The Fed Mission Success Round Up: Acquisition, Cybersecurity, Modernization and More in Federal Agencies

Weekly News Round Up
Written By Fareeha Khan

Welcome to the Fed Mission Success News Round Up brought to you by Makpar. Each week, we will provide a summary of actionable news and insights to help aid in overall mission success for Federal agency IT decision-makers and influencers.

GSA’s New Blanket Purchase Agreement Focuses on Scalable Cloud Solutions

The General Services Administration wants to be the prime destination or federal agencies’ cloud solutions. Now it’s launching a new blanket purchase agreement specifically for cloud technology.

GSA Pauses Polaris Contract to Consider Merits of Pre-Award Protest

The General Services Administration halted the award of the $15 billion Polaris governmentwide acquisition contract while it assesses the merits of a pre-award challenge launched last month over how the prior experience of small businesses is treated as part of the solicitation.

SBA Adds More Industries Eligible for Women-Owned Business Federal Contract Program

The industries being added to the list are part of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), with the number of industries eligible for the WOSB Program rising from 444 to 759. That is an increase of 70%, with the changes effective immediately.

IRS Awards $70 Million Contract for Digital Modernization

The contract lays a foundation for machine learning and automation within the IRS’s business operations.

State Department Announces First Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy

The U.S. Department of State announced the formation of its first Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, an office emphasizing the digital modernization in the Federal sphere that is a key mission within the Biden administration.

Third Time’s A Charm: US FDA Reissues Cybersecurity Draft Guidance

After significant stakeholder feedback, the US Food and Drug Administration decided instead of finalizing a 2018 premarket cybersecurity draft guidance, it would reissue a whole new draft guidance with significant changes. One of those changes includes asking manufacturers to provide a software bill of materials (SBOM) instead of a cybersecurity bill of materials (CBOM) which was a major sticking point for the MedTech industry.

IRS Digitizing Tax Form 709 With New Tech

The pilot program, dubbed the Pilot IRS Solution Challenge, will be run by the agency’s Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management Office, and focus on reducing the amount of paper and manual filing used to process taxes. Officials will work on moving tax Form 709 from hard copies to digital versions. Form 709 reports asset transfers subject to the Federal gift tax or generation-skipping transfer taxes. 

VA, DOD Electronic Health Record System Suffers Nationwide Outage

The electronic health record system used to manage patient data for the Defense Department, Coast Guard and a few Veterans Affairs Department medical centers went offline nationwide for almost three hours Wednesday, preventing clinicians from updating and, for a time, accessing medical records.

Biden’s Management Agenda Update Adds Metrics to Workforce Goals

The Biden administration issued its first update to the president’s management agenda since it was released last November, establishing metrics for most of the document’s goals and making individual officials responsible for overseeing their implementation.

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