On May 20, 2013 the General Services Administration (GSA) announced the third company to become FedRAMP certified as Amazon Web Services. As part of the program, Amazon has been granted two Agency Authorities to Operate (ATOs) by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. CGI Federal and Autonomic Resources are the other two FedRAMP-certified providers.

If you recently had your GSA Schedule Contract canceled due to not meeting the minimum sales requirements, you might have been short changed. Since 2008, the General Services Administration (GSA) has failed to fulfill the Guaranteed Minimum Clause I-FSS-106, as reported by the U. S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Small Business. The clause serves to guarantee contractors within the Multiple Awards Schedules (MAS) Program a minimum of $2,500 in total orders. Should a contractor receive total orders for less than $2,500 at the expiration date of their contract or if cancellation is initiated by the government, GSA is to pay the difference. This minimum guarantee is essentially a payment by the government for the contractor’s promise to deliver the agreed upon goods and services at the agreed upon prices.

Yesterday, March 28th, the draft RFP’s for OASIS were released for public review and comment. Furthermore, on the OASIS Industry Community board it was stated that the General Services Administration (GSA) is tentatively planning an industry day on May 13th.

If you have a 58 I GSA Schedule Contract, this could be pretty significant news. It was recently announced that beginning in March 2013, federal buyers will only be purchasing televisions and monitors that are EPEAT registered. EPEAT is the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, and GSA describes it as “a multi-attribute, multi-tier environmental and energy efficiency rating system and registry for electronic equipment. The criteria address more than energy efficiency and, in essence, define what it means for products to be environmentally preferable.”

University of Baltimore’s Charles Tiefer has proposed multiple solutions to help agencies save money in the face of sequestration. Tiefer believes that there are things each agency can do now to save money lost in unnecessary contracts, in order to avoid furloughing government employees.

CGI has gained approval from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program’s (FedRAMP) Joint Authorization Board to become a secure cloud service provider (CSP). CGI joinsAutonomic Resources as one of only two firms approved by FedRAMP.