The federal government is primed to spend as much as $300 billion in the final quarter of fiscal 2018 as agencies rush to obligate money appropriated by Congress before Sept. 30 or return it to the Treasury Department.
The spending spree is the product of the omnibus budget agreement signed six months late in March coupled with funding increases of $80 billion for defense and $63 billion for civilian agencies. The shortened time frame left procurement officials scrambling to find ways to spend the money.
Through August, defense and civilian agencies obligated some $300 billion in contracts. But to spend all the money appropriated to them by Congress, they may have to obligate well over $200 billion more in the final quarter of fiscal 2018, which ends in two weeks.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/09/unprecedented-government-spending-spree-picks-speed/151347/
The 
Doing so could disrupt the monopoly Dun & Bradstreet has on the identification numbers contractors use to work with the federal government. But if the public and federal government want to better understand where money goes, they’re going to need to use a common identification system, the report from records giant Lexis Nexis and the Data Foundation, a government-transparency focused advocacy group, argued.
There’s the seeming chaos in Washington, with the new administration failing to fill hundreds of mid- and senior-level jobs. There’s the dire sense in most agencies that next year’s budget will be smaller. And there’s the fog and uncertainty that come with operating under a series of continuing resolutions.
But recent work building shipboard operating software for energy management — a project, Mackey says, that has been “extremely well received from the waterfront to the Pentagon” — has led Mackey to think bigger. “We’re actively transitioning our Navy products into maritime internet of things and manufacturing internet of things products,” she said. The company, she says, has formed strategic partnerships to launch itself back into the private sector as a prelude to building an internal sales force. Meanwhile, she anticipates that within a few years, she’ll be bidding on, and winning, much larger Navy contracts — worth as much as $15 million.
