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September 20, 2019 By cs

How GSA is changing government buying

The General Services Administration (GSA) and its components manage a significant portfolio of the government’s spending, delivering the best value on goods and services for government, among other integral functions.

As GSA administrator and the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, respectively, Emily Murphy and Alan Thomas have worked closely to spearhead a period of significant procurement reform, including combining the two-dozen multiple award schedules into one and experimenting with a government online shopping portal.

Federal Times sat down with Murphy and Thomas to discuss how the change has been a team effort and their vision for the future of the agency.

Read this interview at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2019/09/12/acquiring-the-right-mindset-how-gsa-is-changing-government-buying/

September 19, 2019 By cs

DoD will require vendor cybersecurity certifications by this time next year

The department released a draft maturity model and timeline for new certification requirements for all of the defense industrial base.

The government has stringent processes for verifying the IT products and services it uses comply with relevant cybersecurity standards, such as authorities to operate for cloud services and supply chain regulations for hardware products. But those standards and processes don’t cover the vendors.

For the Defense Department, this is a critical issue, as doing business with industry requires the department to share sensitive information, even at the earliest steps of the process.

The department has been kicking around the idea of creating a certification standard for defense industrial base companies to ensure vendors’ cybersecurity posture was adequate to handle controlled and classified information. That became an official effort in March, and on Sept. 4th the department released the first draft Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or CMMC, outline for public comment.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/09/dod-will-require-vendor-cybersecurity-certifications-time-next-year/159702/

September 18, 2019 By cs

HHS’s suspension of acquisition services leaves outside agencies and contractors in limbo

It’s been three months since the department announced it was closing down its shared services operations, and many questions remain unanswered.

The Health and Human Services Department’s decision to wind down its acquisition services for outside agencies has left customers scrambling to fill the void and a number of unanswered questions.

HHS announced in June that it would no longer offer assisted acquisition services for non-HHS customers through its Program Support Center, and gave them until Sept. 30, 2020, to find alternative providers. The center works for HHS and 19 other agencies on a fee-for-service basis, administering more than $1.4 billion in contracts per year, Federal News Network reported. Also, the department put four officials associated with the Program Support Center on paid leave between April and June, Bloomberg News reported.

“As the result of an internal review that is ongoing, [the Program Support Center] has determined that it does not have the policies, procedures, or internal controls necessary to conduct assisted acquisitions for agencies outside of HHS,” said Melissa McAbee, acting head of contracting at PSC, according to a report in Bloomberg News. As of mid-June, the center was managing 250 contracts for agencies besides HHS, including the Defense Department and Environmental Protection Agency.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/09/hhss-suspension-acquisition-services-leaves-outside-agencies-and-contractors-limbo/159870/

September 17, 2019 By cs

FEMA officials charged with bribery over Puerto Rico power contracts

A 15-count federal indictment accuses two former FEMA officials and a contractor with bribery, fraud and other offenses related to disaster relief efforts after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.

A former top Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official, her aide, and the former president of an energy company were indicted and arrested in connection with an alleged scheme to direct billions of dollars in disaster aid to the company for electricity restoration in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Ahsha Tribble, who until recently was FEMA’s Region II deputy regional administrator and led the agency’s efforts to restore power to the devastated island, is accused of accepting a variety of bribes from Donald Ellison, former president of Cobra Acquisitions, LLC, a subsidiary of Mammoth Energy Services, in exchange for pressuring officials at FEMA and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to improperly assign projects to Cobra.

keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2019/09/fema-officials-charged-bribery-over-puerto-rico-power-contracts/159777/

September 16, 2019 By cs

The future of continuous evaluation is just about here, and it has a different name

What started as pilot program for the Defense Department and other agencies in the intelligence community will soon become the key piece to the Trump administration’s overhaul of the suitability, credentialing and security clearance process.

The overhaul itself is called the Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative, and it’s the administration’s attempt to, at last, modernize a security clearance and vetting system that’s badly in need of an update.

The initiative itself will come in the form of several new policies and procedures, which are due sometime near the end of the year, defense and intelligence officials have said. Everything from the type of security clearances themselves to the standards used to investigate and adjudicate clearance holders will change.

And the continuous evaluation concept, the program DoD and others have used to monitor its cleared population and maintain trust with its employees and contractors, will also evolve.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2019/09/the-future-of-continuous-evaluation-is-just-about-here-and-it-has-a-different-name/

The General Services Administration (GSA) and its components manage a significant portfolio of the government’s spending, delivering the best value on goods and services for government, among other integral functions.

The department released a draft maturity model and timeline for new certification requirements for all of the defense industrial base.

It’s been three months since the department announced it was closing down its shared services operations, and many questions remain unanswered.

A 15-count federal indictment accuses two former FEMA officials and a contractor with bribery, fraud and other offenses related to disaster relief efforts after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.

What started as pilot program for the Defense Department and other agencies in the intelligence community will soon become the key piece to the Trump administration’s overhaul of the suitability, credentialing and security clearance process.

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