2 Myths About Federal Data Center Optimization

May 7, 2020 by Leave a comment

By Jessica Parks, Market Intelligence Analyst

One major initiative driving IT modernization at federal civilian agencies continues to be the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI). This program impacts every civilian agency and continues to influence broader modernization efforts. Agencies are making progress, some (such as Department of Justice) more so than others, and they continue to incorporate their optimization goals into their budget and strategic planning.

Do you know where your target agencies are at in this process? If you are still formulating your strategy, here’s some high-level myth-busting to guide you. Read more of this post

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5 Years Later and FITARA Remains Relevant

August 22, 2019 by Leave a comment

By Tara Franzonello, Contracts Manager

FITARA, also known as the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act, was enacted by Congress in December 2014 with an aim to reform government’s management and acquisition of IT. Although agencies have made progress over the last 5 years, there remain significant challenges in working toward FITARA compliance.

What does this mean for technology providers? Opportunity! Read more of this post

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Summing Up the Government IT Sales Summit

November 20, 2018 by 1 Comment

By Tim Larkins, Director, Market Intelligence

The 2018 immixGroup Government IT Sales Summit has come to an end. Despite an unwelcomed surprise from mother nature, hundreds of suppliers, partners, systems integrators and government employees flocked to the event to attend sessions, share knowledge and network. A diverse array of topics was discussed, and while content varied from room to room, many consistencies were noticeable.

Among them were government agencies’ imperatives for modernization, optimization and meaningful use of data. About half of the agencies are funded with new appropriations in FY19, with the other half on a CR through early December. Of the agencies with new money, most of them are seeing an uptick in their IT budgets – with which they will be purchasing COTS software and hardware to help them meet the aforementioned imperatives.

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How Can Technology Tackle the Lengthy Immigration Process?

October 23, 2018 by Leave a comment

By Kevin Shaker, consultant

The United States Digital Service (USDS), founded in 2014 to provide innovative ideas to agencies around IT modernization, is aggressively attempting to streamline the immigration process by implementing electronic forms and doing away with paper-based applications. The goal is to shorten the lengthy process immigrants endure when applying for citizenship and make it less burdensome on government employees as they process immigration and green card applications.

USDS is now working with United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS), the DHS agency that handles immigration and naturalization, to reform their application analysis process. The USDS team working on the project is more focused on developing technologies for IT and operations process redesign than pushing immigration policy through Congress. Their goal is to also collaborate with agency higher ups and end users to design and create automated systems that alleviate redundancy.

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Transformation May Be Your Foot in the Door for Federal Sales

October 2, 2018 by 1 Comment

By Kevin Shaker, consultant

If you have genuinely transformational technology, public sector IT executives may be willing to listen now more than ever.

In August, public and private sector officials held a series of short discussions on government IT and procurement, emphasizing innovation in everything from protecting critical assets to reforming acquisition methods.

Here are three top takeaways

GSA Schedules

Alan Thomas, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, said plans are being discussed to consolidate schedules for easier acquisition.

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Omnibus signed into law–now what?

March 27, 2018 by Leave a comment

Chris Wiedemannfederal budget, fiscal year, procurementBy Chris Wiedemann, consultant

Despite some last-minute dramatics, President Trump signed a $1.3 trillion omnibus appropriations bill into law last Friday, fully funding the government for the rest of fiscal year 2018.

Of course, with any bill this size (over 2,200 pages in total), it takes a while to fully digest the implications for our customers and industry.

That said, it’s never too early to pull out some early highlights – to wit:

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Can data be protected through shared services?

February 22, 2018 by Leave a comment

Lloyd McCoy Jr.

By Lloyd McCoy, DOD manager

Any guesses on how much data is generated every year by government and government-related apps? More than 1,000 billion bytes. It’s a staggering number.

Naturally you wonder how is all of that data protected? How do we protect the information that makes our electric grid, air traffic, voting processes and other government-controlled functions keep working safely and reliably?

One obvious answer is to improve the way services are shared between government agencies – and between government and private industry.

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How to capture more IT business from HHS in FY18

January 30, 2018 by 2 Comments

Chris Wiedemann

By Chris Wiedemann, consultant

I have worked with immixGroup’s suppliers and partners on a wide range of federal agencies and their IT requirements and buying patterns. And one department consistently stands out as the most commonly asked about: Health and Human Services (HHS).

Diving into the numbers makes it clear why. At $13.8 billion, HHS’s top line IT budget is several times bigger than other large non-defense agencies. And although most of that money goes straight out the door in the form of grants to state and local agencies, the remainder still makes HHS the largest non-defense IT agency in government.

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Is this the new way of modernizing old systems?

January 3, 2018 by Leave a comment

Chris WiedemannMGT Act, tech modernization

By Chris Wiedemann, consultant

If you attended the Civilian FY18 Federal Budget Briefing at immixGroup’s most recent Government IT Sales Summit, one theme should have resonated throughout: the new ways government agencies are approaching the old problem of legacy system modernization.

It can be challenging to separate rhetoric from action sometimes, but there’s real energy in government around addressing the challenges of technology overhauls. Agencies are taking a customer-centric approach to design and development, with agile methodologies and human-centric design really becoming deep-rooted in civilian IT groups – and, perhaps more importantly, they’ve gotten an assist from Congress in the form of the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act, which was signed into law as part of the FY18 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

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What you need to know about Army’s IT modernization strategy

April 12, 2017 by Leave a comment

By Stephanie Meloni, senior consultant

The Army views multi-domain operations as the future operating concept it needs to gain a competitive advantage against adversaries.

Despite the possibility of receiving increased funding under a new administration, the Army will largely be focused on readiness, as opposed to modernization. Readiness ensures that soldiers have proper training and equipment, while modernization would mean investing in new capabilities and technologies.

The good news for the IT industry is that multi-domain operations is a concept that addresses both modernization and readiness. And it will ultimately help the warfighter out-maneuver adversaries in land, cyber and intelligence. (You can hear more in my recent on-demand webinar on the Army’s IT Modernization Plan.)

Implementing multi-domain operations will entail significant changes to enterprise architecture and networking infrastructure to give the Army the flexibility it needs when it comes to configuration management and data sharing. This concept is all about data integration—and performing analysis on the data itself. Here are some ways the Army will be using its data to improve operations:

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