Category: IT Security & Solutions

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HSPD-12 A Look Back and Peek to the Future

(This blog post is part of a multi-week series reviewing data and trends from GSA’s IT acquisition vehicles for FY15. Read previous posts at http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/technology/)

The USAccess Homeland Security Presidential Directive # 12 (HSPD-12) shared service is a comprehensive offering available to federal agencies to issue and maintain (PIV) cards, using a nationwide enrollment-activation infrastructure and high-availability hosted data centers, linked to federal agency data systems and commercial and government PKI certificate authorities, as well as physical card production facilities.

Fiscal Year 2015 was an exciting year for our USAccess Managed Service Office (MSO). The program finished the year in a strong position, while increasing the quality of services and value add being provided to customer agencies. USAccess continued the pattern of helping micro to medium-sized agencies improve each customer agency security posture by deploying Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Cards for employees and contractors.

Fiscal Year 2015 results

  • Addition of six new agency customers
  • Growth of 60,000 new cardholders
  • Demonstrated business vitality and being a good steward of taxpayer funding

As part of the National Cybersecurity Strategy and Implementation Plan (CSIP) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) cyber sprint push to improve federal agency physical and logical security – the MSO provided customer agencies accelerated deployment of fixed enrollment/activation stations and light activation kits. The net result to agency clients included:

  • Enabling more coverage for PIV card issuance particularly to remote sites
  • Increasing PIV compliance government-wide

As part of its effort to improve card delivery times and broaden its service offering the MSO worked with the Department of Commerce, US Census Bureau to augment mobile and fixed sites nationwide with “Local Printing” capability. The net end results:

  • A sponsored applicant now can enroll and receive an activated card in one site visit to a credentialing center.
  • Increased scalability of some 10,000% and reduced time to deliver for a PIV card from 3-5 days to real-time
  • Census typically averaged 75 applicants over three days. With the deployment of the new equipment, Census was able to enroll and provide a PIV card to 780 applicants over the same three-day period.

Quick look ahead

USAccess is committed to its agency community in finding new unique ways to deliver credentialing capability. The MSO has its eye to the horizon. Exploiting new:

  • Lightweight physical technology to collect applicant enrollment data
  • Cloud technology to deliver application hosting and support for PIV credentialing from anywhere, anytime and on any device
  • Logical technology that would enhance virtual credentialing, authorization and authentication, to include next-generation biotechnology, voice, fingerprinting, etc.

These are all long-term aims. Over time, this cutting-edge leadership, partnership development, and entrepreneurial spirit will open new markets for GSA to support, ensure a higher level of security posture for federal agencies, and help to keep costs to a minimum.

Remember to follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join the conversation.

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Improving Government Cybersecurity

(This blog post is part of a multi-week series reviewing data and trends from GSA’s IT acquisition vehicles for FY15. Read previous posts at http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/technology/)

As many are aware, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is putting in place tactical and strategic cybersecurity measures in response to threats and events including the recent Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breach. The General Services Administration (GSA) Office of Integrated Technology Services (ITS) is active in this response. In FY15, GSA ITS continued to support government efforts to improve cybersecurity by developing and improving upon the following initiatives:

Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM)

This initiative supports the IT Security Category Management Plan to establish a Supply Chain Risk Management capability to:

  • Develop FAS ITS Cybersecurity SCRM guidance and controls;
  • Conduct contract reviews of IT Schedule 70 vendors;
  • Manage incidents within FAS ITS contracts;
  • Establish and maintain contact with both internal GSA stakeholders and external agencies on cyber incidents; and
  • Maintain awareness of government-wide supply chain policy/trends.

The implementation of a SCRM capability will give customers confidence that our IT products come from original equipment manufacturers, their authorized resellers, or other “trusted” sources. A policy of buying IT products from trusted sources supports a customer’s ability to strengthen their IT security posture.

Cybersecurity Strategy and Implementation Plan (CSIP)

The CSIP directs GSA, in coordination with OMB and DHS, to research contract vehicle options and develop a capability to deploy incident response services that can quickly be leveraged by federal agencies, on a reimbursable basis. ITS is currently working across GSA and with OMB and DHS to do this in accordance with the timeline established by OMB.

Cybersecurity and Information Assurance (CyberIA) Project

As part of the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Category Management Initiative, the Office of Integrated Technology Services (ITS) initiated the Cybersecurity/Information Assurance (CyberIA) Project. The scope of the project is to categorize CyberIA products and services based on the NIST “Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity”, which aligns with Executive Order (EO) 13636 “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity” and OMB M-16-04 “Cybersecurity Strategy and Implementation Plan (CSIP) for the Federal Civilian Government”. It will also allow federal agencies to more easily identify CyberIA products and services, and offer better access to support market research, acquisition planning, and category management.

US Access

GSA’s USAccess program supports improving government cybersecurity by providing over 100 civilian agencies with credentialing solutions: a vital nationwide, economical, secure, shared service facilitating identity credential issuance, maintenance, and lifecycle management. These identity credentials are used to control access to federal information and facilities. The program currently manages over 600,000 active credentials and has been able to significantly reduce the cost of credentialing for customer agencies of all sizes through the shared service platform.

Federal Public-Key Infrastructure (FPKI)

The Federal Public-Key Infrastructure Management Authority (FPKIMA) enables the best and most cost-effective identity management practices for secure physical and logical access, document sharing and communication across the federal government and with the private sector. The FPKIMA enables agencies to achieve their e-government and identity management goals. The FPKI Trust Infrastructure has helped agencies reduce document handling, shipping, and processing costs as well as reducing network intrusions. In addition, the Trust Infrastructure enables interoperability between the over 5 million issued HSPD-12 credentials and other industry approved digital certificates.

Alliant 2 and Alliant 2 Small Business Cyber Security Requirements

GSA has baked in minimum-security standards for select contractor systems, the handling of government sensitive data and information technology, contractor security clearances, and homeland security in our GWACs at the contract level. At the task order level, contractors must comply with all GSA IT Security Policies, all applicable GSA and NIST standards and guidelines, and other government-wide laws and regulations for protection and security of information technology, e.g., Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002.

Network Services

Cybersecurity has always been a key aspect of GSA’s Network Services Programs, and we’re stepping it up in the Network Services 2020 era. Today, Networx includes baseline standards and security services, such as the Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Service (MTIPS) that currently provides Trusted Internet Connections-compliant managed security services to over 60 agencies.

Tomorrow, NS2020 will enable interoperability and further the migration from legacy technologies to a converged IP environment, ensuring cybersecurity is built in and inherently part of the government’s telecom infrastructure. Programs in the portfolio will specify cybersecurity requirements and include an even broader range of pre-defined, flexible security services.

For the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions acquisition, we worked closely with DHS and ensured state of the art cybersecurity measures are applied to all applicable services. In addition to provisions to facilitate the implementation of EINSTEIN 3A for all agencies, EIS contains MTIPS, a range of Managed Protection Services, and Intrusion Prevention Services. And cybersecurity considerations appear throughout the NS2020 portfolio. For example, the recently launched Mobility 2.0 initiative will encompass managed mobility, including Mobile Device Management and Mobile Application Management, both critical aspects of mobile security.

Moving Forward

ITS is committed to help government as a whole improve cybersecurity. We stand ready to work with agencies to explore ways our IT solutions can help reduce costs, minimize duplications and redundancies, and save money. Our job is to help support you to focus on your missions while maintaining quality and reducing costs.

And remember to follow us on Twitter@GSA_ITS to join the conversation.

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FY 2015 Year-End Data Gives Insights to Government IT Needs and Trends

(This blog post is part of a multi-week series reviewing data and trends from GSA’s IT acquisition vehicles for FY15.)

What do you do at the start of a new year?

You make New Year resolutions and look back at the previous fiscal or calendar year and see what transpired and what insights you can gain.

I did this last January with my first Annual Year-End Blog series about FY14 trends in government IT buying.

Again this year I’ll run a series of blog posts here over the next few weeks. This time we’ll take a look at Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15) purchasing trends and activity in different IT areas such as cyber, wireless services, commodities from IT Schedule 70, satellite services, network services and more.

We’ll also look at what happened in FY15 with category management and the Acquisition Gateway initiatives having a big impact on government buying.

Understanding Buying Patterns and Trends

Being the largest IT acquisition organization in the federal government, it is our responsibility to create an environment where agencies and industry can obtain the necessary information to understand buying patterns, trends, and best practices.

We work closely with CIOs, CFOs, and CAOs across government to understand current and future requirements, and connect agencies with better industry solutions.

As we look at buying patterns and trends and talk to officials across government, clearly these continue to be the top priorities:

  • Find mission-enhancing technologies with solutions that will expand and contract as needed and serve multiple purposes, without technology investments becoming outdated and stale.
  • Spend U.S. taxpayer dollars wisely, realize IT cost savings and acquisition efficiencies, and meet our service goals to the American people.
  • Enhance cybersecurity and ensure it is integrated into all IT components.

GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth’s vision for GSA includes goals to be an economic catalyst, proactive federal partner and succeeding in operational excellence. ITS embodies this vision and we are proud to play a role in helping agencies buy smarter, faster, and for greater value.

Stay Tuned for Closer Looks at Each IT Area

IT investments made by government in FY15 give us the latest chapter in the story, including what technologies are important to government as a whole to support the government’s missions.

The data we’re using is based on activity and trends on GSA’s IT contracts. The data gives an idea of our aggregated IT priorities and trends in FY15, and what might be coming next.

Check back here often over the coming weeks as we look back at the insights we can gain from the FY15.

Also, follow and engage us on Twitter @ GSA_ITS.

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IT on the Acquisition Gateway

You’ll recall my April post discussing Category Management and FAS’s launch of the Acquisition Gateway, a space for acquisition professionals to  learn, connect, and act upon acquisition information, expertise, and advice. It will serve as an important tool to support and improve how the federal community acquires products and services.

When I wrote that post, ITS had successfully launched the IT Hardware and IT Software category hallways. We’ve since launched three more:

  • Telecommunications,
  • IT Services, and
  • IT Security.

Now the Acquisition Gateway has 17 category hallways, all of which fall into one of the 10 civilian-centric categories, which account for 80 percent of total federal spend.

With collaboration and support from our partner agencies, our IT category managers have collected pricing tools and information, guides, best practices, and expert articles that will help acquisition professionals make more efficient IT procurements.

Agile development process

The Acquisition Gateway is based on an agile development process, where software developers prototype early and iterate often, continuously focusing on end-users and the tasks they need to accomplish.

In this case, the development team involves all end-users in a transparent and collaborative development process. Success requires constant collaboration and a continuous process of incorporating user feedback, including customer-contributed expertise and content.

If you’ve visited the Acquisition Gateway in the past few months, you may have noticed new system changes and enhanced services, including:

  • Revamped Homepage – more easily accessible sections
  • Solutions Finder – revamped the solutions matrix to make searching governmentwide-available solutions easier
  • Communities – a place to connect with acquisition professionals and share knowledge
  • Project Center where users can build an acquisition, complete with project details
  • eBuy Open – an interactive web application that displays eBuy RFQ information to users and provides several filtering and search options, which enables users to quickly drill down to desired information
  • TechFAR Hub – a community of practice open to all federal government employees with an interest in successful acquisitions. The TechFAR Hub and the Gateway share the common goals of saving taxpayer dollars, making acquisition more efficient, and improving service to customers inside government and out
  • Prices Paid Portal – an interactive web application that provides users access to selected data sets which can be searched, filtered, and exported
  • Shared Services – A hub to help federal departments and agencies find and leverage existing solutions rather than build new ones

Acquisition professionals and IT experts like you made these enhancements possible.

Over time, category hallways will capture the expertise of users, category managers, and industry experts and will become a more powerful and effective tool as users from across government share content, contract solutions, data, and industry expertise. Currently, only federal government users have access to the Acquisition Gateway.

However, because transparency is important, GSA is creating a public view of the Acquisition Gateway planned for early FY16. The Public view will be available to stakeholders such as industry, state and local government, and citizens.

When it comes to IT acquisition, having a single place to gather market research, connect with experts, and complete data-driven acquisition confidently and efficiently is invaluable. The Acquisition Gateway enables more efficient procurements by leveraging contract intelligence and spending data to facilitate smarter purchasing.  

We are looking forward to implementing the following enhancements soon:

  • Launch a Statement of Work (SOW) library across multiple categories (currently resides in the Professional Services category hallway)
  • Integration of Advantage Select which establishes FAR compliant, pre-competed, “click-and-pay”, contractual vehicles that any Government buyer can use. Advantage Select will enable more competition, more often, on the most commonly purchased commodity items, and then showcases and gives transparency of these products and pricing to the entire Government acquisition/contracting enterprise for the ultimate experience in low cost, streamlined purchasing.  

Get Started

To continue building on what we’ve already accomplished together over the past year, please go to the Acquisition Gateway and share your feedback with us. We need acquisition experts in all government agencies to share their knowledge.

So how can you start?

  • Sign up for an OMB Max account and login to the Acquisition Gateway
  • Tell your co-workers
  • Share your best practices, templates, and expertise
  • Participate in the communities
  • Share your prices paid / transactional data
  • Provide information on acquisition solutions
  • Join us for usability testing to help drive new features. If you are interested in participating in Acquisition Gateway usability testing, please contact Kelly Robinson at kelly.robinson@gsa.gov

For more information or to get involved, please email natasha.sheehan@gsa.gov. Follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join GSA’s ITS’s overall acquisition conversations.

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IT Acquisition Best Practices & Dispelling Myths

In June, I read a great open letter from Susan M. Gordon, Deputy Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, that explained how to make sure we’re doing the best we can to get technology and related services to help us meet our missions.

This blog post is an open letter follow-up with seven best practices for agencies acquiring mission enhancing IT solutions such as software, hardware, telecommunications, cybersecurity, cloud, satellite, mobile, and other IT. These tips should help dispel some common myths.

  1. Make Market Research Personal – Don’t assume market research on paper and the Internet gives you the full picture. You’ll need to talk to experts each time you need an acquisition. Talk to industry, other agencies with similar requirements, and GSA. We administer many government-wide shared IT acquisition contracts. Check out the government’s open and independent resource – the Government Acquisition Gateway and hallways – as a starting point. You’ll find white papers, best practices, potential and existing contracts from GSA and other sources, and community discussion groups where you can ask questions and talk with other agencies.
  2. Always Talk to GSA – Each time you need IT, talk to us about pre-established contracts that might work well for you. It won’t take a lot of time to talk to us – we can use video conferencing or visit you in person. Contact a GSA Customer Service Director in your area to schedule a meeting. In addition to contract vehicles, GSA may be able to share an agency contact with you that recently addressed the same challenges and perhaps developed a best practice in the process. Even if you don’t have a live requirement at the moment, using GSA as a resource for strategic ongoing market research will make for better, well-educated, future buying decisions.
  3. Let Go of Preconceived Judgments – Some people have predetermined notions of many of the pre-established contracts. Letting go of preconceived judgments opens the door to finding the best solutions. For example, you may be surprised to learn how much control you have while using pre-established vehicles, and you may be amazed to find you can often and easily obtain lower pricing through additional negotiations than published, list prices.
  4. Know that Things Change – Don’t think that the government-wide contract you or your contractor checked a year ago is still the same. GSA and other agencies continuously refresh shared contracts and make them more user-centric every day. We’re talking more to government and industry. We constantly seek input on what agencies need today and what industry can offer. We are evolving contracts to meet those needs. For example, this year we’ve added a Cloud SIN to IT Schedule 70 to help agencies find their best cloud solutions easier than ever before. Even though a contract didn’t meet every need in the past doesn’t mean today’s options won’t be your best choices. The GSA of today is not the GSA of yesterday.
  5. Dig Further – If you have an industry partner working with you on market research and acquisition planning who recommends you go open source rather than use an existing contract, do you stop there? As a best practice, don’t. Keep in mind that in-house advisors have more involvement and financial benefit in doing steps required for open-source acquisitions, while pre-established contracts have those steps already completed. For example, if you have a contractor doing market research who recommends going open market for commercial satellite services, consider instead that GSA’s Custom SATCOM (CS2) and CS2-SB contracts have vetted partners and solutions without the overhead and cost of creating an entirely new contract. And remember to evaluate advisor recommendations to ensure they don’t steer toward a specific contract because they’re on it.
  6. Look for Efficiencies – Agencies who use existing contract vehicles with the IDIQ Fair Opportunity process or Multiple Award Contract/Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs) save months in acquisition lead time. Why? Because many of the initial steps and approvals required to establish a full stand-alone procurement action, including pre-qualifying industry partners,  have already been done for you. Having to find and qualify contractors can add six months or more to the procurement process.
  7. Lower Agency and Taxpayer Costs – Government-wide contracts can achieve cost savings because multiple agencies are already using them, increasing volume buying from government to industry partners and driving competition to lower costs. I did a recent blog post, for example, about the FSSI Wireless BPAs and how they’re saving agencies on average 27% over what they had been spending on wireless services and devices. Start at the published contract pricing, but always request discounts and lower pricing. Whether you get discounts in initial years or option years, your actual cost will be lower than the initial cost evaluation.

The ultimate motivator and driver for all of us in public service isn’t what we perceive or think is best, but what we find after due diligence is really best for our missions and the American taxpayers.

If you chose not to use GSA for an IT acquisition, it’s ok. But a fresh conversation with GSA should always be part of the equation.

Please follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join the conversation.

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Connecting with ITS

If  you’re a regular reader of the ITS blog, you already know that we provide the government IT and acquisition communities with private-sector solutions for everything from simple IT commodities to complex infrastructure and emerging technology. Now, we’ve made it even easier for government buyers and our industry partners to get the information they need, whether it’s acquisition assistance or information about the latest telecommunications and technology initiatives: just visit gsa.gov/technology to connect with us.

gsa.gov/itshelp also provides access to statement of work (SOW) templates, ordering guides, ordering systems and the other tools government buyers need to get the job done, including the IT Solutions Navigator, a self guided decision tool that can point you to the contract vehicle that best meets your IT needs.

Check out what’s new  — The Acquisition Gateway

Among the challenges facing acquisition professionals when purchasing products and services is understanding how individual submarkets approach pricing and offerings, and what contracts already exist government wide to support acquisition of these services.

To address this need, GSA has turned to category management to reinvent acquisition, a tactic already used to help many Fortune 500 companies buy smarter. Work is now underway to develop the new Common Acquisition Platform (CAP), which will provide access and insights into transactional data from across government and help guide buyers through every step of the full acquisition process to include shared best practices from industry experts and thought leaders alike. CAP will also reduce the need for maintaining redundant and duplicative acquisition vehicles, systems and tools.

GSA has also launched the Acquisition Gateway, a space for acquisition professionals to  learn, connect, and act upon acquisition information, expertise, and advice.  Content on the Acquisition Gateway is divided into product and service category hallways and resources.

The IT category already has two active hallways, IT Hardware and IT Software, providing pricing tools and information, sample SOWs, best practices, and expert articles relative to that specific category for contract solutions across government. The Acquisition Gateway will be an important tool in supporting and improving how the federal community acquires IT.

By May 2015, additional hallways will be launched for Telecommunications, IT Security, IT Consulting, and IT Outsourcing, in addition to other categories outside of IT.

This is an exciting time to be a part of IT acquisition and I’ll have much more to discuss in June, but in the meantime, I recommend all government employees access the Acquisition Gateway.  Check back often as this is an agile platform that is expected to grow as its user base increases and becomes more collaborative.

Resolving Your Issues

Our goal is to resolve your issues within 48 hours and, even though federal acquisition can get complex, we’re doing quite well.

ITS FY15 Case Origin – How Customers /Vendors Reach Out to NCSC Number of FY15 Cases (Issues / Inquiries) Average Case Resolution Time Percentage of Cases Closed Within 48 Hours
Phone 693 36 Hours 85%
E-mail Inquiry 405 42 Hours 82%
Live Chat 244 34 Hours 87%
FY15 Total 1,342 38 Hours 84%

 

Stay Tuned

Getting updates on gsa.gov pages is an easy way for agencies and Industry to stay up to date on contract and program features, innovations, and changes.

For example, when GSA updates the free downloadable SOW templates on our website, you can receive an alert to let you they’re available.

You can subscribe to updates for a wide range of topics, including Technology and Telecommunications, Schedule 70, and Cloud IT Services. Just go to Get Updates, enter your email address, select your interests, set any preferences you prefer (including how often you’d like to receive alerts), and you’re ready to go. It’s that simple.  Of course, we’ll continue to share news “as it happens” on this blog.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join GSA’s IT acquisition conversation.

We Value Your Feedback

Our goal is simple: provide the support agency buyers and Industry partners need. Receiving feedback at every stage of the journey is critical to continuous improvement, driving value, and outstanding customer service. GSA already reaches out to agencies and vendors when we’re shaping specific programs, receives continuous feedback from customer and industry groups, and looks at our impact through our customer and vendor satisfaction surveys. You can find “Rate This Page”on the bottom right of our IT webpages.

Please help us to help you meet your IT acquisition needs by using the “Rate This Page” tool to fill out this form. It will just take a few seconds, but the information you provide about what’s working well and what’s not is invaluable.

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GSA Solutions to Help Federal Agencies Comply with White House Cybersecurity Mandates

The government faces cyber attacks daily and we’re all sensitive to the importance of securing government information. To ensure our data is protected, there are long standing and recent federal mandates and guidelines in place to secure federal information systems. As quickly as the cybersecurity space changes, it can be challenging to keep current and stay protected.

At GSA, we offer a suite of cybersecurity products, services and solutions to help agencies comply with mandates and enhance security of our federal systems.

Below is a video from GSA’s Center for Strategic Solutions and Security Services, featuring Acting Director Shon Lyublanovits. In the video, Shon provides an overview of the current White House initiatives as well as GSA solutions that help federal agencies comply with cybersecurity mandates.

View the video on YouTube: http://youtu.be/KQXES4BwYf4

Please follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join the conversation.

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USAccess HSPD-12 Update

(This blog post is part of a multi-week series reviewing data and trends from GSA’s IT acquisition vehicles for FY14. Read previous posts at  http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/technology/)

GSA is the second largest issuer of Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials in the federal government. The credential you are carrying every day may well be issued by GSA’s USAccess program.

Since 2008, our program has issued almost 900,000 credentials to more than 100 federal agencies. In 2014, we focused on two specific improvements that will improve customer service:

  • Reducing the wait for delivery and activation of PIV cards
  • Enhancing security and personnel management

Reducing wait time

PIV cards are critical for agencies to protect and secure data and locations. Many contractors and employees cannot function without access to the buildings and systems that the PIV cards allow. Because of that, customers have wanted us to shorten the waiting time for delivery and activation.

Since the beginning of our program, the average wait time was 10-14 days. We worked with our shipping partner through GSA’s FSSI Domestic Delivery Service to reduce the wait time by half: 5 to 7 days. Now we combine a daily batching process for producing the cards, exclusively overnight shipping, and better anomaly tracking, so agency customers now receive finished cards 50% faster than before, with 99.97% accuracy.

Enhancing security and personnel management
GSA partnered with the Census Bureau to build a Local (Distributed) Printing Proof of Concept (POC). This POC will allow Census to decrease wait time and therefore increase security and field office personnel management. By their projection, it will also reduce travel expenditures by several million dollars annually by saving employees extra trips to credentialing centers. The first distributed printing station went into operation at Census’ Suitland headquarters on September 15, to be followed by up to 40 more stations across the United States by early 2015.

Since USAccess is a shared service, this enhanced capability can be offered to other agency customers with a much-reduced development time and cost, using the template and lessons learned from the first deployments. The team’s goal is to deploy distributed printing as a standard practice.

Looking ahead
GSA is developing and deploying even more improvements and enhancements to the USAccess PIV card service. Through customer collaboration groups, we can take on technology challenges like mobile and derived credential solutions, temporary credentials, and new identity verification methods like iris scans. These developments will be carefully designed and tested by the team and its support contractors so when they are fielded, they will enhance and extend the USAccess’s value.

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FY 2014 Year-End IT Purchasing Data Tell Our Stories

This blog post is part of a multi-week series reviewing data and trends from GSA’s IT acquisition vehicles for FY14.

Gain insights into what rocked IT in FY14….

The government’s IT purchases tell a story. Gone are days when IT was in a silo off in the corner. Now, IT is a key part of the mission equation. IT investments made in Fiscal Year 2014 give us the latest chapter in the story of what’s important to government as a whole.

Agencies are feeling pressure to develop mission enhancing technologies. They want solutions that will expand and contract as needed and serve multiple purposes, without technology investments becoming outdated and stale. They look for ways to spend U.S. taxpayer dollars wisely, realize IT cost savings and acquisition efficiencies, and meet our service goals to the American people. And they look to GSA for help.

GSA is proud to play a role in helping agencies buy smarter, faster, and for greater value. We work closely with CIOs, CFOs, and CAOs across government to understand our customers’ current and future requirements. We can also look at fiscal year-end purchasing data to give insights into what rocked our government IT world in the past year.

Stay Tuned for Closer Looks at Each IT Area

Being the largest IT acquisition organization in the federal government, it is our responsibility to create an environment where agencies and industry can obtain the necessary information to understand buying patterns, trends, and best practices. That means even greater transparency beyond our extensive customer and industry outreach efforts.

To that end, I will run a series of blog posts here in the next week or so to take a closer look at FY 2014 purchasing trends and activity in different IT areas such as cyber, wireless services, commodities from IT Schedule 70, satellite services, and more.

The data we’re using is based on activity and trends we see on GSA’s IT contracts. The data not only gives an idea of our aggregated IT priorities and trends in 2014, but what might be coming next. I encourage you to join us and check back often over the coming weeks as we look back at FY14 IT to better understand this recently closed chapter.

And remember to follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join the conversation.

 

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IT Solutions with an Eye towards Speed, Savings, Efficiency

When I meet with agency customers, I hear about the struggles we face to get IT acquisitions done efficiently and smoothly.

Most government agencies–federal, state or local—face similar acquisition problems:

  • How do we acquire IT faster?
  • How can we continue to find savings?
  • Can you make it easier to acquire mission-critical IT solutions?
  • Can you help us meet annual small business goals?
  • Can you help us meet regulations and other mandates?

The expectations are very clear: GSA must offer IT acquisition solutions that will meet agency and federal requirements, and give agencies more for their mission dollars. If agencies can also get their solutions quickly, we’re in the sweet spot of IT acquisition. We want to improve efficiency and speed without sacrificing compliance and quality, which limits the acquisition time, burden, and costs, and prevents missed deadlines and opportunities.

Pre-Competed Contracts Help You Buy Faster From Qualified Companies and Result in Higher Quality Solutions

GSA’s pre-competed contracts are available for government agencies to use and offer acquisition speed with pre-vetted vendors and the ability to quickly add customized requirements if needed.

  • Speed: Data shows pre-competed contracts save time and money compared to open-market acquisitions. Using pre-competed solutions can take months off of an open market acquisition and are perfect for acquisitions that need to be done quickly and efficiently. GSA provides scope reviews, training, templates and a range of acquisition assistance to help you use our contracts and programs most effectively. We’ll also help you look at options that may include other agency contracts to ensure you’re choosing the right solution for your requirement.

  • Breadth of vendors: 4,700 industry partners are on IT Schedule 70 alone offering everything an agency could need, including laptops, tablets, other commodities, and IT Services.

  • Supplier Relationship Management:  GSA’s suppliers are our partners. Our Network Services and GWAC providers work closely with GSA program managers to ensure agency needs are met through our solutions. See gsa.gov/technology for more information.

  • Savings: Governmentwide existing acquisition vehicles, like SmartBUY BPAs and IT Schedule 70, deliver cost savings by leveraging government buying power. SmartBUY saved government agencies about $184 million on software purchases in FY 2014 through the second quarter. We encourage customers to always negotiate additional discounts beyond listed prices.

  • Access to Small Business: 80% of Schedule 70 vendors are small business (SB), allowing set-asides for SB. Our pre-competed GWACs 8(a) STARS II, VETS and Alliant Small Business contracts are targeted solely for small business. GSA’s Reverse Auctions tool also makes it easy to meet small business goals by specifying SB in vendor solicitation criteria. Over 87% of reverse auction vendors selected this year have been small business.

  • Assisted Acquisition Services:  GSA’s Assisted Acquisition Services provides a range of assistance to help you throughout the acquisition process to include awarding and administering task orders on behalf of your agency. AAS staff are certified, contracting, project management and financial management professionals located throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. AAS offers expertise in formulating and executing large, and/or complex Information Technology and Professional Services solution.

E-Tools Help You Be More Efficient

E-tools are another IT acquisition resource that empower customers, giving agencies more knowledge than ever before through the power of transparency and information.

Three comments I hear most often from customers are:

  1. I have IT requirements, but there are so many acquisition choices out there, I’m not sure which one best meets my needs.

  2. I need more data. Accessing prices paid information will help with budgeting, cost estimates, and negotiations.

  3. I’m struggling to structure my acquisition for innovative IT.

Our free e-tools were designed with these comments in mind. Our goal is to help speed up and make IT acquisition more efficient.

GSA’s IT Solutions Navigator helps users see which GSA IT acquisition options fit their unique requirements. Check off your acquisition requirements and IT Solutions Navigator will analyze your specific needs, and instantly tell you which solutions are the best choice(s). You can also chat with a solutions expert right from the Navigator page and/or contact us through phone and email for additional support.

Prices Paid tools speed up cost estimates and help with negotiation and savings. You can use our Prices Paid tool for GWACs and now Wireless BPAs for aggregate pricing information. (It requires a .gov or .mil login.)  Prices-paid pilot programs are underway for Schedules and our commercial satellite program, so stay tuned for when these and other prices-paid e-tools are available.

One more way to speed up acquisitions is to leverage existing IT acquisition templates and assistance. For example, we have Statements of Work and other templates you can use to reduce your upfront time and costs.

At the end of the day, resources are intended to bring results: In cost savings, innovative IT, acquisition efficiencies, small business awards, and regulatory compliance. Leveraging existing capabilities, e-tools and pre-competed contracts puts us closer every time in making wise IT decisions to deliver our missions.

Follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join GSA’s IT acquisition conversation and for help.