On Tuesday, January 2, 2013, President Obama signed the military spending budget, which isgood news for small businesses selling to the Federal government. The goal is for Federal agencies to have 23% of awarded contracts go to small businesses, which has been a problem for the Federal government.

On December 27, 2012 the General Services Administration (GSA) announced the first company to become FedRAMP certified as Autonomic Resources. The approval came from the Joint Authorization Board (JAB), which is consisting of the CIO’s from GSA, DoD, and DHS.

The House is calling for the small business contracting goal to be increased, while the Senate is not. That is one of the differences in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Some see the increase as a moot point, because the current goal is not being met. Despite this, the House is pushing for a 2 percent increase, from 23 percent to 25 percent. The two bills passed by each chamber will now be attempted to be resolved by deliberations set to begin this week. Some expect see the increase the House is pushing for, as a glass holding no water. They do not see how the increase will benefit small companies. Guy Timberlake, Co-Founder and Chief Visionary Officer at the American Small Business Coalition, is quoted saying:

As of recently, no cloud solution provider has been endorsed by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). Run by the GSA, FedRAMP is designed to assist in closing costly federal data centers and outsourcing network operations to shared cloud providers, thereby reducing expenditures and increasing technical flexibility. FedRAMP provides a security evaluation that certifies cloud providers in being able to adequately and safely manage electronic federal data. By gaining the FedRAMP approval vendors can offer their cloud services for immediate use in any government agency. However, due to confusion and a slow evaluation process, no vendors have been endorsed by FedRAMP to date.

As we close out 2012, it appears that the Feds will be making an early New Year’s resolution – proactive reformation of their network security and monitoring. According to a spokesman at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a Request for Proposal (RFP) for continuous monitoring of IT assets and data will be put out by the department in the near future. The application of a secure, total Business Service Management (BSM) solution, while currently only at DHS, is being planned to spread across the entire government.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) unveiled on November 27, 2012 a dashboard that consolidates all Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC) spending from 2004 through present date. The data that is shown is all of the non-classified data on federal IT purchases that have been purchased using task orders under the various GWACs. The dashboard also allows searches on small business specific contracting vehicles like 8(a)STARS; 8(a) STARS II; Alliant; Alliant SB; and VETS GWAC programs.