As we cross the frontier into the fourth industrial revolution, the Agile paradigm is leading the way in software development. This approach dates to the winter of 2001, when 17 renowned software developers met at Snowbird, Utah. Coming out of that event was the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, a document that [...]
Mohana Ravindranath Artificial intelligence is making its way into the federal government’s operations—but not like Skynet from the Terminator movies. Since May, the White House has been exploring the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for the public: that is, how the federal government should be investing in the technology to [...]
Frank Konkel The Defense Department’s IT arm is again accepting bids for its controversial ENCORE III contract that could buy as much as $17.5 billion worth of IT services to support the Pentagon’s modernization effort. Contractors now have until Sept. 30 to revise and submit proposals for ENCORE III, which has been [...]
Mary Beth Bosco HIGHLIGHTS: • The U.S. federal government announced new Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) rules that set high-level standards for the basic safeguarding of contractor information systems that process, store or transmit federal contract information. • The new FAR rules are effective July 15, 2016, and apply to all contractors except [...]
Courtesy of Jared Serbu- Federal Radio The Defense Department will likely have to make significant changes to a much-anticipated IT services contract known as ENCORE III following a legal decision that upheld challenges by two prospective bidders. The GAO ruled Wednesday that DISA failed to come up with a reasonable basis for [...]
Everyone in the business is wondering, what this election will mean for the progress of proposal activities? Will it cause serious problems, be more like business as usual, or something in the middle? The Political Problem Everyone agrees, the Republic has not seen anything like this election in the 225 years under [...]
By: Statia Marrocco We’ve identified an opportunity for clients to gain visibility with government customers and with other industry partners while supporting a great cause. This summer, three cyclists will ride across the USA to raise funds to improve our youth’s access to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This initiative, officially [...]
Many of us in the proposal business either haven’t heard about Category Management or are worried about what it will do to the industry. Category Management is a new initiative of GSA / OFPP designed to reform procurement. In a nutshell the idea is to divide many of the products and services [...]
Here is a story that illustrates how much difference a small amount of added evaluation points can make. In 1964 the two top golfers were Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Their average scores that year were only a small fraction of a point apart. Yet Palmer made nearly twice as much income [...]
Many of us are in a difficult situation with Alliant 2. We urgently want to win a seat at the table on this flagship contract. And the self-scoring method used for this proposal looks easy. Unfortunately a lot of recent experience shows that the self-scoring approach is deceptively difficult. Minor mistakes could [...]