General Services Administration

For the fourth straight year, federal IT spending was about even with the prior year’s budget – and it seems very clear that trend will come to an abrupt halt in 2013. The Professional Services Council (PSC) stated the “Addressable IT Budgets” in Fiscal Year 2012 added up to $121.7 billion – a total the Council estimates will drop to $115.5 in FY13, with budgets for IT equipment expected to drop 19% in FY13.

With the so-called “fiscal cliff” looming, the new year began promptly with a deal that largely addressed the tax portion of the so-called “fiscal cliff” equation, but delayed measures addressing the spending portion of the “cliff” that include raising the debt ceiling and sequestration spending cuts. Keep reading →


David McClure calls the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCSIT) “a little sparkplug igniting innovation all across government.”

Indeed, OCSIT’s just-released 2012 annual report, “More for Mission,” serves as a 51-page catalogue for the office’s multi-pronged push for innovation in technology in the federal government. Keep reading →

With the cost of lighting accounting for more than a third of the energy bills at most federal facilities, officials at the General Services Administration know that it will take more than upgrading to newer florescent and LED lighting to make government buildings more energy efficient. It also means finding ways to efficiently install an array of new and smarter technologies.

The stakes, however, are significant. GSA boasts a portfolio of federal buildings that amounts to nearly 10,000 assets. The upshot, though, is that those buildings offer a rich laboratory to evaluate green technologies. Keep reading →

The U.S. General Services Administration announced that a key program for approving shared cloud computing security tools has issued the first approved provisional cloud security authorization to Autonomic Resources LLC.

The authorization comes from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Joint Authorization Board, which is comprised of the chief information officers from GSA and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. Keep reading →

I have been trying out the General Services Administration’s new portal for Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts, or GWACs.

There is a lot of useful information here, but the user experience remains uneven and in my experience, there are available tools that could improve the ability to analyze the data.

The new GSA web site says:

A Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) is a pre-competed, multiple-award, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract that agencies can use to buy total IT solutions.

The GWAC program has taken their data to the next level by creating an interactive tool that allows GWAC stakeholders to view and segment GWAC information to make better decisions.

Users have the ability to:

  • Explore GWAC data by contract family, federal agency, and industry partner
  • Build customized reports and download them to your computer
The GWAC Dashboard is compatible with Internet Explorer 8 and 9 using Flash Player 14.4.X. If you are using any other version, you may experience usability issues.

The Users Guide contains the footnote:

The Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) Dashboards are intended for informational purposes. The data contained within may not be fully accurate.

The contacts page says:

Request for accessible dashboard content may be directed to herman.lyons@gsa.go.

That may be important to some users, since they, like I experienced, may not be able to download the complete data set. That’s what happened to me, so I contacted the GSA contact, but did not get a response so I downloaded each agency separately and merged them into one spreadsheet 19,168 rows and 18 rows. I also created a data dictionary spreadsheet.

Keep reading →

Management and program silos within agencies that so often stymie efforts to integrate information technology and security practices are also hindering efforts to institute smarter risk management strategies at agencies, according to senior government security officials.

“Risk is still being managed at most agencies in a stovepipe manner,” said Department of Energy Chief Information Officer Bob Brese (pictured at left) during a Government Technology Research Alliance conference on government security trends on Monday. Keep reading →

The uncertainty of 2012 has many pondering how to plan their federal Architecture, Engineering and Construction pipeline for the coming year. By getting back to basics, companies can balance trends found in three sources – historic federal spending , budget requests, and what potential opportunities are to be released in the next 12 to 18 months – to develop a business development plan for 2013. Keep reading →

The U.S. General Services Administration announced today the availability of a new online dashboard tracking historical information about Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC), including task-order data. The dashboard is designed to assist federal agencies with spending analysis, evaluation of past GWAC performance, and IT acquisition planning.

“Over the past several years we’ve received feedback from our federal agency customers and our small business partners indicating that they need access to GSA’s GWAC task-order data,” said GSA Federal Acquisition Service Acting Commissioner Mary A. Davie. Keep reading →

Federal leaders for government-wide acquisition and information-sharing initiatives have joined forces with technology suppliers to hammer out a new set of recommendations to identify and use the government’s information sharing standards and requirements.

The goal of the recommendations is to enhance national security, increase efficiency and reduce costs by improving collaboration between government and industry in developing open interoperability standards and incorporating them into commercial products Keep reading →

Procurement is emerging as one of the most significant issues facing federal information technology leaders as the Obama administration begins its second term, a top ranking government IT official said this week.

More and more federal agencies are making the leap to cloud computing, adopting mobile technologies and developing APIs to share information. But agency IT leaders remain hampered from moving faster by contracting constraints that make it hard to make cross-agency buys, said Richard Spires, chief information officer for the Department of Homeland Security and vice chairman of the Federal CIO Council. Keep reading →

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