industry | The Contracting Education Academy

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/

September 25, 2019 By cs

Are meetings with industry actually accelerating military acquisitions?

Military leaders say they are determined to find faster ways to buy cutting-edge technologies.

“We can’t afford to spend seven years thinking about a requirement,” Army Undersecretary Ryan D. McCarthy said during a 2018 visit to Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

“If it is going to take that long, you are probably not going to get it. So, we need to get these capabilities sooner.”

To that end, the Department of Defense has increased the number of engagements with industry, launched alternative contracting vehicles, and taken other steps to streamline innovation more effectively. Industry officials are often clamoring for that interaction, but some say the Pentagon’s efforts are beginning to bear fruit.

One area where those changes are most visible has been in the Army’s modernization of its battlefield network. David Huisenga, president and chief executive at Klas Telecom Government, said he has noticed a marked difference in the quality and quantity of engagements between industry and the Department of Defense.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.c4isrnet.com/industry/2019/09/19/are-meetings-with-industry-actually-accelerating-military-acquisitions/

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 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 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.

Military leaders say they are determined to find faster ways to buy cutting-edge technologies.

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

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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