Under the single-award contract, called T-Cloud, SAIC will support Treasury’s adoption of a multi-cloud environment as a cloud broker, centralizing management of services from major cloud providers like Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, with the opportunity to onboard others.

“T-Cloud will enable the Treasury Department to rapidly and securely adopt a modern, flexible and cost-effective approach to utilizing and consuming data in the cloud,” said Bob Genter, SAIC’s president of defense and civilian sector. “SAIC is honored to be the Treasury Department’s cloud services digital transformation partner.”

SAIC will also provide services for business operations, technical, security, network, service desk, subject matter expert support, and transition services, according to a news release.

Treasury has been planning out T-Cloud since as far back as 2019, when it introduced a cloud roadmap developed by its Office of the Chief Information Officer in collaboration with the IRS, procurement offices and other stakeholders.

“At present, Treasury bureaus are individually moving forward with cloud solutions, and have implemented a number of cloud solutions to address unique mission priorities requiring agile and elastic approaches, often through duplicative contract actions,” that roadmap explained. “This scattered approach, while offering varying degrees of agility for individual customers, ignores opportunities for cost reduction through service deduplication and consolidated procurement actions.”

The contract has a seven-year period of performance.

Treasury isn’t the only large department to award a major cloud contract recently. The Department of the Interior last week awarded Peraton a $1 billion cloud contract. And, the Department of Agriculture is plotting a similar departmentwide contract for cloud adoption.

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The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday said in a summary of the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill that it wants to eliminate funding for the TMF in fiscal 2024 as part of its efforts to “cut wasteful spending” across the federal government.

The Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government conducted its markup of the bill Thursday morning. The bill also seeks to ensure “agencies return to pre-COVID telework policies and levels.”

The Biden administration requested $200 million for the TMF in its 2024 budget request earlier this year, compared to the $300 it requested for fiscal 2023 — which resulted in just $50 million of additional funding, despite the urging of some top lawmakers to fund the program at the requested levels.

It’s been common since the creation of the TMF for fiscally conservative lawmakers to try to zero it out.

Speaking with FedScoop earlier this year on the fifth anniversary of the TMF, Federal CIO Clare Martorana told FedScoop the fund has proven itself as an alternative model to drive modernization that delivers near-term impact in the federal government outside of the otherwise snaillike two-year budget cycle.

“There’s some data out in the marketplace done by large consulting companies that talk about the failure rate of IT projects. And it’s pretty significant — projects over $6 million with a significant failure rate. And that’s not acceptable to us. And as technologists, we know how to do this differently. And the way that you do it differently is the way that we’ve designed TMF,” Martorana explained during an interview on the Daily Scoop podcast.

Despite the potential absence of funding for fiscal 2024, the General Services Administration-managed TMF still has money to spend from the $1 billion injection it received as part of the American Rescue Plan in 2021.

So far, the fund has invested more than $700 million across 38 IT modernization projects at 22 federal agencies since it was launched five years ago. It has more than $786 million remaining to spend, according to federal spending data.

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Back in 2019, the aviation agency announced a new program called the Privacy International Civil Aviation Organization aircraft address, or PIA, program. The system is designed so that some aircraft can fly under a temporary vehicle address that isn’t directly assigned to the owner registered in the Civil Aircraft Registry — theoretically, anonymizing the vehicle — while also remaining trackable by the FAA, according to the agency.

“Real-time tracking of the geographic location of a specific aircraft is possible, generating privacy concerns for the aircraft operator community,” explains the FAA on its website. The agency adds that PIA is “limiting the extent to which the aircraft can be quickly and easily identified by non-U.S.government entities, while ensuring there is no adverse effect on [air traffic control] services.”

Notably, this is the same program that SpaceX tried to use to prevent the tracking of CEO Elon Musk’s private jet. Vice reported earlier this year that employees at the company did not use the system properly, which eventually enabled the viral (and subsequently banned) Twitter account @ElonJet, which tracked the whereabouts of the billionaire’s aircraft.

The PIA program has received support from organizations that represent the users and manufacturers of private jets. Others, though, see the ability to track these vehicles as a source of transparency and accountability for some of the world’s wealthiest people.

Nevertheless, the PIA program was originally anticipated to be transferred to a third-party provider or providers by the middle of 2020, according to several reports from aviation publications at the time. Jens Henning, the vice president of operations at the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, an aviation trade organization, also said that the FAA had originally indicated the transition would take place in 2020. 

As of now, that transition hasn’t happened. The FAA would not comment on the frequency of user issues with the program in “the interest of privacy.” The agency did not provide a comment on why the transition is running behind by the time of publication.

“The PIA program is currently in Phase 1, with the FAA operating, monitoring and maintaining the service,” an FAA spokesperson told FedScoop. “We are working to transition the service to Phase 2, where a third-party service provider or providers would operate, monitor and maintain it.”

The FAA added: “The Privacy International Civil Aviation Organization (PIA/ICAO) Address (PIA) program will continue without any interruption to users while the FAA investigates the feasibility of transitioning it to a third party. The FAA will base its decision on demand, final requirements and FAA needs.”

Henning, from GAMA, said that the PIA program is one of two systems focused on addressing the privacy of these aircraft. The other is the Limited Aircraft Data Displayed program, a system established back before the PIA program that filters out some information about aircraft before it’s shared with third parties that work with the FAA.

“[T]he aircraft identification is transmitted through ADS-B enabled Mode S transponders to any ground-based receiver — government operated and private networks. This basic aircraft transponder functionality logic was developed in the 1970s and is still core to how an aircraft is identified with a unique address,” said Henning. “The ground receivers are internet-connected, which means an aircraft can be tracked online, which raises security concerns for many aircraft owners as a result of their real-time location being known.”

If and when the FAA transitions the service, there are companies that already provide third-party call signs, and which could serve as providers of the PIA service, according to Henning. Still, this approach may not necessarily be a perfect solution for people looking to completely hide their jets, according to researchers who’ve found that — with enough effort — these vehicles can still be tracked.

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The IRS is currently accepting comments from industry on its proposed plan to enlist a managed service provider to update its Integrated Enterprise Portals (IEP) platform through an acquisition, called IEP 2.0.

The IRS refers to these portals as the “front door” to its most vital IT systems, calling them in draft solicitation documents the “primary gateway for external users – including taxpayers, third-party tax preparers, and other business partners – and internal users – IRS employees and contractors with staff-like access – to access IRS business services.”

In essence, it’s a hybrid cloud platform that IRS manages privately to support its most mission-critical services, particularly those that involve peak tax season activities like the agency’s Modernized eFile and Integrated Customer Communications Environment applications.

The volume of traffic to the more than 90 websites and services connected to the portals is staggering: “In 2021, IRS IEP websites served over 11.4 billion page views to 660 million site visitors globally (during 2 billion sessions),” the agency said.

With the IEP 2.0 contract, the IRS wants to partner with a managed service provider to “deliver, operate, and manage the IEP services and to evolve IEP services as needed to support the changing dynamics of the many requirements due to Congressional mandates placed on the IRS.”

Accenture is the incumbent on the preceding IEP contract, which has a total value of $692 million and was awarded in 2017.

The new contract, with a proposed $1.7 billion ceiling, will likely be a single-award contract with a five-year base period of performance, and three one-year options to extend.

Interested vendors have until June 30 to submit comments on the proposed acquisition.

The IEP modernization comes as the IRS, fresh off of an $80 billion injection of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, has leaned into becoming a more digital and modern organization. Earlier this year, it awarded spots on its $2.6 billion Enterprise Development, Operations Services, which will bring more than 400 legacy IRS systems under one contract to modernize existing systems, build out analytics and improve cybersecurity.

Meanwhile, the tax agency is also exploring a direct file option for taxpayers in forthcoming tax seasons. The IRS in May tested a prototype of a free tax filing system that could allow Americans to file tax returns digitally and free of charge.

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In its 13th annual duplication and cost savings report, GAO identified 100 new matters and recommendations in 35 new topic areas for Congress or federal agencies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government. Some of the biggest potential savings identified in the report come from improvements to Medicare payments within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), nuclear waste disposal within the Energy Department, Navy shipbuilding, and IRS enforcement efforts.

“Congressional and agency action in these areas has yielded about $600 billion in cost savings and revenue increases. Addressing remaining matters and recommendations could save tens of billions more dollars and improve government services,” the GAO said in a summary of its report released this week.

The GAO issues annual reports on federal programs, agencies, offices, and initiatives that have duplicative goals or activities and also identifies additional opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness that could result in cost savings or enhanced revenue collection.

Fragmentation refers to instances when more than one federal agency (or more than one organization within an agency) is involved in the same broad mission and opportunities exist to improve service delivery and efficiency.  

Overlap occurs when multiple agencies or programs have similar goals, engage in similar activities or strategies to achieve them, or target similar beneficiaries. 

Duplication is when two or more agencies or government programs are engaged in the same activities or provide the same service to the same beneficiaries.

Some of the largest areas of financial benefit to the federal government and taxpayers from the GAO report include:

• Medicare Payments by Place of Service: Congress should consider directing the Secretary of HHS to equalize payment rates between settings for evaluation and management office visits and other services that the secretary deems appropriate, which could create financial benefits of $141 billion over 10 years, per Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data.
• Nuclear Waste Disposal: The Department of Energy may be able to reduce certain risks by adopting alternative approaches to treating a portion of its low-activity radioactive waste and create tens of billions of dollars in financial benefits in the process, per GAO data.
• Navy Shipbuilding: The U.S. Navy could improve its acquisition practices and take steps to ensure ships can be efficiently sustained and create financial benefits of billions of dollars, GAO data showed.
• Medicare Advantage: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services could better adjust payments for differences between Medicare Advantage plans and traditional Medicare providers in the reporting of beneficiary diagnoses and create financial benefits of billions of dollars, per MedPAC data.
• Internal Revenue Service Enforcement Efforts: Enhancing the IRS’s enforcement and service capabilities can help reduce the gap between taxes owed and paid by collecting tax revenue and facilitating voluntary compliance. This could include expanding third-party information reporting, which could save billions of dollars, per Joint Committee on Taxation data.
• Congress could reauthorize the First Responder Network Authority by 2027 to ensure the continuity of the public-safety broadband network and collection of potential revenues of billions of dollars over 15 years, the report states.
• Foreign Military Sales Administrative Account: Congress should consider redefining what can be considered an allowable expense to be charged from the administrative account of the Defense Department which could create financial benefits of tens of millions of dollars annually, per GAO data.

The new additions to the report fall on top of the 1,885 that GAO has identified in prior reports. Of those, Congress and agencies have fully addressed 1,239 — about 66 % — of those existing items.

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Awarded by the Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey, the $1 billion indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract will enlist Peraton to “manage a portfolio of cloud computing, storage and application services across multiple vendor offerings, supplying DOI with a flexible solution for the delivery of those cloud services,” per the solicitation’s request for quotes issued last November.

“Cloud services provide a wealth of benefits that DOI can leverage to provide the right services, at the right place, at the right time in service to our country needs,” contracting documents read. “Cloud services will enable the Bureaus to improve efficiency, align with administration goals and provide a sound technical platform for our future. DOI needs a consistent approach to reviewing, securing, managing and procuring cloud services to ensure optimized coordination and integration between vendors, which provides the best value for the taxpayer. A partnership between portfolio managers with DOI processes, will rapidly provide the benefits DOI needs for success.”

It added: “The Cloud Hosting Solutions (CHS) III acquisition puts DOI bureaus in control of how, when, and where they wish to receive service.” 

Specifically, Interior called out in acquisition documents that it wanted a partner to build a “Virtual Private Cloud” environment. Overseeing that, the cloud broker will “procure ‘third-party’ services from vendors that provide services on a rental or ‘pay as you go’ nature that are designed to enhance or complement the CSP environment associated with the award.”

The contract has a five-year base period of performance with three two-year options to extend.

This award comes as Interior’s Foundation Cloud Hosting Services contract, awarded to a group of 10 contractors in 2013 with a total ceiling of $10 billion, will expire this year. That contract saw a lengthy bid protest process led by losing bidder Centurylink.

Peraton’s win follows a similar large cloud contract it was awarded by the Department of Homeland Security in the fall of 2021 to shift the department’s data center operations to the cloud.

The company also won a place on the U.S. Postal Service’s $2.7 billion Information Technology Solutions (ITS) contract vehicle with 10 other vendors this year.

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The new law comes after the safety critical system crashed in early January, grounding domestic flights across the United States for nearly two hours.

The incident marked one of the largest examples of a significant federal IT system outage caused by a damaged database file, and has raised questions about the pace of the Federal Aviation Administration’s ongoing Next Generation Air Transportation System modernization initiative, which is known as NextGen.

Federal Aviation Administration Acting Administrator Billy Nolen said in April that his agency has requested $19.6 million to modernize its Notice to Air Missions system and retire aging applications that played a role in its systems going down earlier this year.

Nolen also said at a Senate hearing earlier in February that the FAA is approximately halfway through its modernization effort of the NOTAM system where it is transitioning to the standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which is intended to promote further global harmonization among neighboring Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs). 

It is also expected to provide improved accuracy and accessibility for pilots, dispatchers and NOTAM consumers. This modernization effort is expected to be complete by mid-2025 although the FAA is looking into ways to accelerate this current schedule, Nolen said.

The bill was shepherded by Reps. Pete Stauber, R-MN., and Mark DeSaulnier, D-CA., and Senators Amy Klobuchar, D-MN., Jerry Moran, R-KN., and Shelly Capito, R-WV.

The FAA task force will be required to accomplish the following: review existing methods for publishing NOTAMs and flight operations information for pilots; review regulations, policies, systems, and international standards relating to NOTAMs, including their content and presentation to pilots; evaluate and determine best practices to organize, prioritize, and present flight operations information in a manner that optimizes pilot review and retention of relevant information; provide recommendations to improve the publication and delivery of NOTAM information; and report to Congress on its reviews and evaluations.

The FAA by September 30, 2024, must complete implementation of a federal NOTAM system and implement a back-up system, and brief Congress on a plan to enhance information delivery through this federal system to promote further global harmonization and provide users of the National Airspace System a consistent format for domestic and international operations.

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Approximately one-third of federal employees will be reaching retirement age within the next two years, according to the Partnership for Public Service, while just 1.6% of the federal workforce is composed of Gen Z employees, those born between 1997 and 2012.

“I mean, we don’t want to try to push them out the door unnecessarily, there’s a lot of experience and talent in older generations that we want to make sure is passed on like institutional knowledge and memory is important,” Congressman Glenn Ivey, D-Md., told FedScoop on the sidelines of a Washington tech industry event Thursday. 

“But as they say, old wineskin needs to make room for new wine — we got to make sure we’re creating the space for younger people to come in and utilizing new skills, new talents, broader horizons, and working through these new technologies that, frankly, my generation doesn’t understand as well as,” said Ivey, whose district in Maryland, bordering Washington, D.C., is home to multiple federal agency buildings and thousands of federal workers. 

The government has long struggled to hire and retain talented young workers. According to an Office of Personnel Management report from last year, less than 10 percent of the federal workforce is under the age of 30, compared to 23 percent of the workforce in the private sector in that same age group. 

The report also found that federal workers in their 20s are five times more likely to quit than those in their 50s.

Congressman Ivey said creating new organizational structures that allow federal staff to try and integrate with new technologies is one potential solution for bringing in young, fresh talent.

“I think part of it is creating different departments within agencies. Because it doesn’t all have to be the same infrastructure that it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. You can have organizational charts that are slightly different than they are now,” Ivey told FedScoop.

“You can give them more latitude, more leeway to try and integrate with new technologies. And you can put leadership in place that really understands the needs. And it’s not that you’re pushing people out the door necessarily who really still have something to offer. But you’re creating a space between the talent team to come in and thrive,” he added.

The federal government is uniquely positioned to attract technology talent looking for new opportunities amid the current labor market turmoil, according to the U.S. Digital Service. USDS Chief Delivery Officer Ankit Mathur highlighted last year how the values of public service can align with some of the new top priorities for IT specialists looking for new roles.

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Speaking Thursday at an industry even in Washington, D.C., Mittai Desai said his team has focused on ensuring staff within his agency have a clear understanding of core challenges and feel ownership of each project.

“We have been working hard to break down silos and unify platforms so individuals can carry out their missions more effectively,” Desai said. “It’s the ability to build relationships with internal stakeholders and across the government more broadly.”

He added: “Sharing the responsibility, the pain points and our achievements are paramount for any federal IT project … [w]e have to understand how our customers do their jobs on a daily basis.”

Obtaining buy-in for systems change from frontline IT staff as well as senior department leaders and political appointees is one of the top challenges that agency chief information officers face.  

One of the Biden administration’s top technology priorities has been to improve cross-agency collaboration on technology projects, as spelled out in the President’s Management Agenda and through recent memos issued by the Office of Management and Budget.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is an independent agency within the Department of Energy that has about 1,500 employees. Its mission is focused on regulating the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil, and it was preceded by the Federal Power Commission.

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As Congress on Wednesday got close to suspending the United States’ debt ceiling and limit spending, including rescinding some funds appropriated for federal government IT spending, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says more money will likely be needed for the IT modernization in the near future despite the ongoing battles to restrict spending.

“This probably is not what you want to hear given the current fiscal environment, however, [IT] modernization may not be a cost saving endeavor. What we do get are newer systems that are more efficient, better functionality and stronger security,” said Kevin Walsh, Director of Information Technology and Cybersecurity at the GAO during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on ‘Modernizing DHS’s Mission-Critical Legacy IT Systems.’

Some prominent Democrats in Congress and Biden administration cabinet secretaries have voiced serious concerns about threats to IT modernization within the federal government due to restrictions or caps in federal agency budgets that Republicans in Congress have pushed for.

DHS was criticized during the hearing by Senator Maggie Hasan, D-N.H., for not providing Congress an agency- wide IT modernization plan despite Hasan asking for one in 2020 and 2022, which DHS chief information officer Eric Hysen said was not needed because the DHS IT budget provides the plan and priorities of the agency. 

Furthermore, Hysen said that DHS will update its IT strategic plan and submit that to Congress before the end of the fiscal year in order to provide further clarity on its IT modernizations plans and justifications for its budget. 

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