Despite rumors of a looming fiscal cliff and a harsh reality for contractors, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the General Services Administration (GSA) are finalizing major IT acquisitions. These two technology contracts are expected to exceed $5 billion and $1.5 billion respectively. The VA is looking to award funding by September 30th and the GSA is releasing an RFI this week for continuous monitoring systems.

The 2012 London Olympics are currently at the height of media attention around the world. This year, the Olympics have had a unique challenge not seen before in any other games. The ever-increasing use of social media outlets like Twitter has caused hiccups in the reporting and communications of some competitions.

Social media has so rapidly become a ubiquitous part of our day to day lives. In 2008, only 29% of adult internet users said they used a social networking site, and now according to Pew Research that number has risen above 65%. Now more and more organizations are realizing the significance of social media. If this resource is not utilized not only will your organization miss out on the myriad of benefits that emerge from it, but your organization will also fall behind the rest. Customer Service optimization is one of the attributes of social media that can be extremely useful, and still many organizations utilizing social media don’t take advantage.

As our economy continues to struggle, there is now a direct pressure being placed on the Federal market place. What was once thought of as an unlimited market of selling opportunity is now scheduled to be forcibly reduced by 10% in FY 2013, thanks to the 'sequestration' measures mandating automatic cuts across the Federal government. During this time of Federal market constriction, it is even more critical to be smart about how an organization approaches Federal sales. The GSA reports that 1 out of every 3 new contract awardees does not earn any revenue in their first three years, and the number one reason for this failure to perform is a lack of strategic planning.

On July 6th, the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) published a new strategic IT plan that maps out a wide variety of their organizational goals, on-going project summaries, and accumulated statistics. It also includes new innovative technologies that they plan on taking better advantage of in upcoming years. DIR says their mission is to be limited, efficient, and completely accountable.

The General Services Administration (GSA) has recently developed a social media site, GSA Interact, with the goal of helping the GSA understand how to better provide acquisition products and services. While this interactive website offers vendors many new tools, from training opportunities to blogging questions, one of the more prominent features is the new Contractor Teaming Arrangements Tool (CTAT). CTAT provides GSA Schedule holders with a forum to facilitate teaming arrangements. This forum allows members to communicate their teaming needs to a broad audience of GSA Schedule holders, while allowing those viewing the opportunities to reach out and generate partnerships.