industry | The Contracting Education Academy

June 22, 2020 By cs

What should vendors expect from Q4 2020?

The fourth quarter sprint to the finish line of the 2020 fiscal year starts in about a week. So what can federal contractors expect?

According to Cameron Leuthy, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Government, professional services will be big, the coronavirus pandemic will present both complications and opportunities, and small businesses should already be getting ready.

To project what’s coming, analysts usually look to the previous year as a template. In 2019, Q4 included 30% of all obligations for the entire fiscal year. The Defense Department alone spent just shy of $120 billion. The departments of Housing and Urban Development, Interior and State each had more than 50% of their total obligations for 2019 in the fourth quarter. September was particularly lucrative, with $94.3B spent that month alone, 66% of which came from DoD.

There are a number of reasons for that, Leuthy said. Sometimes those reasons include policy, or maximizing potential leverage with foreign governments, in the case of the State Department. Sometimes funds are just deliberately held back from obligations, though there can be legal ramifications for that.

“Civilian agencies did hold back in some cases, because of the difference between the amount the administration asked for and the amount that Congress eventually ended up appropriating,” Leuthy said. “There’s also an incentive, and a prudent one, to hold back obligations during CRs and not get ahead of yourself.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contracting/2020/06/what-should-vendors-expect-from-q4-2020/

June 8, 2020 By cs

CEOs of major Defense companies speak out about racism, call for unity

In many cases, their internal messages and social media posts went out days before military leaders issued their own calls for reflection.

It’s rare for defense CEOs to speak out about social or political issues, but many spent the early part of the week doing just that, sending internal messages to their employees and posting to social media about racism in America.

In many cases, their messages went out days before military leaders issued their own calls for reflection last Tuesday and Wednesday.

“The death of George Floyd was the result of a reprehensible act,” Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes said in a June 1 note to employees — a reference to the black man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer last week. “Although authorities are taking action to ensure justice, the national response and global dialogue related to Mr. Floyd’s death point to a serious issue ― and we must not look away.

“We must take notice,” Hayes continued. “We have to respond clearly that racism, discrimination and hatred will not be tolerated. We must take this moment to embrace the fundamental values that unite us.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/06/ceos-major-defense-companies-speak-out-about-racism-call-unity/165925

March 18, 2020 By cs

Acquisition contracts key to agencies opening telework options in face of coronavirus

There’s good news and bad news for agencies looking to ramp up telework in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal contracting experts.

According to the CDC, a novel coronavirus was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China in 2019. It is formally named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The good news is federal acquisition contracts are set up for quick acquisition of essential telework equipment, such as laptops or tablets, said acquisition experts FCW spoke with.

The bad news could be that online scammers are watching the expanding tele-workforce with great interest.

The emphasis on agency telework is growing, and although most agency employees are already assigned computers, there may be some hardware gaps to fill as workforces move to remote locations.

Federal governmentwide acquisition contracts, such as NASA’s Services for Enterprise-Wide Procurement, the General Services Administration’s ordering schedule and the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) are set up to help quickly fill laptops, tablets and other IT commodity orders, they said.

Keep reading this article at: https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2020/03/11/coronavirus-telework-procurement-hardware.aspx

The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech has established a webpage where all contract-related developments related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are summarized. Find the page at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/coronavirus-information-for-contracting-officers-and-contractors/

January 9, 2020 By cs

A win-win contracting tool for the Pentagon and the private sector

The Defense Department is taking measures to get new capabilities to warfighters more quickly, and they’re working. One of these tools is called Other Transaction Authority.

The Pentagon has made increasing use of this contracting method, which has existed since the space race but was expanded dramatically in the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act.

The value of Other Transaction Authority agreements has increased nearly 300% since 2016, from $1.4 billion to $3.7 billion, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in November.

The normal defense contracting system is, by all accounts, too slow. Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy has likened the procurement system to baseball: “It’s like having a 19-year-old kid that can throw a 100-mile-an-hour fastball but who won’t make the majors until he’s 39.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/12/30/a-win-win-contracting-tool-for-the-pentagon-and-the-private-sector/

October 22, 2019 By cs

Pentagon standing up a nonprofit to assess vendor cybersecurity

The organization would be responsible for running the department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification.

The Defense Department is looking to stand up a nonprofit organization to measure the strength of its contractors’ cybersecurity practices.

The group would be responsible for running the vendor accreditation process under the Pentagon’s new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or CMMC. The framework, which was released in draft form last month, will serve as a yardstick for determining if contractors are taking sufficient steps to protect the sensitive military data that resides on their networks.

The certification process is intended to push the Pentagon’s extensive network of vendors to strengthen their digital defenses, or at least adopt protections that are appropriate for the sensitivity of their work. The program comes adversaries like China increasingly target defense contractors to steal military secrets.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/10/pentagon-standing-nonprofit-assess-vendor-cybersecurity/160425/

The fourth quarter sprint to the finish line of the 2020 fiscal year starts in about a week. So what can federal contractors expect?

In many cases, their internal messages and social media posts went out days before military leaders issued their own calls for reflection.

There’s good news and bad news for agencies looking to ramp up telework in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal contracting experts.

The Defense Department is taking measures to get new capabilities to warfighters more quickly, and they’re working. One of these tools is called Other Transaction Authority.

The organization would be responsible for running the department’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification.

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