Recently, a new wave of trends has emerged in the Human Resources (HR) market. Regardless of industry, HR organizations, departments, and leaders are focused on leveraging technology in new and creative ways to accurately manage and secure a tremendous amount of company and employee data while facilitating employee access to company and benefit information. As a result, they are turning to their internal IT departments for help streamlining and automating their complex human resource business processes. These technologies are showing improved process adherence and policy compliance, as well as increased employee satisfaction while reducing workload.

A recent Bloomberg Government study reminds us that Federal Government spending on multiple-award contracts (MACs) rose 49 percent to $121 billion over the last four years, more than double the growth rate of all other contracting programs within the Federal Government.

David McClure, Associate Administrator at GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, announced at the AFFIRM event on April 13th that the third party assessment organizations (3PAOs) will be announced in May 2012. This is a major step for FedRAMP, which will start the process for cloud service providers to obtain the provisional authorizations. These 3PAOs are an important part of the FedRAMP process, because they will be validating the cyber security control requirements for service providers. While the review is being handled mainly by DHS and GSA, the entire Joint Authorization Board (JAB) will have the final say on who will be a 3PAO. The JAB consists of the Chief Information Officers from GSA, DHS, and DOD. Department of Homeland Security Chief Information Officer, Richard Spires, said that once the 3PAO’s are picked in May, he expects the program to take-off in June of this year.

FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is led by GSA and is a soon-to-be mandatory government wide program that standardizes the government’s approach to authorizing cloud services for use by federal agencies and monitoring those services to ensure that they continue to meet federal cybersecurity requirements.Once a service goes through the initial FedRAMP authorization process, it will get a stamp of approval that all agencies can use to sign off on the service’s ability to meet federal security requirements. FedRAMP is still in pre-launch stage. The launch of its initial operational capabilities is scheduled for June 2012, and the focus will be on infrastructure as a service and e-mail as service. Full operational capabilities are scheduled for the second quarter of fiscal 2013. At this stage, FedRamp will include more diverse products and services. By 2014 the government will move to full implementation with on-demand scalability and all federal agencies will be required to use the FedRAMP process for assessments.

If you’re a government contractor chances are you are fully aware of the myriad registrations and systems you are required to maintain throughout the year. From annual updates to your Central Contractor Registration (CCR) and Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA) to periodic subcontractor reporting through the Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System (eSRS) or opportunity searching through Federal Business Opportunities (FBO), contractors must consistently monitor several disparate systems in order to continue to partner with Uncle Sam. In a recent BLOG we profiled the FAPIIS System, which consolidated several long standing databases already in use by the procurement community in making contract award determinations. While, from an ease of use standpoint, this is a step in the right direction for Contracting Officers, little has been done to streamline activities for vendors. Well things are about to change.

While helping my clients with GSA Contractor Post Award and governement business development services, I’ve found that many have never heard of GSA’s MarkeTips Magazine before. I’d like to take a moment to highlight the magazine and show you how you can use it as a tool to advertise your products and services under a newly awarded GSA Schedule contract. What is MarkeTips?