GovConJudicata Weekly Debrief (2/17–21)
This week's Weekly Debrief covers a variety of interesting topics, including Overstock's protest of GSA's e-marketplace, DISA's data breach, DHS waiving contracting rules for the border wall project, two cloud procurements in the intel community, and Flour calls off the sale of its government business unit.
GSA
"The General Services Administration responded Friday to an Overstock.com protest of the agency’s commercial e-marketplace solicitation, which could delay pilots until April — assuming revisions aren’t ordered. Overstock filed its pre-award bid protest with the Government Accountability Office on Jan. 15 arguing some of the solicitation’s terms are ambiguous and restrict competition."
DISA
FifthDomain – How many users were affected by the DISA breach?
"A breach of a system hosted by the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Department of Defense’s primary IT support agency, affected 'approximately 200,000' users after a malicious actor may have gained access to names and Social Security numbers, according to a Pentagon spokesman. Chuck Prichard, a DoD spokesman, said there is 'no evidence to suggest that any of the potentially compromised [personally identifiable information] was misused.' DISA is sending letters notifying potentially affected users, in line with agency policy."
Defense
GovExec – Nothing’s ‘Irreversible,’ But the Pentagon’s New Bureaucracies Aim to Come Close
"Tucked in the last sentence of a two-page January memo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper coined an unofficial tagline for the 2021 budget request: 'irreversible implementation' of the National Defense Strategy, the two-year-old vision that predicts great power competition between the United States and rivals China and Russia. Listening to top defense officials discuss the $741 billion budget request, one might surmise the Pentagon‘s spending priorities — guided by that defense strategy — are set in stone, inalterable by Congress or a new presidential administration. They’re not."
DHS
DefenseOne – DHS to Waive Contracting Rules to Build Border Wall Faster
"On Tuesday, the Trump administration said it is going to waive federal contracting laws to speed construction of the border wall between the United States and Mexico. The Homeland Security Department is using a 2005 law to waive 10 procurement regulations and allow the government to build 177 miles of border wall faster in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas."
Intelligence Community
"2020 is shaping up to be a big year for the intelligence community and its efforts to take cloud modernization to the next level. The goal is to develop a clearer narrative and “north star” for the IC’s cloud modernization strategy, John Sherman, IC chief information officer, said Wednesday at AFCEA NOVA’s IC IT Day in Herndon, Virginia. The IC published an official cloud strategy last year, which consolidated nearly 300 priorities from 17 different agencies into one document."
Industry
GCR – Fluor calls off sale of government business unit, reveals SEC investigation
"American engineer Fluor has called off plans to sell its government contracting business, which it announced last September as part of a plan to raise $1bn. It has also delayed the release of its full-year financial report following a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into past reports. The move to sell the government arm was part of a restructuring plan devised after the Texas-based company withdrew its profit forecast for 2019 and revealed a surprise second quarter net loss of $555m on revenue down 16% to $4.1bn."
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