A few times I have gotten questions from clients who have felt left out of doing work with the government and want to know more about the bid protest process because they feel the decision of a contracting officer or government agency regarding a contract bid or awarded contract was unfair. To do this, you first must make sure that you qualify as an “interested party”. To be considered an interested party, the FAR 33-1 states that your company must be “an actual or prospective offeror whose direct economic interest would be affected by the award of a contract or by the failure to award a contract”. Once you discern your status, you must follow a very specific procedure, and the government is obligated to respond to them as long as they are procedurally correct. Ideally, the government contracting realm is impartial and fair, but sometimes competitors feel that someone has been or is about to be awarded a contract on bogus or questionable grounds. They feel that in their case, the process for a bid was not designed to allow competitors the opportunity to bid on a fair and even playing field. The company can then open a case through the contracting officer at that agency (the recommended channel) or file their protest directly to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Through the recent IT management reform effort established by The White House, a totally different type of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell may be coming to an end. This is of course the practice of conducting multi-million/billion dollar projects without sufficient Project Management involvement by the involved Federal Agencies. As Trey Hodgkins said to FCW, “Right now, the way the process works, it is purely coincidental if all the elements in the process are actually talking to each other”, producing a de-facto practice of not asking, and not reporting issues in project progress. It is this practice that the White House’s reform is attempting to address. The reform looks to create a new career path for Government personnel to establish a knowledge base and experience in successful IT Project Management, which will provide a large pool of candidates to provide these services from within Federal Agencies. This will help alleviate the strain on existing Federal Project Managers, who are diverted between an increasing number of projects, and provide more resources to ensure any project over a specific size will have diligent Agency based Project Management.

GSA has taken the first steps towards moving its entire email system to a more efficient and cost effective cloud-based network. The 5 year, $6.7M contract was recently awarded to Unisys Corp. under the Alliant GWAC. To help pioneer this effort, Unisys has partnered with Google, Tempus Nova, and Acumen Solutions to develop the system for GSA – which is the first agency to move its entire agency’s email to a cloud based system. The award also includes collaboration tools that are estimated to reduce inefficiencies and lower costs by 50 percent over the next five years. Google is considered to be one of the biggest and most advanced cloud service providers, so their involvement with this initiative is key and indicates that they most likely had very compelling and innovative ideas to contribute to the winning proposal submitted by Unisys. Tempus Nova’s involvement is also important since they are a leading provider of Google Enterprise solutions and are the sole developer of the tools used to migrate mail and calendar data from Lotus Notes to Google. GSA is one of many agencies that still utilize the antiquated IBM Lotus Notes email and calendar system.

We’ve all heard the overused cliché, “There are two things everyone can count on: death and taxes.” Well, we can add an additional one to that list – rising healthcare premiums. As the debate on healthcare in Washington rages on, there is one thing we can all agree on and that’s that something needs to be done to reign in skyrocketing healthcare costs. While Congress bats legislation back and forth, there is at least one federal government agency that can be counted on for working hard to deliver tangible results in healthcare: The National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH invests hundreds of millions of dollars in healthcare technology solutions every year to keep this great nation on the cutting edge of healthcare innovation and advancement. NIH is in the midst of collecting proposals for its multi-billion dollar Chief Information Officer Solutions and Partners 3 (CIO-SP3), an agency wide contract that will give all 29 NIH offices and divisions access to the best information technology services that the commercial sector has to offer. CIO-SP3 is in its 3rd life cycle and this time the agency has made the unprecedented move of offering a small business set-aside equal in size to the unrestricted portion! That’s right – $20 billion to small businesses and $20 billion to the large integrators. Both awarding Prime contractors. NIH anticipates setting aside over 40 positions to small businesses. The best part? There is still time to bid. Proposals are due no later than January 14th. Here are the 10 unique IT Task Areas solicited in CIO-SP3: IT Services for biomedical research and healthcare; Chief Information Officer support; Imaging, including systems and services that support the collection, storage, and retrieval of digital images; Outsourcing, IT services required to assume management and operations of government IT resources and business functions; Operations and maintenance; Integration services and data migration; Critical infrastructure protection and information assurance; Digital government, including the provision of government services through digital, electronic means; Enterprise management systems; and Software development, including customized software applications, database applications, and other solutions not available in off-the-shelf modular software applications.

There are almost four hundred million Americans in this country. Among those four million, we have multiple political parties that are regularly viable and get votes in the election. Each of those parties contains a viewpoint that is different from the next, each trying to influence government policy through their elected candidate. From gun control to health care reform, you can find diverse collection of opinions. Despite our differences, our political sway, and viewpoints, one thing that Americans can come together and agree upon is this: putting aside your political and personal viewpoints on war, our veterans who proudly serve our nation deserve our gratitude and appreciation. Each year the nation pauses to remember its veterans—those brave citizens who have served in our armed forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, and during the World Wars (today, being the 69th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor). To aid these veterans, their families, and survivors, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was established to "consolidate and coordinate Government activities affecting war veterans”. It is a government-run military veteran benefit system that administers programs of benefits for veterans, their families, and survivors. Among other responsibilities, the VA is tasked with operating a nationwide system of hospitals, clinics, Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISN), data processing centers, and National Cemeteries—all which demand a broad gamut of goods and services.

That’s right you fashionistas, green is the new black. Going “Green” is the thing to do these days and the U.S. Government is leading the way. One of the most sweeping economic packages in our country today is The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This program is currently at work for American families and businesses. The General Services Administration has been given an opportunity to have a huge impact in this effort by working for a new energy economy by investing in new, more energy efficient vehicles for the federal fleet and by investing in other green initiatives. Green Vehicles