commercial network capabilities,” to prepare for the unprecedented cloud migration and ensure that it’s successful in the long-term.

Within 90 days of the bill’s enactment, the DOD’s Cloud Executive Steering Group would have to “develop an approach to rapidly acquire advanced commercial network capabilities, including software-defined networking, on-demand bandwidth, and aggregated cloud access gateways, through commercial service providers…” In addition to easing the migration, this would “increase visibility of end-to-end performance to enable and enforce service level agreements for cloud services,” “ensure efficient and common cloud access” and “facilitate shifting data and applications from one cloud platform to another,” among other things, the bill says.

The bill’s language seems to suggest that if the JEDI commercial cloud is the DOD’s preferred strategy to modernize its systems, then it should be all-in and its preparations should reflect that. It calls for the steering group to review all workloads or applications that it hopes eventually to migrate to JEDI and reassess if it will actually migrate them or perhaps terminate them. On top of that, the bill limits any new system or application development led by the steering group to be “already, or can and would be, cloud-hosted.”

The bill briefly addresses the JEDI acquisition strategy, which the DOD, despite continual criticism, has maintained will be a single award contract, particularly in a recent report to Congress, including the Armed Service Committee in each chamber. It doesn’t set any specific requirements to reassess that decision, but it broadly hints that the committee would prefer to see the Pentagon issue more than one award for the procurement.

“The Deputy Secretary shall ensure that the acquisition approach of the Department continues to follow the Federal Acquisition Regulation, including part 16.504(c) of such regulation, regarding procedures relating to the preference for multiple awards,” it says.

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee also released its preliminary defense spending bill Wednesday with JEDI in its crosshairs. It would restrict funding of the program and the department’s other massive cloud contract — the $8 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions led by the Defense Information Systems Agency —until 90 days after Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis submits a letter proposing a budget accounting system for all funds spent on DOD cloud computing, as well as “a detailed description of the Department’s strategy to implement enterprise-wide cloud computing.”

The DEOS procurement focuses more on modernizing the Pentagon’s enterprise business communication, collaboration and productivity applications, whereas JEDI has been described as a commercial cloud procurement meant to serve as the foundation for the DOD’s next-gen, emerging tech capabilities.

As part of that report, Mattis must also include a “strategy to sustain competition and innovation throughout the period of performance of each contract, including defining opportunities for multiple cloud service providers and insertion of new technologies; and an assessment of potential threats and security vulnerabilities of the proposed cloud computing strategy, and plans to mitigate such risks,” the bill says.

The final request for proposals for the JEDI contract, expected in May, could drop any day now. Or it could be a while — the Pentagon didn’t have any specifics on the delay when asked in a recent press conference. Spokesperson Dana White called it an “events-driven RFP” that “we are still working on.”

“So we are working on it, but it’s important that we don’t rush toward failure,” White told reporters. “This is different for us. We have a lot more players in it. This is something different from some of our other acquisition programs because we do have a great deal of commercial interest. We are going to the commercial sector for it.”

Cloud migration increasingly important to federal agencies’ missions

Agencies rank “the ability to better deliver on mission” as a top priority for adopting cloud IT services, according to a new FedScoop study.

About half of federal civilian agency IT officials polled in the study also reported they are currently implementing mission support and business systems in the cloud, not just more basic applications that once characterized the governments earlier efforts to embrace cloud computing.

FedScoop study on moving mission IT services to cloud

Download the full report.

Cost savings ranked as the No. 1 motivation for cloud migration. Two-thirds of respondents believe adopting cloud-services would free up IT budget to reinvest in other areas, with more than estimating it could represent savings of 10-to-29 percent of their IT budgets.

Those savings would undoubtedly help fund agencies’ plans to modernize their IT. Six in 10 respondents in the study said their agencies have increased budgets for IT modernization in fiscal 2018, suggesting a shift may be underway to address urgent IT needs.

Among other top-ranking benefits associated with adopting cloud services:

The online survey, conducted by FedScoop and underwritten by Salesforce, provides insights to what matters most for federal civilian agency IT leaders and mission, business or program managers at those agencies.

Some perceptions about the benefits of cloud computing varied, depending on where in the agency leaders sit. Mission, business and program managers, for instance, were significantly more inclined to see “fast modernization” and “scalability” as benefits of cloud adoption than their C-suite and IT and data management counterparts, suggesting those who rely on IT may be the strongest proponents for adopting cloud services.

Yet while cloud adoption is clearly on the rise at many federal agencies, more than 1 in 4 officials say their agency has yet to plan for more common cloud IT services such as email, office tools, IaaS or PaaS. The findings suggest gaps remain as agencies undertake IT modernization and shared services initiatives.

The study identified a variety of constraints officials say are serving as barriers to cloud adoption. Among their top operational concerns:

Additionally, there is a potential disconnect in cross-agency support for IT initiatives, the study found. Respondents who identified as mission, businesses or program management reported that they are less informed about their agency’s IT modernization budget than their IT counterparts.

Despite challenges to intra-agency collaboration, internal demands for modernization continue to drive agencies to the cloud.

Officials ranked faster modernization, reliability, automation of services and scalability across a large ecosystem among the top technical benefits of cloud-based services.

For more information, read the cloud modernization report, “Moving mission IT services to the cloud” for detailed findings and guidance on how agencies are implementing IT modernization and shared services. 

Learn more about Salesforce and trailblazers in government.

This article was produced by FedScoop and underwritten by Salesforce.

DOD wants to use ‘internet isolation’ to secure Pentagon networks

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is interested in exploring “cloud based internet isolation” as part of its endpoint security portfolio.

The agency issued an request for information on Monday seeking industry’s help in developing an internet isolation solution that would isolate users’ internet browsing activity away from the Department of Defense network.

As the RFI puts it, “the service would redirect the act of internet browsing from the end user’s desktop into a remote server, external to the Department of Defense Information Network.”

This method of security, one that has attracted a lot of attention in enterprise, promises to ensure that a user browsing the internet from an internal work machine doesn’t threaten to let malicious actors in because, well, that user’s internet browsing activity is “isolated.”

In the past this kind of isolation has been achieved through virtualization. But virtualization is expensive and doesn’t scale well. Now, providers are exploring new architectures for isolating web browsing — apparently this is a work in progress. Companies, however, are betting it will be big. Tech research firm Gartner named browser isolation to a list of top technologies for security in 2017. Just last year the security company Symantec bought an Israeli startup called FireGlass, specifically to increase its browser isolation offerings.

And now, DISA wants in. Or at least wants to learn more.

Companies that wish to respond to the RFI have until June 29 to submit a white paper on the capabilities, approaches and expertise available.

DISA to roll out revamped security clearance application process

Applicants to begin the the federal government’s backlogged background investigation process can expect a smoother online experience with a forthcoming updated application form, according to the the Defense Information Systems Agency.

The new service is called eApp, and the goal in developing it was to make the process of submitting background investigation forms cleaner and more intuitive, DISA says. eApp is meant to replace the current portal applicants use, known as e-QIP (Election Questionnaires for Investigations Processing).

DISA demonstrated eApp for the first time in May at the AFCEA Cyber Operations Symposium in Baltimore, but the agency will start gradually rolling it out in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018, Raju Shah, program manager for the DISA’s National Background Investigation Services (NBIS), said in a statement.

In the meantime, Shah said eApp will go through a “usability study” with 1,000 users in the Army in order to get feedback and fine-tune the experience.

DISA boasts that the new system will automate a number of tasks that have historically been manual, helping investigators focus more on assessing information rather than menially processing documents. In addition, certain elements of the form will be pre-populated for repeat applicants.

A promotional video for eApp posted by DISA features user testimonials saying that the process is “more modern and current” and that it’s “the most painless experience for a painful form.”

The video also showcases how eApp is meant to improve the submittal process’s flow and navigation, ability to edit items and ability to track and save progress.

Although the Office of Personnel Management is the point agency for the federal background check and security clearance process, the IT aspect of that process was given to DISA in 2016 in the wake of the infamous OPM breach.

The Associated Press reported last week that the Department of Defense will soon completely take over the background investigation process.

But OPM still has to fight a backlog of background investigations that as of March sat at about 710,000. The Government Accountability Office in January put the process on its list of “high-risk” programs due to IT and security concerns.

CACI locks $407 million CDM DEFEND contract with DHS

CACI International will help provide cybersecurity services for the Department of Homeland Security’s next iteration of its Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program.

The Arlington, Virginia-based IT company said that it secured a potential $407 million contract to help develop advanced cybersecurity tools for CDM’s Dynamic and Evolving Federal Enterprise Network Defense – Group A (DEFEND A), representing new work for its cybersecurity operations. CDM is the government’s program for fortifying its own networks and systems.

“CACI brings the Department of Homeland Security extensive expertise in developing and implementing enterprise IT and full-spectrum cyber operations,” said company President and CEO Ken Asbury in a release. “Our adversary-centric approach and leading-edge cyber security tool development capabilities enhance our customers’ ability to safeguard critical networks and data.”

The DEFEND program represents the second edition on contracts for the CDM program, with the first group set to expire this year.

The Group A contracts, issued through the General Services Administration’s Alliant contract vehicle, feature a single base year with five additional one-year options. The estimated total cost of the DEFEND contracts, which include six groups, is thought to be around $3.4 billion.

CACI officials said the task orders will include work building CDM dashboards and tools, as well as “asset management of software and hardware, cloud-based and mobile devices and configuration-setting and vulnerability management.”

CDM program manager Kevin Cox recently told FedScoop that the new task orders provide DHS with a longer period of performance and more contract flexibility as the program seeks to provide federal agencies more cybersecurity monitoring.

Booz Allen Hamilton secured a $621-million DEFEND contract in February. CDM is set to have 24 Chief Financial Officer Act-agencies reporting data to its federal dashboard this month.

OPM developing integrated digital employee record, asks for industry help

The Office of Personnel Management is looking to develop a single integrated employee digital record for federal employees.

The agency issued a request for information on IT systems that can help integrate the disparate data of a federal employee’s work history held in OPM’s and other agencies’ systems around government into a single digital record.

“Currently, Human Resource data systems lack integration within agencies and interoperability among and between agencies and service providers,” the RFI said. “This results in redundancy, inefficient and occasionally inaccurate reporting, complex and costly vendor management, and incomplete data that makes it difficult to apply needed business processes to core HR functions.”

OPM is calling for IT contractors to provide new solutions to build out its vision for an employee digital record — but it cautioned that “generic technology solution statements” would not be considered by the agency. The agency has already built a prototype, which it highlights in the RFI.

The RFI also noted that OPM will hold an industry Thursday at agency headquarters to inform stakeholders about the requirements it is looking for.

RFI respondents may also be called upon by the agency to provide an operational capability demonstration of their technology solution the week of June 18 in Macon, Ga.

OPM has recently tested new technology to help make a federal employee’s work history more shareable across federal networks, including a blockchain prototype to track employee transfers between agencies.

Interested stakeholders have until June 13 to respond.