GovConJudicata Weekly Debrief (5/8–12)
This week's Weekly Debrief covers DHS's enterprise cloud plan, SBA seeks to grow small business contracting pool, NIST's revised standards for CUI, DoD and the revolving door, and DARPA's cyber tech for password problem.
Homeland Security
"The Department of Homeland Security's plan to bring enterprise cloud services to its expansive and diverse mission sets is, for the moment, on standby. After offering initial details of a proposed 10-year, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract vehicle known as Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Provider Suite—ECLIPS for short—at a November industry day, DHS officials have been quietly assessing their procurement strategy with only two updates in the past six months."
Small Business
"The Small Business Administration expects the federal government to meet upcoming targets for more of its contract spending to go to small companies, but is trying to reverse a significant decline in the number of small firms actually doing business in the federal marketplace. The total number of federal contracting dollars going to small businesses keeps going up year over year. More than $154 billion in federal contracts went to small businesses in fiscal 2021 — about 27% of all government contract spending that year."
NIST
"The National Institute of Standards and Technology has published new draft guidelines for the protection of sensitive unclassified information. When implemented, the revised guidelines will govern how federal agencies handle the type of information known as controlled unclassified information (CUI)."
Defense
"President Joe Biden will soon nominate a new chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By all accounts, the president has excellent candidates for the role. When the nominee appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he will field questions about the nation’s most pressing national security challenges. The nominee should also address an urgent question about public integrity at the Pentagon — the revolving door. This is a chance for the nominee to set a high ethical standard by agreeing in advance that he will not immediately jump from a position of public trust to a lucrative job working on behalf of a defense contractor or a foreign adversary."
"Are you tired of having to change all your passwords frequently? So is the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is trying to come up with a solution to the annoying problem."
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