When my phone rings for proposal consulting work, about 90% of the time the story is the same: we’ve got a Request for Proposal in and we need you to help us immediately. I say – great, would be happy to help you. By the way, have you done any capture? I hear either “yes,”Read… Read more »
On Thursday, (3/8), GovLoop and Bloomberg Government hosted a training webinar on “How to Streamline and Improve the Federal Government Acquisitions Process.” During the training we discussed current acquisition challenges and how to improve communications with industry to streamline the acquisition process. We also learned some awesome tips and best practices for market research. 1.Read… Read more »
Deltek Analyst Kristin Howe reports. The most common terms appearing in solicitations during the month of February were Security, Services and Management. The word cloud below provides a visual interpretation of key-term frequency. Number of public safety bids: 140 Top three states (by number of solicitations released): California, Texas and Missouri Top three key words:Read… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda The Necessity of Government Digital Service. From across the pond comes this blog post by Carl Haggerty, “Does local government need a local government digital service?” Though the post (as its name implies) focuses squarely on local government, the lessons are applicable to all levels of government, and the answer to the title’sRead… Read more »
ETHICS.GOV LAUNCH. Story here. “The new website fulfills a campaign promise made by President Barack Obama to centralize ethics and lobbying information for voters.” OBAMA AND LOBBYING. Naivete? “So when the Republican National Committee uses those words from Obama 2008 to ding Obama 2012, it has a point. But the administration’s real sin isn’t beingRead… Read more »
Context This article assumes a software development project that is several months into a multi-year endeavor. Using rolling wave you, the project manager, look three to six months out and begin to decompose a significant portion of project scope. As a diligent PM you pull out the GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide and printRead… Read more »
This May the Thrift Savings Plan is launching a new investment option that provides more flexibility for TSP participants. Federal employees and military members will be able to allocate their contributions between a Roth and the traditional plan shortly. The flexibility is in the tax treatment of the employee’s contributions and it may be beneficialRead… Read more »
VA is soliciting Supplier participation in this fiscal year’s SRT Webinar to be held on Monday, March 12 from 1-3 PM EST. The SRT initiative is a part of VA’s broader effort to transform the end-to-end acquisition process which will capitalize on industry expertise as an effort to improve the VA acquisition process as aRead… Read more »
Cloud computing is taking the business and government world by storm. Just like anything else new, it’s uncharted waters and guidelines and best practices are hard to come by. Of course the federal government has the NIST standards and the FedRAMP programs to guide the way on cloud services and acquisitions, but what about stateRead… Read more »
Defense acquisitions sometimes get behind schedule, cost too much, and/or have poor performance. This often comes from using incorrect approaches. Dan Ward, who I actually consider an acquisition prophet of sorts, argues for a different methodology called FIST — Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny. It calls for rapid acquisition using “80% now is better than 100%Read… Read more »