The General Services Administration has launched an online dashboard to provide agencies and industry with greater access to its contract spending data for planning and budgeting purposes. The Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) Dashboards aggregate non-classified data on federal information technology spending from 2004 to present through GSA’s five GWACs: 8(a) STARS, 8(a) STARS II, Alliant, Alliant Small Business and VETS contracts, GSA announced on Tuesday. “This tool is especially valuable to small businesses as it provides access to business intelligence they can use to assess market opportunity, decide how best to allocate resources, and identify potential teaming partners for future projects,” GSA Federal…
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The Veterans Affairs Department has awarded HP Enterprise Services a $36 million contract to move 600,000 email accounts to the cloud. Under the five-year contract, VA users will have access to email and shared calendars using Microsoft Office 365 for Government. Users, however, will not have access to additional features such as instant messaging and web and video conferencing. “VA is moving to cloud-based email and collaboration as part of a broader effort to leverage emerging technologies to reduce costs, increase efficiencies and, most importantly, improve service delivery to our nation’s veterans,” Charles De Sanno, executive director for enterprise systems engineering at the VA,…
The General Service Administration awarded this year’s SmartPay 2 Innovation award to the Energy Department for its use of an electronic payment system that will better track individual purchase orders, J.P. Morgan bank announced Thursday. The Energy Department was the first agency to use J.P. Morgan’s Single-Use Account for SmartPay charge card purchases with CH2M-WG Idaho, one of its major contractors, according to a news release. Instead of CH2M-WG Idaho using a general account number for all of its charges, the Single-Use Account issued a unique, 16-digit account number for each payment that CH2M-WG made to its vendors. This allowed the…
Nine companies have been awarded spots on an intelligence training contract worth $750 million over five years, the Defense Department announced today. Out of 24 proposals submitted, nine awards were made on Oct. 26 to: BAE of McLean,Va. Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus,Ohio Booz Allen Hamilton of McLean,Va. Cyberspace Solutions LLC of Reston,Va. Intrepid Solutions Services Inc. of Falls Church,Va. Prescient Edge Corp. of Falls Church,Va. SAIC of McLean,Va. Six 3 Intelligence Solutions of McLean,Va. SRA of Fairfax,Va. The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract will expire Nov. 30, 2017, according to the announcement. Work will be performed in Washington DC; Quantico, Va.;…
The Department of Homeland Security is following through on recommendations to hire at least 600 cybersecurity experts, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday. Speaking at a Washington Post cybersecurity forum, Napolitano said the department is looking to hire cyber experts, analysts, IT specialists and people who are familiar with coding. In June, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano directed a newly formed CyberSkills task force to develop recommendations for growing DHS’s cyber workforce and expanding the pipeline of cyber talent nationwide, which includes hiring at least 600 cyber professionals. Napolitano said DHS has increased its workforce by 600 percent over the last…
The Office of Personnel Management just announced that federal offices in the Washington area will be open Wednesday, after two days of closures due to Hurricane Sandy. However, non-emergency employees will have the option to telework, or use unscheduled leave if they need to. That means they can use leave options such as earned annual leave, compensatory time off, or leave without pay, or they can rearrange their work week under a flexible work schedule, if possible.
Hurricane Sandy is nowhere near done pummeling the D.C. area tonight, but FedLine can’t help noticing how the storm has already showered attention on the federal government’s role in anticipating and responding to disasters. Last Friday, for example, The New York Times ran a front-page article on how delays in development of the next generation of weather satellites could jeopardize future forecasting. That risk would not have come as news to Federal Times readers, but the mainstream media had previously paid little attention to the issue. Since then, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has had to fend off questions over whether he wants to cut funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And at least one…
Hurricane Sandy has claimed another workday in the Washington area. The Office of Personnel Management just announced that DC-area offices will be closed again Tuesday, Oct. 30. The Supreme Court also rescheduled Tuesday’s arguments for Thursday, Nov. 1. UPDATE: Tuesday’s closure will operate by the same rules as today: Emergency employees still must show up unless their bosses say otherwise, and employees who were already scheduled to or required to telework will still have to telework.
Organized labor may be hurting, but it would be hard to tell from the amount of money that the four big postal unions are spending on this year’s presidential and congressional races. According to their most recent disclosure reports filed earlier this month, the four–through their political action committees–had shoveled about $9.6 million into the 2012 election cycle, already ahead of the $8.9 million total for 2010, a non-presidential election year, according to data compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. Accounting for more than half of the 2012 sum was the National Association of Letter Carriers, followed by the American Postal…
With Hurricane Sandy barreling towards the East Coast, the Office of Personnel Management just announced that federal offices in the Washington area will be closed to the public Monday. That means that most employees will be granted an excused absence, unless they’re required to telework, on official travel outside of the DC area, on leave without pay, or on an alternative work schedule day off. There are a few other categories of employees who won’t get the day off, however. Emergency employees are expected to show up for work tomorrow, unless they’re told otherwise by their bosses. And if you…