GSA Approves First CSP Under FedRAMP: While we were away, GSA met its self-imposed deadline to approve at least one cloud service provider under the FedRAMP program by the end of 2012. On December 27, 2012, GSA announced the first provisional authorization under the FedRAMP program was awarded to Autonomic Resources, a small, North Carolina-based government cloud provider, also on the Infrastructure as a Service and Email as a Service BPAs. The FedRAMP certification was conducted by Veris Group, one of 15 GSA-approved third party assessors (3PAOs). GSA reports more than 50 applications under the FedRAMP program so the expectation is that we will see more approvals throughout 2013. Nextgov has a story on the first certification and Federal News Radio one on the outlook for more approvals.
House Oversight and Government Reform Announces New Subcommittee Chairmen, Reorganization of Subcommittee Structure: In what appears to be a reprioritization of the committee’s agenda the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced a new structure this week, which included eliminating two subcommittees and combining the jurisdictions of the Government Organization and the Technology Subcommittees into a “super-subcommittee” to oversee “Government Operations”. The new subcommittee will be chaired by Rep. John Mica (R-FL), a longtime member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the immediate past Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Rep. James Lankford (R-OK), who had been the chairman of the Technology Subcommittee moves over to chair the Energy Policy Subcommittee, while Rep. Platts (R-PA) who chaired Government Organization retired from Congress. See the Committee’s press release here.
Fiscal Cliff Avoided, Uncertainty Looms for Feds and Contractors: For the first time in over 50 years, the Congress was in session on New Year’s Day and managed to get some work done. As I flipped back and forth between the Orange Bowl and C-Span’s coverage of the floor debate, the House passed the Senate version of legislation to avoid the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for most Americans, while delaying the “sequester” for another two months. This sets up a good deal of uncertainty for federal employees and government contractors, who are unsure about how to proceed given the looming sequester cuts, as well as the expiration of the continuing resolution and a potential fight over the debt ceiling. It could get interesting. Federal News Radio has a story.
GovWin Releases Big Data Spending Outlook: GovWin has a new (free) report out highlighting the growing demand for big data solutions in the federal government. According to the report, spending on big data and related solutions was just under $5 billion in the last fiscal year, but is expected to top $7 billion by 2017. Download the report here.
Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.