agile | The Contracting Education Academy

October 31, 2017 By AMK

DoD acquisition ‘slow by design,’ can’t handle cybersecurity defense

The Defense Department isn’t built to handle cybersecurity defense well.

Its acquisition system is designed to develop and purchase large, expensive weapons systems while holding to the tenets of competition, transparency and integrity. That means it can’t keep up with cybersecurity defense.

“The defense acquisition process is slow by design,” Lt. Col. Dan Schoeni, judge advocate at the Air Force, said on Cybersecurity Month. “And that’s completely understandable — when you’re spending billions of dollars of other peoples’ money, the number-one thing on taxpayers’ minds is fraud, waste and abuse. They’re concerned about, ‘Where are our tax dollars going?’ So the system has been built, has been skewed in favor of overarching principles.”

But taking seven-to-10 years to develop a new fighter jet or weapons system is one thing; taking that long to develop cybersecurity systems is another. It can’t keep up with the speed of attacks, much less the speed with which the threat environment itself evolves.

Schoeni said Congress has tried to help by expanding authorities for purchasing cybersecurity technology, including rapid acquisition and special emergency procurement, but neither one does enough.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/cybersecurity-2017/2017/10/dod-acquisition-slow-by-design-cant-handle-cybersecurity-defense/

August 24, 2017 By AMK

This agency can help fast track your tech acquisitions

Several years ago, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began taking a more agile approach to technology. The agency hoped it would see more success by building systems in small, functional bites than by trying to build budget-busting projects that affect millions of people all at once.

After early successes implementing agile practices across the IT and business lines, the agency responsible for overseeing lawful immigration to the U.S. hit a wall, said David Simeon, chief of USCIS’ innovation and technology division.

“The challenge we ran into was the systems integrator market—the vendors you reach out to develop software for the government—had not kept up with agile,” Simeon told Nextgov.

As an early government adopter of agile practices, Simeon said by 2014 the agency’s next step was the deployment of cloud-native applications but that required “a brand new way of thinking” and new talent to boot. Rather than undertake a traditional approach to procuring new technology, which could take 18 months or longer, Simeon said USCIS turned to another federal agency: the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2017/07/agency-can-help-fast-track-your-tech-acquisitions/139877/

July 28, 2017 By AMK

Commentary: Contract management’s new certainty of uncertainty

As anyone involved in contracting with the federal government is already well aware, this is the age of complete uncertainty.

What are the government’s requirements? What are its priorities? What is its budget? When will it receive its funding? When will solicitations be issued? When will contract awards be made? Once contract awards are completed, will they last? Will the program survive? What will be the effect on existing contracts of changes in budget priorities, funding reallocations, funding stoppages, funding shortages, government shutdowns, stop-gap funding, the administration’s changing or still unknown goals and intent, etc.?

The only sure “knowns” in contracting today are the multitudinous “unknowns.” The once weakly supported notion of wider use of multi-year funding — to provide increased program stability, efficiencies and contract savings — is a distant memory. Such uncertainty was the subject of a recent message to Congress by the Secretary of Defense.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/articles/contract-managements-new-certainty-of-uncertainty-commentary

June 21, 2017 By AMK

New platform tries to bring some normalcy to the agile craze

Nine months after Federal News Radio asked if the agile craze is taking the government by storm, the data and actions continue to show a lack of coordinated contracting approach leading to a bunch of one-off contracts.

Over at the Homeland Security Department is the most obvious example of this growing challenge.

In late April, the Transportation Security Administration awarded Accenture a $64 million contract for the EAGLE II multiple award contract vehicle to transform more than 70 applications into a modern architecture.

About a month later, DHS’s procurement office bailed on setting up its $1.5 billion small-business contract vehicle for agile services after two rounds of awards and two rounds of protests. DHS told the Government Accountability Office (GAO) it didn’t have the expertise to fix the procurement and would develop a new acquisition approach in 2018.

The same agency is trying to implement agile with separate approaches, leading to duplication of resources and potentially putting vendors through the long and costly procurement process multiple times.

Let’s dig deeper into what’s going on across the government.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2017/06/normalcyagilecraze/

The MITRE Corp. has developed a free online platform called Acquisition in the Digital Age (AiDA) to provide tools, references and best practices for agencies to use agile methodologies. It can be accessed here: https://aida.mitre.org/

June 7, 2017 By AMK

DHS cancels $1.5 billion contract for agile services

The Homeland Security Department’s has cancelled its $1.5 billion contract vehicle for agile development services.

Multiple industry sources confirmed DHS alerted the companies and the Government Accountability Office that it would no longer move forward with the troubled small business procurement known as Flexible Agile Support for the Homeland (FLASH).

An email to DHS seeking comment on FLASH was not immediately returned.

It’s unclear what comes next for FLASH—whether DHS will try again with a new procurement or give up entirely on a separate contract vehicle for agile services and rely on an existing one like EAGLE II.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/contractsawards/2017/05/dhs-cancels-1-5b-contract-for-agile-services/

The Defense Department isn’t built to handle cybersecurity defense well.

Several years ago, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began taking a more agile approach to technology. The agency hoped it would see more success by building systems in small, functional bites than by trying to build budget-busting projects that affect millions of people all at once.

As anyone involved in contracting with the federal government is already well aware, this is the age of complete uncertainty.

Nine months after Federal News Radio asked if the agile craze is taking the government by storm, the data and actions continue to show a lack of coordinated contracting approach leading to a bunch of one-off contracts.

The Homeland Security Department’s has cancelled its $1.5 billion contract vehicle for agile development services.

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