What you need to know about changes at DOD

December 12, 2017 by Leave a comment

Stephanie MeloniDepartment of Defense

By Stephanie Meloni, consultant, and Mark Wisinger, senior analyst

The Department of Defense and military services have been making strides to ensure DOD can modernize its capabilities across domains and stay ahead of threats. Facing budget shortfalls for the past few years has raised concerns about adversaries catching up to the U.S. With the DOD’s requested budget increase for the coming years, it will be looking to technology to restore readiness shortfalls and maintain the military edge.

Here are some of the major changes technology companies will want to be aware of in 2018:

CYBERCOM’s elevation to full command status

Expect CYBERCOM to officially become a Combatant Command by the end of October 2018, which will coincide with it reaching full operating capability. This also speaks to the ever-increasing emphasis on cyber as a warfighting domain, and one of its major focus areas will be automating cyber defense.

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Filed under Government IT Sales Summit, Market Intelligence Tagged with , , ,

Are commercial online marketplaces in the government’s future?

July 25, 2017 by Leave a comment

By Steve Charles, immixGroup co-founder

Proposed legislation out of the House Armed Services Committee would give the Department of Defense and other federal agencies the ability to buy commercial items (COTS) via online marketplaces without contracting officers having to determine price reasonableness before ordering. To make sure prices paid are competitive at the time, the marketplaces would provide all kinds of data to the government, including posted prices for similar, competitive items on the system at the time of sale. Suppliers would be able to update pricing in real-time.

DOD has long complained about GSA Schedule contracts, as well as GSA’s online marketplace, GSA Advantage, arguing that it’s not a real marketplace.  Product catalogs are not current, pricing is not maintained in real-time and many of the contractors lack strategic relationships with the manufacturers of the products represented.  Agencies put in orders on GSA Advantage, only to learn two weeks later that those ordered items are not actually available. Even people at GSA have told me that it’s much more reliable and cheaper for them to leverage the micro-purchase rules and use commercial shopping sites.

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Filed under Channel Management, Contracting, Public Policy, Sales Tagged with , , , ,

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