security clearance | The Contracting Education Academy

March 10, 2021 By cs

Former Air Force contractor pleads guilty to illegally taking 2,500 pages of classified information

A former contractor with the U.S. Air Force recently pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio to illegally taking approximately 2,500 pages of classified documents.

Isaak Vincent Kemp was charged on Jan. 25, 2021, by a Bill of Information. Originally, law enforcement discovered classified documents which contained approximately 2,500 pages of material classified at the Secret level, while executing a search warrant at Kemp’s home on May 25, 2019.

According to court documents, Kemp was employed as a contractor at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) from July 2016 to May 2019, and later as a contractor at the U.S. Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC). While working at AFRL and NASIC – both located on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Fairborn, Ohio – Kemp had Top Secret security clearance.

Despite having training on various occasions on how to safeguard classified material, Kemp took 112 classified documents and retained them at his home.

Unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents is a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Congress sets the maximum statutory sentence. Sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the Court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-air-force-contractor-pleads-guilty-illegally-taking-2500-pages-classified-information

December 2, 2020 By cs

New small business rules: Capabilities of small business joint venture members and first-tier subs

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has published a long-awaited rule that made important changes to numerous small business contracting programs and the rules Federal agencies must follow when contracting with small businesses.

These changes went into effect on November 16, 2020. You can read a summary of the rule here and read the rule itself here.

Here, we take a closer look at changes in the way procuring agencies will have to consider the past performance, experience, security clearances, capabilities, and certifications of small businesses and small business joint ventures.

To understand why the new rule is important, it’s useful to consider the current state of affairs. When businesses compete for Government contracts, they often create joint ventures or put together subcontractor teams with different companies complementing each other’s capabilities and experience. In general, procuring agencies have had wide latitude in being able to specify on a procurement-by-procurement basis the extent to which the prime offeror itself must have certain capabilities and experience, and the extent to which the offeror may rely upon subcontractors or joint venture members to fill in any gaps.

There currently is one principal exception to that wide latitude. When an offeror is a small business joint venture, the procuring agency is required to consider the past performance and experience of the joint venture members (including of any large business mentor joint venture member) as the past performance and experience of the joint venture itself. 15 U.S.C. § 644(q)(1)(C); 13 C.F.R. § 125.8(e) (Dec. 27, 2016).

Keep reading this article at: https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/government-contracts-procurement-ppp/999586/new-small-business-rules-capabilities-of-small-business-joint-venture-members-and-first-tier-subcontractors

March 12, 2020 By cs

Pilot IRS to return with new focus areas and significantly more funding

In the next three to six months, the IRS plans to issue new solicitations through its experimental contracting vehicle.

The IRS is considering tripling down on its experimental procurement vehicle Pilot IRS — an incremental funding program the tax agency uses to identify and develop cutting-edge technologies—with the second iteration of the program coming in the next few months, with three new focus areas and more than three times the funding up for grabs.

The first iteration of Pilot IRS sought to update the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation, or FPDS-NG, using robotic process automation tools to improve data quality and limit the amount of manual data entry. As with other alternative procurement methods like other transaction authority contracts, the Pilot IRS program uses a multi-phased funding approach that rewards vendors that meet milestones in a timely fashion.

Three weeks after issuing the solicitation in August, the IRS made five awards for the first phase, totaling $25,000. Since that time, “Two firms continue to receive funding, and have demonstrated return on investment rates of roughly 30-80% reductions in time required to make corrections to and improve the data in FPDS-NG,” according to a program update posted last Wednesday to beta.SAM.gov.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2020/03/pilot-irs-return-new-focus-areas-and-significantly-more-funding/163526/

July 17, 2019 By AMK

Pentagon aims to expedite security clearance process with $75 million award

Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC won a $75 million other transaction agreement on May 14 to continue modernization of the federal security clearance process, in particular with machine learning and related technology.

The Defense Security Service and Defense Information Systems Agency awarded the 24-month OTA, which covers improvements to National Background Investigation Services information technology.

Perspecta will help DSS — which will eventually be renamed the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency — expedite background investigations, adjudications, continuous vetting and insider-threat programs by creating a Security Enterprise Architecture and Data Services prototype.

When a new employee or transfer needs clearance, the prototype will use machine learning and natural language processing to pull from disparate data sources to fill out form information. Previously a full investigative package was prepared manually and handed over for adjudication.

Keep reading article at: https://www.fedscoop.com/security-clearances-perspecta-enterprise-solutions-ota/

July 11, 2019 By AMK

DISA, DSS award second OTA to build governmentwide security clearance system

Defense officials said Tuesday that they had awarded a $75 million other transaction agreement to build major components of the IT system that will eventually handle all background investigations and security clearance adjudications for federal employees and contractors.

The award went to a team of vendors led by Perspecta, the same large government contractor that won a separate $49 million OTA last year to build another portion of the National Background Investigation System (NBIS).

The new agreement is specifically meant to build the security architecture and data services for NBIS. Officials decided it was needed after lessons learned from the first OTA, which focused primarily on building investigation management tools.

“We’ve had pieces of the NBIS application running at other DoD agency data centers and being built by other partners, independent of this common enterprise architecture,” said Terry Carpenter, the program executive officer for NBIS. “What we’re figuring out is by building out a common data broker, we can get an even greater efficiency. This is a federal-wide service that has to be up 365 days a year, 24 by seven. And to assure that type of robustness, we really wanted to make sure we were taking advantage of the cloud architecture to make sure that the application has those kinds of properties: Self-healing, self-aware, can expand with the demand. And all of those pieces are in this new OTA.”

Keep reading article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/nbib-transfer-to-dod/2019/05/disa-dss-award-second-ota-to-build-governmentwide-security-clearance-system/

A former contractor with the U.S. Air Force recently pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio to illegally taking approximately 2,500 pages of classified documents.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has published a long-awaited rule that made important changes to numerous small business contracting programs and the rules Federal agencies must follow when contracting with small businesses.

In the next three to six months, the IRS plans to issue new solicitations through its experimental contracting vehicle.

Perspecta Enterprise Solutions LLC won a $75 million other transaction agreement on May 14 to continue modernization of the federal security clearance process, in particular with machine learning and related technology.

Defense officials said Tuesday that they had awarded a $75 million other transaction agreement to build major components of the IT system that will eventually handle all background investigations and security clearance adjudications for federal employees and contractors.

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