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Government Contracting Landscape Shifts As Task Orders Rise

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Government contractors need to prepare not only for a more austere future for government spending, but also adapt to a shifting landscape that is favoring task orders over traditional acquisition contracts, a leading government forecasting group said today.

Among the forces reshaping that landscape are agency efforts to accelerate the delivery of technology and other projects. One way they’re doing that is by breaking projects into smaller, more modular chunks. That has resulted in a growing use of task orders, said Kevin Plexico, senior vice president for research and analysis services at Deltek, speaking at Deltek’s FedFocus 2012 forum today. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 3, 2011 at 5:12 PM
Technology

FedFocus 2012 – Key Issues And Opportunities For 2012

Source: Deltek

The Quicksand of Super Committee Politics

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The Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (a.k.a. Super Committee) is struggling to reach agreement on a minimum of $1.2 trillion of deficit reductions over ten years.

Finding an average of $120 billion per year with $3.6 trillion in annual spending might seem easy from the outside. In an election year, however, a vote to increase taxes or reduce a government program can become political quicksand sinking reelection bids. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 3, 2011 at 1:18 PM

Feds@Work: VA Analyst’s Efforts Help Health Data Access Effort

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Veterans, Medicare recipients and military health care beneficiaries today can download digital files of their available personal health data on a computer, smartphone or flash drive, providing them with instant access to critical information and promoting personal management of their own health care.

This groundbreaking development is possible because of additions to three government websites, all now containing a “Blue Button” icon that allows individual users to login, view, print and save copies of their available personal health information, some of which is extracted from organizational health records. More than 250,000 people had downloaded their health information through the fledgling Blue Button initiative by the spring of 2011, but there is a potential for millions of people to use the system. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 3, 2011 at 10:03 AM

Senate Plan to Save Postal Service Includes Layoffs

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A new Senate plan emerged Wednesday to save the U.S. Postal Service from going belly up and keep Saturday delivery service for at least two years, but it also includes laying off 100,000 workers to balance its budget.

The proposal would keep the agency “from the brink of bankruptcy,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. But it still contains a number of painful fixes for the 200-year-old institution that is more than $9 billion in debt. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 2, 2011 at 3:30 PM

Cain Claims U.S. Tech Demand Key To Economic Growth

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Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain made only indirect references to recent sexual harassment allegations but addressed a slew of other topics — from his famed tax plan to technology’s role in economic growth — at a speaking engagement in Northern Virginia on Wednesday.

Cain received a warm welcome and several bouts of laughter and applause in a ballroom full of Northern Virginia Technology Council members at the Ritz-Carlton in McLean, Virginia. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 2, 2011 at 2:50 PM

Information Aficionados Lament The Demise Of U.S. Statistical Abstract

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Since 1878, the Statistical Abstract of the United States has been printed by the Government Printing Office on behalf of the Census Bureau.

The “Stat Abstract” is considered “the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. It compiles data from multiple sources, including the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other federal agencies and private organizations. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 2, 2011 at 9:55 AM

In Praise Of The SAFE Data Act Bill

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COMMENTARY:
Despite what seems to be a political deadlock and an endless election cycle, some folks in Washington are indeed trying to accomplish a few items – and potentially for the better as it pertains to concerns about cybersecurity.

Data breaches ranging from Stuxnet to PlayStation have reached most constituents and even their living rooms in some cases. This rash of high level and public data breaches has helped Congress move forward the SAFE Data Act. The proposed bill would establish security and data breach notification standards for organizations that collect private information from consumers and deserves more than casual attention. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 2, 2011 at 7:56 AM

Feds@Work: IRS Employee Eases Student Aid Process

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When applying to college, students and their parents traditionally have worried about grades, aptitude test scores and application essays. And then there’s the complex financial aid process that requires the submission of detailed tax information.

Supplying the tax data, in fact, has long proven to be a huge headache for many families, and in some cases it’s a major barrier. But thanks to Julie Rushin of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), millions of students and their families are now benefiting from a new user-friendly system that takes away that worry about the tax information. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 1, 2011 at 3:35 PM

First Android Device Certified For Pentagon Personnel

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Due to the government’s growing interest in providing mobile devices to civilian and military personnel, the Defense Information Systems Agency has certified its first secure mobile device running on the Android operating system.

Defense Systems has reported the Dell Streak 5 smart phone/small tablet computer is the first handheld device using the Android 2.2 operating system to be certified for use in the Defense Department’s secure but unclassified communications, said John Marinho, director of Dell enterprise mobility solutions. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 1, 2011 at 2:00 PM
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