The CIA wants to turbocharge commercial tech buying with a new acquisition framework

Earlier this year, the CIA issued a new acquisition framework that it hopes will “turbocharge” collaboration with industry by proritizing the adoption of commercial products. Along with the framework, the agency released new processes for centralized vendor vetting and streamlined IT authorization. In her first interview as the CIA’s chief procurement officer, Effie Frangogiannis joins the Daily Scoop to break down the new framework, how interested industry partners can get involved and what’s coming next.

The Trump administration issued a revised executive order Tuesday focused on artificial intelligence, offering a significantly pared-back vision for the federal government’s role vetting AI systems compared with a draft version that was spiked weeks ago. The order keeps in place the administration’s largely voluntary framework for companies to engage with the federal government around testing new models before release, but appears to considerably weaken or loosen provisions that had been opposed by industry. Under the order, AI companies would voluntarily provide the federal government access to frontier models before release, but now it will be for “up to” 30 days instead of the 90-day timeline included in previous drafts. It also explicitly states that nothing in the program will be construed as mandatory or part of a federal licensing or permitting regime, and gives AI companies significant influence to help define what models would and would not be covered under for testing. Under the order, all federal testing and access to the models would be subject to “confidentiality, cybersecurity, insider-risk, and intellectual-property protection, use, and nondisclosure requirements.”

The Pentagon’s next iteration of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract would establish a cloud marketplace for military users while expanding support for artificial intelligence, edge computing and cross-domain operations, according to a draft solicitation. On May 20, the Defense Information Systems Agency published a draft performance of work statement for the upcoming JWCC Unified Cloud Marketplace (UCM) contract on Sam.gov. Previously known as JWCC Next, the program is intended to create a single marketplace through which Defense Department organizations can access authorized cloud services from a broad range of vendors. Under the proposed structure, the UCM would be organized into three tiers. The first would consist of hyperscale cloud service providers delivering core infrastructure and platform services. A second tier would encompass “Everything-as-a-Service” (XaaS) offerings — including software-, platform- and infrastructure-as-a-service capabilities. A third tier would be dedicated to commercial innovators and small businesses offering cloud-based technologies that meet the department’s security requirements.

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