Nick Wakeman, editor in chief of Washington Technology, is getting an earful from readers about a recent blog entry he posted about the fate of governmentwide acquisition contracts.
Wakeman’s objective was simple: To defend an article he wrote (specifically, a headline) from a speech by GSA’s Ed O’Hare.
In the speech, O’Hare noted that GSA planned to focus its energies on two primary GWACs, Alliant and Alliant Small Business, as well as some smaller ones aimed at specific socioeconomic categories. O’Hare also noted that GSA’s GWAC business might eventually be merged with its Schedules business.
The team here judged that speech newsworthy, so Nick filed his story for Washington Technology, with the headline “GSA to phase out GWAC program” (while FCW picked it up, using the headline “GSA may end GWAC era”).
GSA took issue with the articles, and especially with the headlines, saying we misconstrued what O’Hare said. Fair enough (although it was strange they complained to other publications, not to editors here).
So Nick asked Wash Tech readers: What do you think? Here are excerpts from their comments. You can read the full blog post and its comments here.
* After reading your story, perhaps a more accurate title would have been “GSA to phase out some older GWAC programs" or "GSA to consolidate GWAC programs." If a reader, who was not at the event, and who is not knowledgeable about the topic, only read the headline, he or she might inadvertently infer that all GWACs were being phased out.
* The reduction in the number of GSA’s IT GWACs is not new news. Since 2004 numerous specialty GWACs were sun-setted. The current group of GSA GWACs is quite small compared to nine years ago. Interestingly, over the same time period, more other-agency-managed GWACs and MACs have been awarded. GSA is managing overlap among its IT acquisition programs, but no one is managing overlap and duplication across government.
* GSA began using more GWAC's when it was criticized for using commercial items procedures before FAR Part 12 allowed T&M for commercial items. GSA would have never had so many GWAC's if not for that fact.
* GSA has got too many contracts that do the same thing. Alliant ain’t no better than bidding something on the schedules, 'cepting you have to let 60 vendors throw they hat in the ring.
* I think every small business needs to carefully follow this and thus benefit from the real value proposition for the GSA Schedules alternative as a GWAC.
* Shakespeare wrote a play, "Much Ado About Nothing": It seems appropriate to the circumstance. The end of the era started 4 years ago when Alliant was but a hoped-for award. There may have been a delay but the end game was never in doubt.
* GWAC era ending? Yeah, in ten years when GSA "lets Alliant expire."
* Consolidation of GSA contracts, including GWACs, is appropriate portfolio management. But that don't get headlines.
* I was there. I heard what Mr. O'Hare said and I think Nick reported accurately. I think it is positive that we in industry will not have to pursue many GSA offered GWACs just not to be left out.
* Mr Wakeman, you appear to be trying to generate controversy out of your own spin. Here are some facts: The Department of Homeland Security, NASA, and CECOM are not funded by the taxpayer to buy services for the Department of Agriculture or the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It is not their mission. So why waste resources there? GSA is funded to support the entire federal government. It is their mission. Any federal contracting officer can use Alliant to buy IT Solutions. The vehicle is not GSA's, it's the federal government's. It's better than [its] predecessor contracts from a government and taxpayer point of view. This is a very positive story. Why not report it?
Posted on Jun 30, 2009 at 11:54 AM2 comments
Social media might be way behind the mindset of the acquisition community, says one reader.
We recently ran a story about how the acquisition community might have an easier time attracting young, bright employees if it were to use social media and other technology to make the work more efficient and more appealing (see story here).
Mordecai Labovitz is skeptical. Here is what he wrote:
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I was reviewing your summary of Shay Assad's testimony and the data base DOD wants to assemble. In a more rudimentary fashion, the Navy used to maintain files of negotiation memorandums covering every contractor. Welcome to the 21st century when we have come up with the idea to do this using a database! For the last couple of years I have been suggesting that rather than adding on top of what already exists, it might be wise to assemble a "Council of Greybeards" who would be willing to work for free (what a concept) to come together to look for the simple solutions. They do exist. We are trying way too hard. In medicine, they scrape away the bad part before making a repair. In acquisition, we pile on top of "the bad part." This is largely because we don't know what is broken so we don't know what needs the repair.
Posted on Jun 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM4 comments
To some FCW readers, the idea of allowing military personnel to access social-media sites at work is nothing less than a national security disaster waiting to happen.
They make compelling arguments -- so much so that one might wonder if the best option might be for the Defense Department to take its cue from NASA and develop homegrown social-networking technology and limit its use to service members and employees. In this scheme, commercial social media sites -- Facebook, Twitter, et al -- would be limited to public outreach campaigns.
Two comments in particular seem irrefutable. But is that case? Or is there an argument to be made for allowing military personnel at all levels to use Facebook, Twitter and similar sites at work? If so, we would love to hear it.
Here are excerpts from those the comments. You can read more here (scroll down and click on “View all comments”).
* I was at a company in Sunnyvale, California many years ago. Without having direct access to the plant buildings but just by hanging out in bars, meeting folks in the park, monitoring telephones, watching where folks parked and walked to, a small group identified a building next to us that we thought was not important as being a highly classified program, what they were working on, and as I recall, some more items that were too classified for our briefing (we were only at the secret level after all). Social networks makes the prep work for data gather[ing] so much simpler, as many folks forget that spying is not the movies where one guy gets the data, it is many people gathering a lot of information, sifting, gathering more based on the sifting until a pattern develops. Even personalized license plates of the people who worked in the building mentioned was part of the datum that lead to the identification of what was going on. As I recall, it was a small group of people who were tasked to find out what was going on at the plant that might be interesting, so they had 30,000+ people to winnow through to find the ones that were useful. And we did not have the Internet system back then like we do now where your laundry is hung out to dry. Americans are overly trusting, lazy and ignorant when it comes to what other entities want to do -- just ask some folks who live closer to threats than we do.
* Balance is indeed a fundamental concern, and work must certainly “get done,” but some of the comments on this article indicate a blithe naivete. When the intelligence operative can identify and establish personal contact with someone in possession of potentially valuable information, he or she has surmounted a difficult obstacle. Of course the target won't be reviewing top secret stuff at Starbuck's, but the social environment is a perfect place in which to initiate a personal relationship that a skillful operative may be able to develop into data source. In fact, if the operative is truly skillful, the target may not even realize that valuable clues are being divulged. Much of the tradecraft of intelligence operatives is seemingly trivial, and it is very valuable to the operative to maintain that profile. This same kind of self-assured know-it-all-ism is what led some people to pooh-pooh the identification of Valerie Plame. But just the knowledge of who she was and where she had worked likely endangered or even condemned some of her sources. The key to security is informed vigilance, and to quote Boorstin, “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
Posted on Jun 25, 2009 at 11:19 AM0 comments
FCW readers are sharply divided about the wisdom of allowing military personnel to access social-media sites through official networks.
We received a raft of comments on two stories we published: “Army gives soldiers access to Twitter, Facebook” (June 11); and “DOD: Be wary of social media's 'loose lips'” (June 22), with readers generally taking a hard line on one side or the other.
The pro-social media argument is captured nicely in this comment:
* It's a matter of balance. Perfect security is likely to mean perfect stasis. The flux of shared ideas and critique can be key to the development of innovation. Even security people will get significant benefit from discussion of concepts and possibilities contained in various reports and snippets of information. The real craft lies in balancing these needs.
-- Arty
The anti-social media position, which is more popular so far, is stated elegantly by this reader:
* Some of the comments on this article indicate a blithe naivete. When the intelligence operative can identify and establish personal contact with someone in possession of potentially valuable information, he or she has surmounted a difficult obstacle. Of course, the target won't be reviewing top secret stuff at Starbuck's, but the social environment is a perfect place in which to initiate a personal relationship that a skillful operative may be able to develop into data source. In fact, if the operative is truly skillful, the target may not even realize that valuable clues are being divulged. Much of the tradecraft of intelligence operatives is seemingly trivial, and it is very valuable to the operative to maintain that profile.
-- Anonymous
Perhaps that reader makes the most persuasive argument, but I wouldn’t say he or she is representative of like-minded readers. They are far more outraged by the idea.
Here are excerpts of just some of the comments we received. Let us know what you think by posting a comment here or on the stories linked above.
* Yea, who needs security ...
-- Anonymous
* While I admit I don't work in military operations and don't know how encumbering the protocol is, I'd rather it be that way -- on the federal side, protocol is something that gets followed on a whim.
-- Anonymous
* Back in the 70s and early 80s the big social tool for many of us was the CB radio in the car. I was in a special forces group at the time and we had an exercise in which we were told in advance that the opposition would be doing 'spy work' against us and to do due-diligence in all our communications and talking in the chow hall. To make a long story short, we did not do very well. The obvious stuff was okay, but what gave much of our planning away was idle chatter on the CB. Nothing any one person said was important, but taken in aggregate, it gave a good picture of our ops plan.
-- RayW
* Perfect security is no operation at all. Our counter-intelligence people always assume the enemy has unlimited resources and that the way to guard against it is to ensure our own operations are so encumbered by protocol to an extent the enemy wish he could cause! If it were up to these security people the U.S. would not export 50 percent of what it does, and our military would communicate very little with each other, there would be no free press and no Internet. We could start by being honest about the fact that most information marked sensitive is not at all. Let us move forward into the new age. Shall we? Our enemy will.
-- M
* The question not raised is this: Does the benefit of the Intel Professionals group on Linkin, which allows them to discover each other and collaborate, outweigh the OPSEC threat?
-- joemaz
* All this information is freely available from government and related association public sources, not just social-networking sites. You can look up bios on Defenselink.mil, see presentations from conferences posted online by the government, etc. The information has always been there; it is just the ability to aggregate data more quickly that has changed with online sources.
-- Anonymous
* Perhaps the answer would be a super secure social network for governmental activities and agencies. Outsiders could be let in on an "as required" basis but taken off as soon as the need for them to be there goes away. Access could be tightly monitored and "just because I want them on the network" would not be a valid reason.
-- Anonymous
* Even that may not be a reliable method unless you can control access to the network connecting to the super secure social network. All it takes is access to one logon ID, and you can assume the identity of that person. Despite all of the encumbrances it would bring, the answer may be closing the military's unclassified network to the outside world, and having a separate, unclassified system for Internet access.
-- Anonymous
* If any of my soldiers are using your tax money to play on Facebook, it is because I have failed as their leader and fail you.
-- SFC, US
* If leaders instill in their soldiers good sense of operational security, what's the problem in trusting the soldiers with a Web site? After all, we give them automatic weapons and trust them to police third-world countries where they can't even speak the language. Don't be so paranoid, and have a little more faith in our troops.
-- Romanandpan
* This is a good decision that will have the intended effect of getting out the word about all the great things that the Army and other military services are doing to make the world a better place. It will assist commands, staffs and soldiers in collaborating and coordinating. The unintended affects will always plague us. But we trust our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to make good choices and to protect our sensitive information. Kudos to our visionary leadership.
-- LTC Mark J. Grgurich MacDill AFB
* This is not good ... get ready for the leak investigations to begin ...
-- Anonymous
* Great Idea! What possible risks could there be with warfighters posting their minute-by-minute activities to a semi-public site?
-- Anonymous
Posted on Jun 23, 2009 at 1:27 PM4 comments