April 7, 2015 Issue # 30 About The Gormley Group | Join Our Mailing List | Our Services Domain Expertise Federal Marketplace Matters Educational Topics Compliance Issues Upcoming Events Our Services TGG Strategic Sales Planning About The Gormley Group Join our Mailing List The Gormley Group 1990 M Street, NW Suite 480 Washington, DC 20036 www.gormgroup.com info@gormgroup.com GSA unveils plan to allow TIC compliance for FedRAMP services The General Services Administration rolled out a draft template on April 2 aimed at giving commercial cloud providers a faster way to deliver secure Internet connections to federal agencies. The Department of Homeland Security, collaborating with GSA's Federal Risk Authorization Management Program, released a draft overlay for the Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) that meets FedRAMP requirements. The draft, said GSA, is the initial step to update the TIC reference architecture to give agencies more choices in adopting cloud services from commercial providers. "This overlay is the result of more than 18 months of collaboration between the TIC Initiative and the FedRAMP [Program Management Office] to find alternative solutions to enable federal agencies to more easily and effectively comply with both FedRAMP and TIC," FedRAMP Director Matthew Goodrich wrote in an email to FCW. Read More 1990 M Street NW, Suite 480, Washington DC, 20036 202.999.4940 www.gormgroup.com April 7, 2015 Issue # 30 GSA combines solar panel procurements into a single RFP The General Services Administration is looking for a developer to help the agency boost its use of solar power, according to a request for proposal released April 2. The agency is looking for a power purchase agreement as part of a new pilot project that combines several small and mid-size solar panel installation opportunities into a single procurement. The RFP is limited to sites in California and northern Nevada. TGG Hosted Client Strategic Business Planning Meeting To complement our client’s sales objectives, TGG provides Federal Market domain expertise to discuss and develop your business strategy and growth objectives for the Federal Market . TGG Website Under a power purchase agreement the developer will install and operate the solar panel systems and sell power back to the agencies at set payments over time. The project is expected to reduce electricity costs while simultaneously allowing agencies to achieve renewable energy goals. Agencies are under pressure to become more sustainable and use more renewable energy under an executive order signed by President Obama March 19. The order requires agencies to increase the amount of renewable energy they use to 30 percent of overall energy use. Kevin Kampshroer, GSA's acting senior sustainability officer, said the agency has a responsibility to its agency tenants to lead by example. Read More Source: SSQ data 1990 M Street NW, Suite 480, Washington DC, 20036 202.999.4940 www.gormgroup.com April 7, 2015 Issue # 30 GSA Names Professional Services Industry Liaison Kathy Jocoy has just been appointed as GSA’s, professional services industry liaison. Kathy has more than 30 years of outstanding government contracting experience and was recognized in 2014 with a Lifetime Acquisition Excellence Award from The Coalition for Government Procurement. Kathy will now serve as the primary point of contact for the professional services industry as the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) realigns around category management—a strategic business approach designed to enable the federal government to buy smarter and more like a single enterprise. NASA awards SEWP V contracts to small businesses NASA has awarded contracts to 118 small, disadvantaged companies under its Solutions for EnterpriseWide Procurement (SEWP V) contract, a multi-award GovernmentWide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) vehicle focused on information technology products and productbased services. The contract announcement for service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses (Group B) and other small businesses (Group C) arrived one week after NASA posted the winners from its two other categories — Group A and D. NASA scheduled the governmentwide acquisition contract to start in May 2015. Of these SEWP V contracts, 14 went to companies operating in historically underutilized business zones, 25 contracts were awarded to business owned by service-disabled veterans and 79 contracts were awarded to other small businesses Read More Category management is designed to improve how FAS interacts with industry, eliminating redundancy and duplication in the procurement process. According to a blog post on GSA Interact, the professional service category is committed to working closely with industry to make sure that the best professional service in the commercial market are also available to the government. Watch the Professional Services Category Community on GSA Interact for future posts from Kathy Jocoy. Refreshed USASpending Website Irks Some Transparency Advocates The work-in-progress known as government transparency took a new twist on April 1 when the Treasury Department unveiled “improvements” to the USAspending.gov website aimed at providing easy public access to data on federal contracts, grants and financial assistance governmentwide. David Lebryk, Treasury’s fiscal assistant secretary, in a blog post described the change -- done in response to external feedback-as improving “navigation to allow users to more directly summarize spending data” and to take advantage of a platform borrowed from the award-winning Recovery.gov website used to track spending on the 2009 stimulus legislation. 1990 M Street NW, Suite 480, Washington DC, 20036 Read More 202.999.4940 www.gormgroup.com April 7, 2015 Issue # 30 GSA CIO on leaving government, fixing federal IT General Services Administration CIO Sonny Hashmi is leaving government at the beginning of April to take over as managing director of government for cloud platform provider Box. As he exits the public sector, Hashmi reflected on his four years at GSA — including program successes and failures — the transformation going on in federal IT and what needs to happen for that transition to continue. Below are edited excerpts from an interview with Federal Times Senior Writer Aaron Boyd. GSA Public Meeting on Transactional Data Rule, April 17 On April 17th 2015, GSA will hold a public meeting on its proposal to amend the General Services Administration Acquisition Regulation (GSAR) to require contractors to report transactional data from orders and prices paid by ordering activities. A summary of the rule is here. GSA estimates that the additional reporting requirements will have little impact on industry. During the public meeting, Roger Waldron will make a statement on the public burden of the transactional data reporting proposal based on our member survey. The Coalition would like to thank members who have already taken the time to submit a response to the survey, which closes today, April 3rd. What made you decide to leave the public space? It is a very difficult decision for me. The work I have been doing with GSA and the federal government over the last three or four years now is accelerating, it is showing great promise, great results. As you know the 18F program migrated over to the cloud, reduced budget, improved performance. I have been very fortunate to be part of this amazing team and there is a lot more to do both at GSA and government wide. I was not actively looking to leave GSA. I was very fortunate and happy to serve the administration, serve the administrator, but when [Box co-founder and CEO] Aaron [Levie] and I spoke a few months ago and then continued the discussion through [senior vice president of global alliances] Karen Appleton and others at Box, I realized that smart companies like Box have an amazing opportunity to help agencies rethink and change how services can be provided to citizens. That has been my passion my entire career. I have always been in the technology field and I have always been in the government technology field. I look at this as a continuation of my career, my journey because my role at Box is going to be to find out ways to bring smart, innovative technology, secure technology like the Box platform and ecosystem partner technology to solve real government challenges that help agencies solve those challenges. Read More The public meeting will be held at GSA Central Office Auditorium at 1800 F Street NW, Washington DC, 2006. To register, visit 1990 M Street NW, Suite 480, Washington DC, 20036 202.999.4940 www.gormgroup.com April 7, 2015 Issue # 30 GSA’s Subcontracting Directory The GSA Subcontracting Directory is published for small business concerns seeking subcontracting opportunities with General Services Administration (GSA) prime contractors. The directory lists large business prime contractors who, by law, are required to establish plans and goals for subcontracting with small business firms. The Gormley Group 1990 M Street, NW Suite 480 Washington, DC 20036 Who's in the directory: Large prime contractors who have received federal contracts, other than construction, valued at over $650,000 Large prime contractors who have received federal contracts for construction valued at over $1.5 million Source GSA www.gormgroup.com info@gormgroup.com Discussion | Standard Configurations for Executive Office Furniture Submitted by FSSI Furniture ... on Monday, April 6, 2015 - 3:26 PM Strategic Sourcing’s Demand Management approach is inward facing, focused on optimizing internal practices, processes, and policies aimed at reducing the overall usage of goods and services, thereby improving the total cost of ownership (TCO). A sound Demand Management strategy can assist with achieving savings through a better understanding of the cost trade off for a product based on various options or features and the rationalization of specifications or requirements. In this regard, demand management helps discern between “needs” and “wants”, matching requirements or plans to market capabilities. For example, buying a different color table may decrease costs, so weighting and pricing out different options is very important. The Furniture Commodity Team has developed the following standard configurations for Executive Office Furniture. At this time we are soliciting industry comments/feedback to determine that the standard configurations are clear, concise and competitive in the market place. Read More 1990 M Street NW, Suite 480, Washington DC, 20036 202.999.4940 www.gormgroup.com April 7, 2015 Issue # 30 Maintaining Your Schedule Contract - Mass Modifications Upcoming CGP Events April 9 – 7.30 – 11.00 Breakfast Forum on Indirect Contracting with the Federal Government Registration April 28, 2015 CGP Spring Training Conference titled The Business of Government view draft agenda To see more scheduled CGP events visit website May 27 and 28 - R7 Greater Southwest Acquisition Center Industry Days for Schedules 56 and 73. To register Mass Modifications are government-initiated modifications issued by GSA. It occurs when there have been uniform changes across the Schedule Solicitation. The purpose is to ensure that all contractors’ GSA contracts contain the same contract clauses. This type of modification is considered bilateral. Therefore, your response to the modification is required in order to update the terms and conditions of your GSA/VA Schedule contract(s). Recently, many of the solicitations have been refreshed. Your company contract administrator should have received notification delivered via email to review and accept the Mass Modification. This email contains a unique PIN (password) that allows you to access and accept the modification and a direct hyperlink into the Vendor Support Center (VSC) website, where the Mass Modification can be found. At the website, you can review and accept the modification. Upon execution of the modification, you will be asked to enter your contract number and PIN to accept or decline the modification. If you have an offer pending, you may have received notification to go into the eMod/eOffer System to except the latest refresh. GSA has been very proactive to ensure that Mass Modifications are accepted. You must accept any pending Mass Modification(s) before GSA will approve previous or newly submitted modification request for additions, deletions, EPA, administrative, etc. Some contracting officers have rejected newly submitted modification(s) indicating the Mass Modification must be accepted prior to submission of any new modification requests. Failure to respond to a Mass Modification could result in the cancellation of your contract. Contact your TGG consultant if you have any questions about on-going management of your schedule contract or whether it is time for an in depth analysis of your schedule contract compliance processes and procedures. 1990 M Street NW, Suite 480, Washington DC, 20036 202.999.4940 www.gormgroup.com
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