Homeland Security | The Contracting Education Academy

March 12, 2018 By cs

ICE broke contracting rules in establishing its largest detention facility

The nation’s largest immigrant detention facility was procured improperly, according to a watchdog report, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2014 using an existing agreement with a town in Arizona as a vehicle to establish the center 900 miles away in Texas.

Since 2014, ICE has spent $438,000 annually for Eloy, Ariz., to serve solely as a middleman for a 2,400-bed detention facility in Dilley, Texas, according to the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. The agency first contracted with the city of Eloy in 2006 to establish the Eloy Detention Center, which the city subcontracted to a company called CCA. ICE reached the agreement with Eloy through a process known as an intergovernmental service agreement, or IGSA.

After an influx of unaccompanied minors and families illegally crossed the border in 2014, ICE looked to boost its detention capacity in south Texas. The agency asked CCA and another contractor to submit proposals for a facility, but only CCA responded. The contractor negotiated directly with ICE on the provisions of the agreement. Rather than create a new contract, ICE went to the city of Eloy and requested that it modify its IGSA to enable CCA to run the South Texas Family Residential Center. The Eloy City Council gave its consent, and the agreement was altered. The provision was set to expire in October 2016, but ICE extended it until 2021.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2018/02/ice-broke-contracting-rules-establishing-its-largest-detention-facility/146278

December 20, 2017 By cs

Homeland Security’s ‘innovation station’

A variety of systems cultivated under a Homeland Security rapid development program may be fielded late next year, bearing the first major fruits of the 2-year-old effort.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) kicked off its Silicon Valley Innovation Program in 2015 in an attempt to dramatically reduce the time to develop and deploy technology. The program focuses on all areas of the DHS mission, including information technology, finance, energy, health and first responders.

Program officials work largely with smaller companies, often startups that do not normally collaborate with the government. The businesses, in many cases, already have products and commercial customers, but their technologies need to be further developed and adapted to suit DHS needs.

“We actually have [entrepreneurs] whose venture capitalists have told them not to work with government because it’s too slow,” reports Melissa Ho, managing director of the DHS Silicon Valley Innovation Programs Office. But now, she says, startups want to work with the DHS “because we’re a customer that can validate their technology and because we have a way of contracting with them faster.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.afcea.org/content/homeland-securitys-innovation-station

November 27, 2017 By cs

Homeland Security’s top buyer: Still all-in in agile

The Homeland Security Department is no stranger to agile and is still committed to the modular software development process despite the failure of its large-scale agile buying experiment.

At a recent event hosted by the technology group AFFIRM, Homeland Security’s Chief Procurement Officer Soraya Correa said the department is still promoting agile software development because “we’ve finally woken up and realized we can’t keep doing [things] the way we were.”

“We can’t continue to let our enemies … get ahead of us,” she said.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2017/11/homeland-securitys-top-buyer-still-all-agile/142540/

October 24, 2017 By cs

Two-year DHS DOMino contract protest saga concludes

More than two years after the Department of Homeland Security originally decided to award their Development, Operations, and Maintenance (DOMino) contract to Raytheon, GAO has denied Northrup Grumman’s third protest of the contract award, allowing Raytheon and DHS to begin work under the contract.

The $1 billion, five-year contract, originally announced in July 2014, sought support for DHS’s mission of protecting the .gov web domain from cyberattacks. The contracted company would support cybersecurity system design, development, deployment and operations and maintenance for the National Cybersecurity Protection System (NCPS), also known as EINSTEIN.

The EINSTEIN system protects more than 100 federal networks from known threat vectors, and serves as one of DHS’s major cybersecurity initiatives.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fifthdomain.com/civilian/dhs/2017/10/20/two-year-dhs-domino-contract-protest-saga-concludes/

April 11, 2017 By cs

DHA achieves an acquisition first for the agency

The Homeland Security Department’s acquisition struggles have been in Congress’ crosshairs for years and were again highlighted in the Government Accountability Office’s High-Risk list this February.

A new GAO audit, however, suggests progress addressing those issues.

Released this week, the audit states all 26 acquisition programs GAO reviewed met department-approved cost, schedule and performance baselines to measure progress “for the first time since GAO began its annual assessments” three years ago, with more than half the programs on track to meet initial cost goals.

The audit covers DHS acquisitions over fiscal 2016, which total approximately $7 billion spent on ships, surveillance technology at the border, screening equipment at airports and other equipment.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2017/04/dhs-achieves-acquisition-first-agency/136849

The nation’s largest immigrant detention facility was procured improperly, according to a watchdog report, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2014 using an existing agreement with a town in Arizona as a vehicle to establish the center 900 miles away in Texas.

A variety of systems cultivated under a Homeland Security rapid development program may be fielded late next year, bearing the first major fruits of the 2-year-old effort.

The Homeland Security Department is no stranger to agile and is still committed to the modular software development process despite the failure of its large-scale agile buying experiment.

The Homeland Security Department’s acquisition struggles have been in Congress’ crosshairs for years and were again highlighted in the Government Accountability Office’s High-Risk list this February.

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