Quick Hits

Polaris extended one last time (maybe).

It’s a never ending solicitation! GSA extended the deadline for Polaris. Proposals for the Small Business and Woman-Owned Small Business categories are now due on September 23. Also, GSA recently released the pre-solicitation notices for the SDVOSB and the HUBZone track.
Read more

GAO says “nope” to BAH’s request to reconsider a ruling.

Backstory: GAO previously sustained Serco, Inc.’s protests against the issuance of a task order to BAH for professional support services for the Deputy Commander for Surface Warfare. Serco argued that BAH had improper competitive advantage that resulted from the employment by BAH’s teaming partners of two recently-retired Navy captains who had access to non-public, competitively useful information. Furthermore, they claimed that BAH had held meetings with contracting officers prior to the release of the RFP. BAH said, “Nuh uh, look again! Your decision was ‘tainted by errors of fact and law.'” To which GAO recently replied, “nope, we’re sticking with our decision thank you very much.”
Read more

ICYMI Snippets:

• Did you see this? DHS’s Procurement Office has a series of Youtube videos about all things purchasing. In Episode #19, they discuss procurement innovation techniques, citing an example from FEMA to illustrate their topic.

Top Defense & Aerospace

The White House plans to nominate the DODs Operational Testing and Evaluation Director Nickolas Guertin to be the service’s next acquisition head. Guertin was sworn into his role as the director of operational test and evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense last December after being confirmed by the Senate. Before taking on this position, Guertin did applied research on software-relient and cyber-physical systems at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute.
Read more

The Army wants smarter sensors to ease soldiers’ cognitive burden.

The Army wants to make sure commanders and soldiers get data in near real-time. So the service’s shop for intelligence and electronic warfare is focusing on developing tools to do that without trawling through a morass of information. In the past, Army senior leaders weren’t very concerned about electronic warfare, according to Mark Kitz, who leads the Army’s Program Executive Office Intelligence Electronic Warfare and Sensors. But that’s changing, in part due to world events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kitz’s top priorities are developing prototypes for long-range sensing as well as “smart sensors that can offload some of the cognitive burden that we have on our analysts.”Those sensors would be able to aggregate data and deliver “smart suggestions” or “hypotheses or answers in that data.”
Read more

ICYMI Snippets

• Space Force is building a ground station in Alaska.
• Got Challenge Coins? Someone (a former DOD CISO) is looking for some to put in her background.
• DOD to roll out new online marketplace to speedily buy AI-aligned tech.

Defense Contract Awards

• Raytheon wins $972M order for Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile.
• ECS wins $53M recompete supporting USTRANSCOM System.
• Tribalco, LLC, a small business, was awarded a $31M fixed price contract for radio systems and services from ACOE.
• L3Harris Awarded $104M Navy equipment, engineering support contract modification.

Follow the Defense Leaders

• Trip Ferguson is added as COO at BlueHalo.
• Kevin Steen takes helm as OneWeb Technologies CEO.
• Nickolas Guertin nominated by the WH as Navy Acquisition Chief

Follow the Defense Job Openings

• NASA is looking for a Director of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
• DOD’s Military Treatment Facilities are looking for a Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist.

Did someone forward you this email? 
Tell them thanks, buy them a beer, & join the GovBrew Crew! 

Top Intel Community

The OIG at the Department of State said that the agency has not been complying with the Geospatial Data Act of 2018 (GDA) in its latest report from late August. The GDA requires that all federal agencies collect and preserve geospatial data and make it available to the general public and encourage the use of this data and promote the betterment of all federal agencies and their partners. “The Department has not fully complied with all responsibilities, in part, because of an inadequate internal control environment. Specifically, the Department lacks dedicated funding to facilitate compliance with its GDA responsibilities. Additionally, the Department does not have adequate control activities, such as documented policies and procedures,” stated the report.
Read more

NGA maps out digital priorities for GEOINT.

The NGA’s Source Operations and Management Directorate is moving to a more digitally based world of mapping and information to support the key military missions and other governmental efforts. The Source Directorate’s operational priorities of leveraging—commercial geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT; assured positioning, navigation, timing and targeting; integrated collections; and modernized GEOINT dissemination—are grounded in the agency’s effort to construct a larger digital environment. To procure commercial GEOINT, the Source Directorate harnesses a range of contract vehicles such as “bailment agreements, no cost contracts, CRADAs [Cooperative Research and Development Agreements], the InQTel work program and other contracting authorities” to get access to or providing our vendors access to data as required in the easiest, fastest ways possible.
Read more

ICMY Snippets

• DHS is testing tech that could bring emergency alerts to vehicle screens.
• House lawmakers seek improved intelligence analysis of foreign military will to fight

Intel Contracts Awards

• Noblis wins a patent for a system that simulates security checkpoint environments.
• KBR wins $4.8B USAF National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) technical intelligence contract with Xandar JV.

Follow the Intel Leaders

• Ramona Watts-Sutton is a new Head of Contracting Activity at the DO.
• Doc McConnell took a position as Director of the Federal Enterprise Improvement Team at CISA.
• Office of the National Cyber Director has announced new appointees. These include: Nicholos Leiserson and Joyce Corell.
• Austin Y. Wang is now VP of the MITRE national security intelligence center.
• Joe Greer former Technical Director, Defense Intelligence US Gov is transitioning to be a CTO at (TBD Oct 1st).

Follow the Intel Job Openings

• DHS is looking for a CISO for the ICE division.
• DIA seeking a Chief of Operations.
• NSA looking for an Attorney Fellow.
• NGA looking for a Data Engineer.

Top Civilian

“Whoopsie-poopsie!” IRS admits to exposing confidential taxpayer info on its website.

The IRS earlier this year published confidential information about taxpayers on its website before finding the error and removing the data. The data related to organizations that submit the business tax return document Form 990-T. The inadvertent disclosures included names, contact information and financial information about income within those IRAs but did not include SSNs, full individual income information or other data that could affect a taxpayer’s credit. “The IRS recently discovered that some machine-readable (XML) Form 990-T data made available for bulk download section on the TEOS should not have been made public,” the IRS said. Cringe!
Read more

NASA unveils $1.3B IT Draft-RFP.

NASA has released the draft solicitation for an eight-year, $1.3 billion task order that would consolidate up to 10 existing contracts. This will be a large business award and some of the notable incumbents on existing contracts include SAIC and GDIT. Mori Associates holds a communication and outreach contract as a large business. Small businesses hold the other remaining seven contracts to be consolidated into the NASA Consolidated Applications and Platform Services procurement. The draft request for proposals includes a requirement for subcontracting 32 percent of the work to small businesses. The agency will compete NCAPS via the General Services Administration’s Alliant 2 vehicle.
Read more

ICMY Snippets

• Appointments to the National Infrastructure Advisory Council have been announced.
• $1.4 billion in railroad grants are available, with at least 25% going to projects in rural areas.
• GSA is seeking feedback from the private sector on existing application security testing capabilities for Federal agencies.

Civilian Contracts Awards

• Sorry for all that time I spent on that RFP, boss! IRS cancels Digital Support Services solicitation, citing changing agency needs.

Follow the Civilian Leaders

• GSA’s Dave Zvenyach to exit his position as Director of Technology Transformation Services.
• Sudhanshu “Sid” Sinha is the new CTO at Social Security Administration.
• Jay Ribeiro joins USDOT at CISO and Associate CIO.
• Beckie Koonge has a new job as Assistant CIO at National Weather Service.
• FDA Office of Digital Transformation announces Jess Berrellez as Executive Officer and Farhan Khan as the Director of the Office of Technology and Delivery in the Office of Information Management and Technology.

Follow the Civilian Job Openings

• FDA is looking for a Deputy Office Director.
• The House of Representatives is looking for a CISO.
• FDIC is looking for a Deputy CIO (Temp position)

See what’s brewing in GovCon throughout the day.  
Follow GovBrew on social media. 

GovCon M&A Corner

Blue Delta takes investment in Edgewater Federal Solutions.

Blue Delta provides growth capital to entrepreneurs in the GovCon space who want to grow without selling control of their companies. They have invested in 21 companies and 10 of which have been acquired. They just recently signed an agreement with Edgewater Federal Solutions a company that provides enterprise IT, cybersecurity, systems engineering, and data science and analytics for Government customers including the DOE and NIH.
Read more

SPA acquires the operations research & cyber analysis division of Metron.

Systems Planning & Analysis, Inc. (“SPA”), an Arlington Capital portfolio company, announced that it has acquired the Operations Research & Cyber Analysis (OCRA) division of Metron. ORCA specializes in operations research, systems of systems engineering, model-based system engineering, and digital engineering processes for the Navy and other marquee national security customers. After closing, Jeff Monroe, Coni Ratonel and Matt Norton will continue to manage ORCA as a division within SPA’s Naval, Nuclear and Critical Infrastructure sector, led by Vice Admiral (Ret.) Terry Benedict.
Read more