Tag: Acquisition Excellence

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Small Business GWAC Program

(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/)

Small businesses are the backbone of job growth and constitute a major force in the U.S. economy. They generate a vital portion of our gross domestic product (GDP) and contribute to growth and vitality of economic and socioeconomic development. In particular, small businesses create jobs and spark innovation, which complement the economic activity of large organizations by providing them with products and services that contribute to their bottom line.

Here at GSA, we pride ourselves on helping the government utilize small business. We have multiple acquisition vehicles that connect government to small business. This provides agencies the flexibility to choose the best acquisition vehicle to meet their need. Some of these vehicles reside in our Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC) program.

Small Business (SB) GWACs provide powerful and flexible contracts that support agencies’ complex projects and requirements. These contracts experienced a tremendous amount of growth in FY 2014. Total business volume growth increased by approximately $400M on our three active SB GWACs, comprising 8(a) STARS II, Alliant Small Business, and VETS, from FY13 to FY14; an increase of approximately 19%.

Scope Reviews: Lowering risk and increasing customer support

Part of that increase is due to our complimentary scope reviews for statements of work (SOW). The team works with agencies to help determine whether requirements are within scope of a GWAC within two to five business days. This service reduces the risk of protest.  The Small Business GWAC Pre-award Scope Review Team recently analyzed the pre-award scope review process to see how our contracts are being used.

The number of pre-award scope reviews conducted on our active small business GWAC increased by 12% (253 to 287) from FY13 to FY14.  Across all three of the small business GWACs, IT Support Services is the predominant type of work being considered.

During FY14, GSA conducted 285 reviews and performed those reviews in 1.3 days on average. Retrospectively, the scope review process provides a clear understanding of the requirements, establishes a baseline for proposal evaluation, reduces evaluation and negotiation time, and most importantly minimizes the need for future changes. Understanding the trends of these scopes gives us a better understanding of how to promote small business contracting and satisfy our customers’ needs.

Buying Trends

Some of the most popular uses were for IT Support Services like Help Desk, software maintenance, and system operations.

Small Business GWACs represent 45% of GSA’s total GWAC obligations for FY14.

  • The Alliant Small Business Program experienced a 17% increase in obligations for FY14 compared to FY13.
  • 60 of 80 Alliant small business primes have at least one task order award
  • The 8(a) STARS II GWAC is the follow-on to the very successful 8(a) STARS GWAC.  The contract was awarded August 31, 2011 and resulted in 645 awards in FY14 with over $641 million in obligations.
  • The 8(a) STARS II Program has seen a 41% increase in obligations for FY14 compared to FY13.
  • The Veterans Technology Services (VETS) GWAC has obligations from 16 different federal agency customers.  All contract holders have received task orders totaling over $1 billion in obligations. In FY14, VETS added 14 task orders with $17.1 million in obligations.

Looking Ahead

The future of Small Business GWACs is bright. We’ve seen agencies increase the use of our GWACs to reach their small business goals and meet their IT demands, and we’ve seen businesses grow beyond their small-business designation due to their participation on our program.

This next year is going to be an exciting time for our Small Business GWACs. We’re going to continue to exceed customer expectations by bringing additional value like our complimentary scope reviews and prices paid data. Our flexible vehicles and focus on customer service should help us continue to expand the usage of these vehicles as we look into the future toward our next generation Small Business GWACs.

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

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Schedule 70 in the State and Local Market

(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/)

State and local governments are adopting Schedule 70 at a rapidly growing rate. They have the ability to receive the same benefits that federal agencies receive when using Schedule 70: fast and easy acquisitions and access to a large range of pre-vetted vendors at prices determined to be fair and reasonable.  The program is called the Cooperative Purchasing Program and allows state and local entities to use Schedule 70 and Schedule 84.

State and local: by the numbers

  1. Growth: The usage of Schedule 70 by state and local governments increased almost 30% last year to $846 million in volume. The projected IT spend at the state and local level has increased over the past couple of years, and the growth of usage of Schedule 70 has outpaced that growth.
  2. Outreach: GSA has increased overall focus on outreach and training to state and local governments on the use of Schedules 70 and 84.
  3. Local vendors: An enormous benefit to state and local governments is access to companies in their local communities.  Schedule 70 has thousands of vendors located across the US and many state/local entities encourage local businesses to consider GSA Schedule as an option.  80% of the companies on Schedule 70 are small businesses and GSA can provide support to those companies seeking to obtain a Schedule contract.
  4. Positioned for future growth: for state and local,  growth in spend is occurring in areas such as software, IT services, systems, and IT outsourcing. These are areas that we expect to see continued future growth in state and local markets.

Improving efficiencies in all levels of government

The state and local IT market is valued at over $60 billion. Although the market is significantly more fragmented than the federal market, GSA is ready to help all forms of government become more efficient, spend smarter, and support delivery of services to the citizens. We will continue to work with local governments and vendors in an effort to drive greater value for the taxpayer.

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

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FY 2014 Delivers Enterprise Growth in Wireless

(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/)

As we all know, the explosion in demand for wireless and mobile services is continuing at a pace hard to keep up with. And with that popularity comes government’s continuing need to find ways to exploit those technologies while simultaneously saving money and increasing acquisition and operational efficiencies.

In FY 2014, we saw agencies increasingly turn to GSA’s Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative (FSSI) Wireless Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs). Initially launched in the second half of FY 2013, the BPAs experienced substantial growth in FY 2014, with multiple enterprise level buys (greater than 2,500 units) awarded and task order-level competition yielding very competitive rates and cost savings for most federal users.

Since June 2014, month over month program growth exceeded 30%. Additional awards are anticipated in early FY 2015 increasing agency usage and savings (>20%) for the foreseeable future.

Cost Savings, Choice, and Efficiency

The growing demand of the FSSI Wireless solution is largely due to the >22% cost savings they deliver and the flexible features they offer (including no-charge refreshable devices, open market premium devices, agency-level pooling to reduce overage costs, and adherence to federal policies and administrative priorities). The achieved savings by participating agencies is compared to their prior rates or government-wide average and not list prices.

FSSI Wireless BPA task order competitions have driven rates lower from the award value to rates as low as $42, $40, $38, and $36 per user per month for many common smartphone plans.

This competition lowered the average monthly rate across all federal mobile users to approximately $40 per user. The prior average rate across government based on the contracts we reviewed was nearly $55, which was comprised primarily of devices with limited data capabilities. This means the FSSI Wireless BPAs are producing considerable additional savings for agencies as they deploy devices with a much greater data-intensive footprint.

The BPAs have the added advantage they include government-wide discounts that apply as government-wide usage increases, which adds even greater value.

The more agencies use the BPAs, the greater the current and future cost savings for the government and taxpayers.

Initial savings are through the discounted wireless plan pricing and no-cost devices. Two of the four carriers on contract have committed that the BPA prices are the lowest they offer government buyers.  In addition, agencies can see the published prices on all the BPAs in a single place.

In addition, the pooling option for data and minutes are saving agency dollars by allowing high-volume users to leverage the unused minutes and MBs purchased by lower volume users, further reducing overage costs.

Savings came in acquisition efficiencies too. In the past year, some agencies procured services from the BPAs in as little as 3-5 days.  One agency procured 3500-plus devices in less than two months and indicated they could have executed the order in less time.

Wireless Buying Trends

The most popular data add-on and data-only plans are the 500MB Pooled and Unlimited plans. The most popular voice plans under the BPAs are the 400 Minute Pooled and 100 Minute Pooled plans.

We’re finding agencies default to unlimited when they don’t know what they will use to avoid potential overages. The FSSI wireless contracts offer agencies usage data enabling them to structure the right plan and pooling arrangement that will satisfy individual needs reducing risk of overages.

During 2014, government agencies also took advantage of additional assistance offered by GSA to help manage the mobile component of their IT enterprise by using GSA’s Managed Mobility sources of supply list or the FSSI Wireless BPAs to add mobile management resources they can bundle with wireless service plans.

Overall, 2014 was a successful year for GSA’s wireless and mobile programs.  Building on the FSSI Wireless Program and Managed Mobility Program, we consolidated these solutions and category management approaches under the GSA Enterprise Mobility Program.

Going forward in 2015, we expect wireless BPA usage and savings to continue to grow. Several agencies indicate the BPAs will be their contract vehicle of choice for all future acquisition of wireless services.

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

 

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Alliant GWAC: Exploring Success

(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/)

The GSA Alliant GWAC had an outstanding year helping agencies achieve their mission through a fast, flexible, and safe acquisition vehicle. Agencies obligated  $2.682 billion dollars to Alliant during FY14, marking Alliant as the largest utilized single GWAC in GSA history by dollar value. Alliant is GSA’s premier enterprise GWAC, providing flexible access to customized IT solutions from a large, diverse pool of industry partners. Alliant allows for long-term planning of large-scale, complex program requirements. The success can be attributed to several factors that deserve a closer look.

Alliant FY14 Success Analytics:

Since contract inception, more than 60 agencies have used Alliant and awarded an estimated $18.7 Billion in task order value.  Fourteen agencies used Alliant for the first time in FY14. This steady growth can be attributed to numerous factors. For example, approximately 1200 federal acquisition & program professionals have received the Alliant GWAC Delegation of Procurement (DPA) training to including 229 just in FY14 – an 18% increase in buying power! Lastly during FY14, 85 Statements of Work (SOWs) were submitted for review.

Top Agencies and Vendors:

The top three agencies utilizing Alliant (obligated dollars) are the Department of Homeland Security at $2.74 billion, the Air Force at $2.70 billion, and the Department of State at $2.52 billion. The Army comes in at a close fourth at  $2.24 billion, marking a significant task order increase of 47% between FY13 and FY14.

Currently, SAIC is the dominant vendor with over $1.6 billion in obligations spread across 42 task orders. Booz Allen Hamilton Engineering Services follows with $720 million across 43 task orders, increasing its capture by more than 60% over the past three years according to a recent study conducted by Govini. Northrop Grumman follows suit with $550 million across 36 task orders.

Strong relationships between Government and Industry:

As pre-competed vehicles, GWACs can streamline the acquisition process, which naturally leads to saving time and taxpayer money. Our pre-competed vehicle consists of 58 exceptionally qualified contractors. The Alliant program office takes pride in the individual relationships that have been created through the years between the Enterprise GWAC division and the outstanding Alliant contractors. To date, 50 out of 58 primes have received awards, exemplifying the diverse pool of credible talent and the constant interaction between government and industry.

The Enterprise GWAC division recently invited representatives from each of the 58 Primes to participate in Alliant’s twice-a-year Program Management Review (PMR). The event spans two days and allows industry to interact with government and partake in collaborative program updates and breakout sessions.  Success on projects through Alliant is a three-part partnership – GSA, the procuring agency and the company performing the work under the task order. We’ve built this model over a number of years through all of our GWACs, and it’s because of that focus and approach that Alliant has served the federal community so well.

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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Trends in Federal Network Connections

(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/)

Connectivity is the lifeblood of government. Government investment in improving and maintaining basic connectivity may be a small part of our IT budgets, but an important one. Reliable and flexible connections remain vital as the mobile workforce grows.

Connections II is the GSA contract agencies often come to when they need to purchase support and equipment to provide connectivity from the user’s desktop to the point of interconnection of the customer’s network service providers.

Connections II Customer Buying Trends

Federal agencies obligated $124 million to campus and building networking solutions through Connections II and issued 133 task orders in FY 2014.

What Connections II purchase data tells us is agencies need continued support and resources in this area. Five service types available from Connections II make up almost 80% of demand.

Technology Solutions Percentage of Total
Voice Operations and Billing Consolidation 23%
Unified Communications Expansion 20%
General Support 15%
Telecom Upgrades 11%
Network Maintenance 10%

Customers predominantly look to acquire more consolidated support as it offers advantages for lowering costs and reducing redundancies.

Second, 20% of Connections II customers are seeking to merge Voice/Data/Video (Unified Communications). The emphasis is on need to communicate from any device, anywhere, any time.

Looking for Operational Savings over Time

Connections II customers are receiving solutions that save their operational budget over time.

For example, telecom operations, billing management, and VoIP/UC modernization for one agency is estimated to save $30 million over 3 years over existing operational costs. Another agency is performing a nationwide Unified Communications Convergence upgrade with an estimated operational savings of $25 million over 5 years.

Connections II has always had strong customer loyalty with most projects coming from repeat customers. Now, we’ve added a tiered fee potential for customers with multiple smaller tasks adding up to significant volume, to further reward these customers.

Orders Increasing Year to Year

Demand for solutions from Connections II is growing year to year. FY 14 obligations represent an increase of 29% in obligations from FY 2013 and 34% from FY 2012.

This growth occurred despite sequestration and the government shutdown for two and half weeks in FY 2014. Local connectivity is a necessity for workforce support, internal and external communications and core administrative activities that every agency needs.

Looking into the future, under Connections II, we expect to see more Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as some customers do not want to own all their systems but instead buy the support.

In the world of wireless, we expect to see more about 802.11x technology, local LAN repeaters/amplifiers, etc. In security, we anticipate the need for new solutions for existing networks as well as future wireless networks.

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

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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.

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Industry and Small Business Outreach on Northeast Infrastructure Solutions

What’s hot right now besides the weather?

Our newly issued Northeast Infrastructure Solutions (NIS) Draft Statement of Work (SOW) is a hot topic in the federal IT community. The NIS acquisition is one of GSA’s critical steps to our ultimate goal of moving toward a fully consolidated, enterprise-wide, nationwide telecommunications portfolio (Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions [EIS]) based on GSA’s Network Services 2020 (NS2020) strategy.

Working with our federal agency partners, we developed requirements and issued the draft SOW on fbo.gov on July 24, 2014. The draft is industry’s chance to help shape the acquisition that will serve markets and customer requirements located in the Northeast Corridor.

As part of NIS, GSA is considering a partial set-aside to small business for DSL and Tariff requirements. This RFI is also seeking input on those capabilities. See our Small Business Partial Set-Aside document for a full description of requirements and information requested. We haven’t made a final decision on small business set-aside yet, and are using this tool to assess capabilities and receive feedback.

Submit comments through August 8, 2014 using this email address: nis.sources-sought.comments@gsa.gov.

Next Steps

NIS will consolidate local service contracts currently in place in four GSA Regions across the Northeast United States (NCR and Regions 1, 2 and 3). Two more regional consolidations — Western Infrastructure Solutions (WIS) and Central Infrastructure Solutions (CIS) — are also planned over the next fiscal year. Together, the three consolidated regional acquisitions are called the Regional Infrastructure Solutions (RIS).

We anticipate issuing Requests for Information (RFIs) soon for WIS and CIS, so stay tuned to @GSA_ITS on Twitter for updates.

 

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Fireworks, Festivities, and Connections II Dashboard Launch

In July, we celebrate America, our independence, and our freedom. Thousands of fireworks take off one after another across our beautiful night skies and we have fun with family and friends.

This year, we have one more reason to celebrate — at least in the IT and data communities.

Over the July 4th weekend, our Connections II program launched an interactive, real-time Connections II dashboard. The tool allows Connections II users to view and analyze non-classified data on federal IT purchasing activity awarded under GSA’s Connections II.

Data turned into actionable information will allow government to buy smarter, help agencies make better buying decisions, and lead to smoother bid and proposal processes. More information can help agencies better understand purchasing trends, conduct better market research, and be better negotiators. Ultimately, government buying decisions based on consistent, shared information deliver dollar savings to U.S. taxpayers.

We collectively are opening up data, sharing it, and working together to find additional value. At GSA, we look for ways to make government purchasing data more open, transparent, and accessible, and the Connections II dashboard is one way to do this.

The Connections II dashboard creates a single point of access for all data on Connections II task order obligations, number of awards, agency/bureau, and industry partner activity.

Users have quick and easy access to the dashboard. Search results display in easily understood lists, graphs, and charts. The real-time dashboard gives meaningful and timely program information–whether to industry or government–at any time. Users can search for specific items, sort data, and create and download custom reports.

We try to give customers and industry partners real-time data whenever they need it – at both the agency and order level so government can increase data quality and spend analysis, and make better business decisions, and so industry partners can tailor their offerings.

Other Reasons to Celebrate

GSA is just getting the big data explosion started with using and sharing our data to everyone’s benefit. GSA has several other data transparency efforts underway for the government IT acquisition community:

  • Get spend data from our GWACs Dashboard and Networx.
  • Use the 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 satellite program.
  • GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service is working on the common acquisition platform as a critical resource for federal buyers. It will contain even more tools, capabilities, and government-wide data on acquisition vehicles, intelligence, and prices paid.

If you want more information about Connections II, read about Connections II and transitioning to IPv6. We have several Statement of Work (SOW) templates you can download: IPv6 SOW to assist with IPv6 transitioning, DNSSEC SOW to help agencies with security transitioning from DNS to DNSSEC and email authentication based on the deployed DNSSEC, and a Unified Communications SOW template to help agencies combine voice, data, and video.

If you need help or information on GSA IT programs, go to our Need Help Page. Please follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join GSA’s IT acquisition conversation.