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Biden Administration Unveils ‘Better Contracting Initiative’
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Biden Administration Unveils ‘Better Contracting Initiative’

The Biden administration has introduced a four-pronged strategy designed to improve the performance of federal contracts and save the government more than $10 billion annually.

The Better Contracting Initiative, or BCI, directs the Office of Management and Budget to create a centralized data management framework for sharing product prices and other market intelligence and supply chain data, the White House announced in a statement on Wednesday.

OMB is expected to publish a guide in the coming months for high priority acquisition requirements. The agency will also conduct workshops to identify and rank the needs of procurement, IT, supply chain and other branches in government offices.

Under the BCI, the General Services Administration will be authorized to lead the negotiation of IT software licensing agreements to help control price variance. GSA will also sponsor acquisition workshops and cooperate with other departments’ procurement teams to deliver similar training.

The White House noted that the initiative will foster competitive equality by giving buyers options for considering small business set-aside contracts.

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DOD CIO Eyes DevSecOps Guidance Update; Rob Vietmeyer, Aaron Weis Quoted
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DOD CIO Eyes DevSecOps Guidance Update; Rob Vietmeyer, Aaron Weis Quoted

The Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer is considering an update to DOD’s DevSecOps guidance in light of recent cyber attacks, The Cyber Edge reported Wednesday.

“We published more than a year ago some DevSecOps guidance where we identified a set of required and preferred activities for what should be incorporated in the DevSecOps pipeline,” Rob Vietmeyer, chief software officer for the deputy CIO for information enterprise within the Office of the DOD CIO, said during a panel discussion at a Honolulu conference this week.

“We’re now re-looking at that given the some of these attacks and trying to update our guidance to help people navigate through some of these mechanisms because it is a complex environment right now,” he added.

Aaron Weis, managing director of Google Public Sector and a four-time Wash100 awardee, joined Vietmeyer during the panel discussion, citing the limitations of the risk management framework when it comes to addressing cyberthreats.

“RMF is proof positive of why this kind of mindset shift, in terms of left of boom, intercepting these bad code injections into a pipeline are so critical. And it’s never going to be addressed through RMF, right? There’s no amount of spreadsheets and checklists that are going to overtake the dynamic nature of the problem that we’re trying to solve for,” said Weis, who is also former CIO of the Department of the Navy.

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Guidehouse Books FBI Contract for IT Support; John Saad Quoted
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Guidehouse Books FBI Contract for IT Support; John Saad Quoted

Guidehouse has been selected to provide the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of Chief Information Officer with information technology services.

Under a five-year contract, Guidehouse will assist the office with various IT operations, processes and systems, the McLean, Virginia-based consulting firm announced on Thursday.

“Guidehouse looks forward to continuing our partnership with the FBI and expanding our support to the OCIO and its important role in the organization,” said John Saad, partner and defense and security segment leader at the company.

For more than 17 years, Guidehouse has worked with the bureau in a wide variety of areas, including cybersecurity, data governance and data analytics, among multiple others.

“Our team will continue to bring IT thought leadership, leading practices and consultants that are passionate about the FBI’s public safety mission,” Saad added.

Guidehouse’s contracting responsibilities include implementing IT resources that are customer-centric, boosting operational agility and improving business functions while setting up FBI technology for the future. The company will also help secure, assess and maintain the agency’s cybersecurity program and IT systems to promote public trust in the organization.

In support of FBI transformation goals, Guidehouse will oversee strategic IT roadmaps, tackle agency-wide IT challenges and define enterprise technology standards to drive interoperability of enterprise services.

This contract follows the firm’s win of an $89.9 million U.S. Army award for financial operations modernization. Issued in September, the contract aims to improve the Army Working Capital Fund’s audit readiness.

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DISA Exceeds Small Business & HUBZone Contract Award Goals for FY 2023
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DISA Exceeds Small Business & HUBZone Contract Award Goals for FY 2023

The Defense Information Systems Agency exceeded its goal to award 25 percent of contracts to small businesses in fiscal year 2023.

DISA announced Monday that it granted $1.86 billion in contracts directly to SBEs, representing 29.25 percent of its contract awards for the period.

The agency highlighted its record-setting sum awarded to historically underutilized business zone, or HUBZone companies, which reached $283 million or 4.4 percent this year.

DISA implemented a “small business first” policy that includes quarterly forecasting of acquisition opportunities with a value greater than or equal to $5 million for the next three years. The agency’s Office of Small Business Programs, or OSBP, also publishes monthly acquisition decisions, new opportunities and comparisons of forecast and actual data on the DISA website.

“Not only are America’s nearly 30 million small businesses the engine of our economy, but they also provide critical goods, services and technologies which actively contribute to the health of the manufacturing and defense industrial base,” said Carlen Capenos, director of OSBP. “DISA supports our small businesses with its ‘Small Business First’ policy and considers each requirement first for small business.”

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Raylene Yung Appointed Chief of Staff at DOE Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations
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Raylene Yung Appointed Chief of Staff at DOE Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations

Raylene Yung, formerly executive director of the General Services Administration’s Technology Modernization Fund Program Management Office, has been appointed chief of staff at the Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.

DOE said Tuesday Yung is among the six new appointees to its senior leadership team to support agency-wide efforts to achieve the Biden administration’s climate and energy goals.

Before joining DOE, Yung oversaw the $1.2 billion TMF initiative that supports the information technology modernization efforts across the federal government and served as co-founder and CEO of the U.S. Digital Response.

The Biden administration also appointed Rafael Cestero as special assistant for advance at the Office of Scheduling and Advance, Rebecca Kasper as chief of staff at the Loan Programs Office, Lila Nojima as attorney-adviser at the Office of the General Counsel, Andrea Piccardo as special assistant to the White House Liaison at the Office of the Secretary and Usha Sahay as chief speechwriter at the Office of Public Affairs.

Two current appointees received promotions: Julius Goldberg-Lewis was named chief of staff at the Office of Technology Transitions and Frances Swanson was assigned special adviser at the Office of the Under Secretary for Infrastructure.

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Monica Bertagnolli Confirmed as NIH Director
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Monica Bertagnolli Confirmed as NIH Director

The Senate on Tuesday voted 62-36 to confirm Monica Bertagnolli, head of the National Cancer Institute, as director of the National Institutes of Health.

In May, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Bertagnolli to serve as NIH director.

Xavier Becerra, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, welcomed the Senate confirmation of Bertagnolli, who will replace Acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak.

Bertagnolli “has built a reputation for her willingness to take on the deadliest diseases facing patients and as a powerful advocate for cancer patients, working to end cancer as we know it. That same tireless energy and clear vision will serve her well as NIH director,” Becerra said in a statement.

Before becoming the 16th NCI director, Bertagnolli was a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

She is a former research fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who served as group chair of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and led gastrointestinal science efforts within the Cooperative Groups Program, which is now called NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network.

Bertagnolli is a past president and board chairman of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The physician-scientist has also served on the boards of the American Cancer Society and the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

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Discover and dialogue on the latest healthcare technology trends at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2023 Healthcare Summit on Dec. 6. Register here to attend this important event.

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NASA Stennis Releases 5-Year Strategic Plan to Prepare for Future Space Missions
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NASA Stennis Releases 5-Year Strategic Plan to Prepare for Future Space Missions

NASA’s Stennis Space Center has unveiled a strategic plan outlining its goals and objectives in key mission areas for the next five years as it seeks to accelerate its space exploration and commercialization efforts.

The NASA Stennis Strategic Plan 2024-2028 lays out the center’s plans for propulsion testing, the federal city business model, autonomous systems design and development, range assets and infrastructure and workforce development, the agency said Monday.

NASA Stennis aims to operate as a multi-user propulsion test enterprise, develop a sustainable and long-term capital improvement plan for the federal city, design intelligent and autonomous systems and services, use its range location and infrastructure to support the testing and operation of uncrewed systems and prepare and optimize its workforce for the future.

“The new plan is our guide to help make sure we are aligning ourselves with the NASA mission and the needs of our commercial partners,” said Duane Armstrong, manager of the NASA Stennis Strategic Business Development Office.

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GSA & CIO Council Unveil Cloud Operations Guidance for Federal Agencies
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GSA & CIO Council Unveil Cloud Operations Guidance for Federal Agencies

The CIO Council’s Enterprise Operations Committee and the General Services Administration’s IT Modernization Division have released new guidance to help federal agencies manage and optimize their cloud operations.

The Cloud Operations Best Practices and Resource Guide outlines four key components of cloud operations, which are leadership, business management, security and platform engineering, and clarifies the differences between traditional IT and cloud operations.

“The overarching theme of this guide is that cloud operations fundamentally differ from traditional IT operations. This difference emerges in virtually every aspect of IT operations, including strategy, planning, budgeting, governance, monitoring, provisioning, and more,” the guidance reads.

Eighty-two subject matter experts across 31 federal agencies shared their best practices and insights for purchasing cloud services, migrating applications and managing IT investments.

The guidance also includes insights on improving cloud operations from the members of the Cloud and Infrastructure Community of Practice working group.

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AARO Shakes Up Executive Team With 2 New Leadership Changes; Kathleen Hicks Quoted
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AARO Shakes Up Executive Team With 2 New Leadership Changes; Kathleen Hicks Quoted

The U.S. Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office has made two major leadership changes.

These moves include the selection of Timothy Phillips as the office’s deputy director and the upcoming retirement of Sean Kirkpatrick, who serves as director of AARO, the DOD said on Wednesday.

Phillips has been a member of the Senior National Intelligence Service for nearly two decades and holds a strong track record of geospatial intelligence collection and mission management. His experience will support AARO efforts to identify, characterize and resolve unidentified anomalous phenomena.

Kirkpatrick shared his intent to step down from his current role in December in an interview with Politico published on Tuesday. The DOD officially confirmed his retirement in a statement by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks hours before Phillips’ appointment was announced.

Hicks, a three-time recipient of the Wash100 Award, noted Kirkpatrick’s “distinguished 27-year career of public services” within the DOD and Intelligence Community. During his time with AARO, she said, Kirkpatrick “served the American people with honesty and integrity, tackling an incredibly difficult mission to explain the unknown.”

One aspect of Kirkpatrick’s career that Hicks highlighted is his “commitment to transparency with the United States Congress and the American public on UAP.”

She cited his launch of the office’s public-facing website as an example and noted Kirkpatrick’s establishment of the office and its operations, assessment of hundreds of UAP cases and leadership in an exhaustive search for UAP-related government and contractor programs as other key contributions.

“Our department is stronger and better prepared for future scientific and national security challenges because of Sean’s distinguished service to our country,” she said.

DHS, CISA, FEMA Jointly Launch Critical Infrastructure Resilience Campaign
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DHS, CISA, FEMA Jointly Launch Critical Infrastructure Resilience Campaign

The Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are collaborating for a campaign to strengthen the resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure.

The Shields Ready campaign is a follow-up to Shields Up, and aims to provide resources and tools to help hospitals, utilities and other critical infrastructure entities respond and recover from operational disruption, DHS announced Tuesday.

CISA previously launched Shields Up to urge the sector’s stakeholders to develop time-sensitive risk management measures in preparation for cybersecurity-specific threat intelligence.

Shields Ready is designed in likeness to FEMA’s Ready initiative for disaster response. It includes guidance on identifying an infrastructure organization’s dependencies and risks, making actionable plans and developing metrics for continuous improvement strategies. More information is found on the campaign’s page on CISA’s website.

“In coordination with FEMA’s own Ready campaign, this new approach will help us encourage critical infrastructure stakeholders to practice preparedness and build a more resilient nation by creating plans to protect people and communities alike against hazardous events,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell remarked.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and CISA Director Jen Easterly, who are both Wash100 inductees, expressed similar sentiments, saying the project prepares individuals and communities for present and future threats and challenges in national infrastructure.

DHS and CISA will be among the participants at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2023 Homeland Security Summit on Nov. 15. Click here to register for the event.

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