You may have been looking up at the sky recently to catch a glimpse of the rare "comet of the century", but this won't be the only comet returning this year—GSA has plans in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 for COMET II, a multiple award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for IT modernization, transformation, and operations/maintenance. The current COMET vehicle, which stands for CIO Modernization and Enterprise Transformation, has awarded task orders totaling almost $1 billion, making it a great success for GSA and all contractors involved, especially when it comes to updating GSA’s legacy systems.

Cybersecurity is a constant priority in the IT government contracting space, with the government continually working to enhance cybersecurity practices as technology evolves. IT government contractors should be aware of both current and future cybersecurity regulations, so they can stay compliant now and in the future.

Another opportunity is on the horizon for GSA IT contractors. GSA has released the final draft solicitation for Pool 1 of their new Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) called Ascend. This contract vehicle will serve as a one-stop-shop for government customers to acquire secure cloud service offerings from GSA contractors. The first pool focuses on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (Paas), and will be followed by 2 other pools geared toward Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and and cloud-IT related professional services. Let’s breakdown this upcoming BPA and what it could mean for you as a GSA IT contractor.

If you’ve been following the CMMC journey since 2019, you’ll see that we’re one inch closer to seeing Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 requirements in defense contracts. If you haven’t, no worries, we’ll fill you in on what you need to know. Recently, the Department of Defense (DoD) released a draft rule that would implement CMMC into the acquisition process for defense contracts. Let’s talk about what this means for the future of CMMC and what the next steps are.

GSA recently released the Request for Proposal (RFP) for Alliant 3, a follow on to the highly successful Alliant 2 Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC). Like Alliant 2, Alliant 3 is an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for IT-services based solutions, but one major change is that Alliant 3 has no maximum dollar ceiling. In this blog, we’ll cover the highlights of the Alliant 3 RFP to help you determine if this is a good fit for your company.

The General Services Administration (GSA) recently published a new emerging technology framework for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) prioritizing generative Artificial Intelligence, or AI. This means that contractors who offer generative AI capabilities will be given priority to be expedited through the FedRAMP authorization process. Since AI has grown exponentially over the past few years, there has been a race between the need to rapidly acquire emerging AI technologies in the federal government, and the assurance that AI will be developed and used safely as well as securely. This is the first time FedRAMP will have a framework prioritizing one technology over another. In this blog, we’ll dig into FedRAMP and what the new emerging technology framework will look like for contractors.