House Passes FISMA Reform Bill: As part of its “Cyber Week” activities, the House passed H.R. 1163 the Federal Information Security Amendments Act of 2013 this week by a vote of 416-0. The bill, introduced by House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) amends the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) to reestablish the oversight authority of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with respect to agency information and security policies and practices. The bill adds security controls for IT systems government-wide, and requires agencies to implement continuous monitoring, conduct threat assessments and maintain secure facilities. According to the Congressional Budget Office the bill will cost $620 million over 4 years to implement. Here’s the GPO Summary.

Cybersecurity Enhancement Act Moves through House: The House also passed H.R. 756, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2013. This bill, introduced by House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul (R-TX), requires the development of a strategic plan to guide cybersecurity research and development across the federal government. In developing the plan, the bill requires that advice be solicited from federal and private stakeholders, including industry, academia, and other relevant organizations. H.R. 756 also requires the President to submit to Congress an assessment of the federal government’s cybersecurity workforce needs, including the needs of each agency and department, the skills sought by the federal government and the private sector in this field, and the capacity of institutions of higher education to meet the workforce needs. From a public sector standpoint, the legislation aims to codify NIST’s role in the development of cloud computing for the federal government by requiring that the NIST Director work in collaboration with the Federal CIO Council to continue to encourage the development of a comprehensive strategy for the use and adoption of cloud computing by federal agencies. See the bill text and summary here.

CIO Council Releases Federal Shared Services Implementation Guide: As a follow up to the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy released in May 2012, the CIO Council released the Federal Shared Services Implementation Guide on April 16, 2013 to provide information and guidance on the provisioning and consumption of shared services in the Federal Government. The guide provides agencies with high level processes and key considerations for “defining, establishing and implementing interagency shared services to help achieve organizational goals, improve performance, increase return on investment and promote innovation,” according to the released guide. The release of the implementation guide demonstrates the continued commitment of the Obama Administration to leveraging shared services government-wide as they believe there are significant cost savings opportunities to be achieved as a result. Here’s the link to the guide.

GSA releases application for FedRAMP 3PAO accreditation organizations: On April 15, 2013, GSA released the application for private sector entities to apply to take over the process by which FedRAMP Third-Party Assessment Organizations are chosen. The decision to move forward with this was made following the RFI that GSA released on the same subject back on February 15th. The idea behind this is to take some of the burden off GSA while adding bandwidth to the FedRAMP 3PAO program, with the hope of moving more cloud service providers through the process more quickly. To date there have been 17 3PAOs certified and two companies who have received their provisional authorization through the FedRAMP program. GSA stopped accepting applications for additional 3PAOs in March. Here’s the link to the FBO announcement.

DISA ready to move forward as DOD’s “cloud broker”: On April 16th DISA announced that it has the framework in place to act as the overall cloud broker for the Department of Defense responding to a task assigned by Defense CIO Teri Takai last June, which made DISA the Department’s internal cloud broker. According to this article in NextGov DISA said it has performed cybersecurity assessments of two commercial cloud providers approved under the FedRAMP program but did not name the companies. The article also points out that DISA continues to conduct security assessments to expand future cloud alternatives and is working on model contract language supporting the use of commercial cloud providers. On a side note, as has been reported, there are only two providers approved under the FedRAMP program, CGI Federal and Autonomic Resources.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.

Obama releases FY 2014 budget request: On April 10th, the Obama Administration released its FY 2014 budget request, which included a request of $82 billion for information technology. This increase was a surprise to most who expected a cut to IT spending. The request represents a modest 2.1 percent increase from the FY 2012 appropriation. Roughly half of the $82 billion goes to civilian agencies ($42.3 billion) with the remaining $39.5 billion going to Defense. The budget request also provides a window into the Administration’s IT priorities, with some $13 billion dedicated to cybersecurity. Agencies with the largest increases include VA, DHS and the Department of Education. FCW has a comprehensive report on the IT budget request, which you can read here. Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel also posted his thoughts.

GAO releases its annual report to Congress on duplication: This week GAO released its third annual report to Congress on federal programs, agencies, offices and initiatives which have duplicative goals or activities. The report highlights 31 areas where GAO believes agencies should be able to achieve greater efficiency or effectiveness, including 17 areas where they believe there is significant fragmentation, overlap or duplication and 14 where opportunities exist to achieve greater cost savings or revenue collection. In the report GAO highlights “cloud computing” as one area of focus where the federal government as a whole could achieve greater efficiency if properly leveraged. Read the report here.

Kentucky moves to the cloud: The Commonwealth of Kentucky recently completed a two year effort to move 173 school districts to a cloud based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, making the state’s education system one of the largest to move its financial management system to the cloud. Read more from GCN.

DISA Goes for a private cloud: The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) awarded a $45 million contract to Alliance Technology Group for private cloud services. The award was made without competition according this article in Washington Technology. In its justification documentation for the no-compete award, DISA described the need for an intelligence specific cloud and stated that Alliance Technology, a small business based in Hanover, Maryland, was the only company that met all of DISA’s unique requirements.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.

Momentum growing to revise federal budget process: There’s a move afoot to forego the annual budget process and replace it with a biennial budget process that would require the President to submit a new budget request at the beginning of each Congress. Backers of the idea believe it will give lawmakers more time to focus on oversight and policy areas of interest, without constantly worrying about budget deadlines. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) has introduced a bill on budget reform in the House, while Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) have one in the Senate. The Hill points out that while many prominent members of Congress have expressed support for a biennial budget, Appropriators for the most part have opposed the idea. Stay tuned.

Spending on Big Data poised to increase: According to data released by government market research firm Deltek and reported by E-Commerce Times, spending on big data is expected to increase significantly between FY 2012 and 2017 as agencies try to figure out the best ways to leverage and analyze the massive amount of data collected by government. According to Deltek, the federal government spent about $4.9 billion on big data in FY 2012 and that number is expected to grow to $5.7 billion in 2014 and to $7.2 billion by 2017. Well it’s not expected that this will be new spending, but rather the redirecting of spending from other IT areas, the compound annual growth rate of 8.2% is significant when compared to declining budgets in other areas. See the E-Commerce Times story here.

Former VA CIO Roger Baker joins Agilex: Roger Baker, the former CIO at the Department of Veterans Affairs joined Agilex, a Virginia-based mobility and technology solutions provider. Baker began his job as Chief Strategy Officer on April 1st and is expected to work to improve client service to existing Agilex customers as well as build the Agilex brand elsewhere in the federal market. At VA ,Baker led a $3.3 billion IT organization with more than 7,500 employees and has long been considered a respected leader in the federal IT space. Agilex has plans to grow from its current size to a $1 billion company over the next decade. Read Agilex’s press release.

Keegan to be acting NASA CIO: With the retirement of NASA CIO Linda Cureton on April 3rd, Richard Keegan, NASA’s Associate Deputy Administrator will step in as acting CIO until a permanent replacement is named. Keegan is an experienced federal employee who has been NASA Associate Deputy Administrator since 2010 and started his federal government career 1980. FCW has more including speculation on who might be in-line to take over as CIO on a permanent basis.

Coalfire announces Coalfire Federal to assess Federal cloud environments: Coalfire, one of the 16 certified FedRAMP 3rd Party Assessment Organizations or 3PAOS announced the formation of Coalfire Federal this week, designed to address the specific needs of agencies and government contractors as a result of FISMA and FedRAMP. Read more from Coalfire’s press release.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.

OMB pushes shared services for financial systems: It seems like just yesterday that the Office of Management and Budget was promoting the Financial Management Line of Business (FMLOB) as the solution to a myriad of problems in federal financial management, but it was actually almost 7 years ago. Well, they are back at it. The revised proposal was set forth in a memo from OMB Controller Danny Werfel earlier this week. The memo directs all executive agencies to use a shared services solution for future modernizations of core accounting systems, with limited exceptions. While the goal of promoting modernization and reducing unnecessary duplication is laudable, the same issue from 7 years ago remains and this proposal, like the FMLOB before it, appears to fail to recognize the massive economies of scale that already exist in the federal government. It makes little sense to push DHS, DOD, HHS or a litany of other huge federal departments to an outside shared services center. Large agencies already benefit from the types of economies of scale we are trying to bring about through this policy. Shared services make sense for smaller agencies that don’t have the size or the resources to manage their own systems. That’s where this policy should be focused. Read the memo here.

Proposed legislation would require businesses to disclose if they’ve been hacked: Draft legislation being circulated by the House Judiciary Committee would raise the maximum penalty for computer crimes and give businesses 14 days to disclose a security breach after they find out about it. In the case of a “major” breach, that window shrinks to 72 hours, and involves the FBI or the Secret Service. The proposed legislation applies this standard to any firm that handles personal information, except certain financial institutions and those that work under HIPAA. Nextgov has more with a link to the proposed legislation.

Interior cloud services contract cleared: GAO has denied the protest of Qwest Government Services over the award of the $35 million email and a service contract at the Department of Interior. The GAO ruling means the project, original awarded in 2012 can move ahead. Qwest had challenged the award on the grounds that the goods and services interior described in the solicitation were too vague and that the terms and conditions of the proposed contracts placed too much risk on vendors. The Comptroller General’s March 7th ruling stated that they believed Interior had provided adequate information for vendors to compete for the cloud hosting contracts and that the agency was under no obligation to limit risk for the vendors. The decision was released publicly Tuesday and Nextgov has the story.

OMB updates Portfoliostat: On Wednesday, Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel released the updated version of Portfoliostat, the Administration’s data driven management effort designed to reduce duplication in IT spending. “The upgraded process streamlines agency data collection and improves analytics, consolidates the agency’s strategic IT direction and management improvements into one central plan, and holds agencies accountable for the goals set through last year’s process,” according to Mr. Van Roekel’s blog post. Read the memo here.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.

IT Reform Passes House Committee: Last Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee passed legislation that would be the first overhaul of federal IT acquisition regulations in more than 15 years if enacted into law, when the committee voted out HR 1232, the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, introduced earlier this week by Chairman Issa. The bill would empower federal CIOs with additional authorities, including direct access to the agency head, limited budget authority and it makes the CIOs in the 16 largest federal agencies (except DoD) Presidential appointees. The legislation, while much improved from previous drafts still raises concerns for some in industry about just how many of the provisions would affect companies doing business with the federal government. FedNewsRadio has complete coverage including an interview with SIIA’s Mike Hettinger.

Congress passes full year CR funding the government through September 30th: Another budget battle ended last week as both the House and Senate passed a full year continuing resolution to fund the operations of the federal government through the end of FY 2013. The bill provides close to $1 trillion in funding for the remainder of the year and softens a handful of the deepest cuts implemented as a result of sequestration. Politico has a recap.

Debt ceiling fight on the horizon?: Just as Congress passed the full year continuing resolution last week, the other big spending fight appears to be just getting underway — how to deal with the debt ceiling. According to numerous press reports, Speaker Boehner highlighted the need to match the debt ceiling increase with dollar for dollar spending cuts, but also said his not willing to risk the full faith and credit of the federal government. More to come and here’s more from Roll Call.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.

Senate Continuing Resolution Provision Promotes IT Spending Control at USDA: A provision in the Agriculture Appropriation section of the Senate Amendment to the House passed FY 2013 Continuing Resolution would put additional authority in the hands of the USDA CIO to approve IT expenditures within the agency. The provision requires that no funds be spent on new IT systems or “significant upgrades” without the backing of the CIO and the department’s Executive Information Technology Investment Review Board and that no single IT project budgeted at over $25,000 can be funded without written approval from the agency CIO. The language also makes it clear that the provision aims to get the CIOs approval for the spending, but not to directly transfer the funds to the OCIO. If the provision led to a push within the agency for more pay-as-you-go cloud computing contracts, I think we can agree that would be a good thing for the department. The broader concern is that the low dollar threshold might slow the acquisition process for IT department-wide. See the full provision on Page 66 of the Senate Amendment.

FDCCI to become part of PortfolioStat: Since 2010 the Obama Administration has been touting the money saving impacts of its plans to close or consolidate some 1,200 of the government’s more than 2,900 active data centers. This week the Administration announced that the next version of PortfolioStat, which examines agency IT portfolios to look for areas of savings, would include efforts to eliminate and optimize data centers, essentially formally putting FDCCI within the program. FCW has more.

White House releases 10th Annual Report on the implementation of the E-Gov Act of 2002: The White House released its 10th annual report on the implementation of the E-Gov Act this week and as expected it shows continued gains in how the federal government leverages technology to improve citizen services. I continue to be amazed by how much the E-Gov Act has accomplished with how little funding actually goes to support the program. According to the report, in FY 2012, $5.75 million in the E-Gov Fund went to support the acceleration of “cross-government innovation”, including $3.75 million to promote cloud computing and security (Including FedRAMP) and $2 million to promote innovations in technology. Access the full report here.

Big Data may be the buzz word but the value for government comes from analytics: There continues to be a lot of debate in Washington around the value of big data for the federal government. We know that government today is collecting and housing massive amounts of data that may provide insight into everything from where waste is occurring in federal spending, to airline on-time arrivals, to disease outbreak. But simply collecting the data is one thing, leveraging it is another. Technology changes so quickly but are today’s policies changing fast enough to allow for the effective use of data analytics in government? FCW debates the answer to that question.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.