Agencies take advantage of a rule allowing them to order directly from GSA's governmentwide acquisition contracts instead of going through the Federal Technology Service.
Sen. Susan Collins is drafting a letter to the General Services Administration and Bank of America asking how it will protect the personal data of federal credit card holders, following last week's revelation that the company had lost backup tapes containing personal information on 1.2 million federal employees.
The General Services Administration this spring will release a $5 billion, 10-year governmentwide acquisition contract for service-disabled veteran-owned IT small businesses.
The elimination of the House subcommittee that focuses solely on IT does not mean that federal agencies and contractors should expect oversight by lawmakers to relax.
Don't be fooled by the 7 percent increase in IT spending proposed in President Bush's fiscal 2006 budget request. Although the IT budget request of $65.1 billion boosts spending by more than 20 percent each at the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Veterans Affairs, most agencies received only modest increases, and six had their IT budgets cut.
Despite the Office of Management and Budget's emphasis on cybersecurity over the past four years, the federal government is barely secure ? and Congress is frustrated.
The Bush administration's 2006 budget request calls for the collapsing of the Federal Supply and Federal Technology services into a single organization.
Over the next six weeks, the Homeland Security Department will start evaluating technologies and vendor products in preparation for a March request for proposals for its enterprise portal initiative.
President Bush last night gave a nod to two federal IT initiatives in his fifth State of the Union address: the federal health IT architecture and the government's entry-exit system.
Systems security concerns caused the Veterans Affairs Department's and the Small Business Administration's e-government initiatives to drop a grade each in the latest ratings on the President's Management Agenda.
The Office of Management and Budget has tapped Stacie Higgins as its new manager of the government-to-government Quicksilver portfolio and Grants Management Lines of Business initiative.
The General Services Administration in late December established a one-time fee of $2,500 for vendors and the public to receive a direct, continuous feed from the new Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation via Web services.
Is a protest of your latest big win inevitable? If it's a multiyear enterprise deal worth big bucks and for several years, the chances rise precipitously. And the chances of more such contracts drawing protests in the coming year seem like a safe bet.
