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Weekly Roundup
March 20 – March 26 2015


A Note From Our President & Founder Jim Garrettson

Several activities of lawmakers caught the attention of stakeholders in the GovCon arena this week in the areas of acquisition reform and cybersecurity.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), who became chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in January, introduced a defense acquisition reform bill the committee believes can change how the Pentagon buys products and services and roll back some of the military’s bureaucracy.
The full text of the bill was due Wednesday and Thornberry offered a preview of the legislationMonday to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
As written in this space last week, lawmakers in both chambers of Congress made separate moves to advance bills on cybersecurity information sharing between the public and private sectors.
For its part, the House Intelligence Committee had a Thursday vote on its schedule to consider an information sharing bill that includes liability protection for companies that share cyber intelligence with the government.
Private businesses would exchange information with agencies through a portal run by DHS under the Protecting Cyber Networks Act.
Mike Brown, global public sector lead at RSA, called on Congress to give companies liability relief in any cyber bill and for a new national breach process in an op-ed piece for CSO Online.
“For our part, businesses around the nation need to join America’s elected officials in the common purpose of cybersecurity: becoming aggressive defenders of our collective right to digital security,” Brown added.

THIS WEEK’S TOP NEWS STORIES 
NASA Issues 84 Awards for $20B Govt-Wide Enterprise IT Vehicle
Contract covers computer systems, networking and conferencing technologies.
Leidos Board Appoints CEO Roger Krone Chairman
Krone officially started as chairman on March 20, less than a year after he joined the company as chief executive.
Michael Basla, Former Air Force CIO, Appointed to SVP Role at L-3
Basla retired from the military in November after a 35-year career.
Janet Foutty, Deloitte Federal Head, on Digital Services Trends to Watch and STEM Workforce Construction
Foutty also identifies leadership development models in Q&A.
Letitia Long Joins Raytheon’s Board of Directors
Long led NGA from 2010 to 2014 holds the distinction of the first-ever woman to lead an intelligence agency.
Maximus’ Tom Romeo, Veris’ Dave McClure Urge Agencies to Integrate Data Security into Business Processes
Romeo and McClure advocate for the adoption of rules, algorithms and models.
Stephen Welby Nominated to DoD Research and Engineering Assistant Secretary Post
Welby currently is the DoD secretary’s principal systems engineering adviser.
Jeff Johnson to Head Military Aircraft BD at Boeing
Johnson previously led the airplane maker’s operations in the Middle East for four years.
CA, SAIC Form Public Sector IT Services Partnership
The companies formed the team in an effort to help agencies handle IT management issues and help them adopt managed services.
IDC: FY 2015 Civilian IT Spending to Exceed Defense
The research firm pegs HHS as the agency to see the largest IT spending increases in fiscal year 2016.
Tiffany Hixson: GSA Adopts Category Mgmt for Federal Acquisitions
Hixson says GSA will organize its operations around 17 categories of spend.
Tony Scott: Cloud Strategies Need to Have Time Frames, Common Services
The new federal CIO outlines his IT priorities in his first public statement.
Steven VanRoekel Departs USAID
VanRoekel joined the agency in September 2014 to help in its anti-Ebola efforts after three years as federal CIO.
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The Wash100 is the premier group of private and public sector leaders selected by Executive Mosaic’s organizational and editorial leadership as the most influential figures in the GovCon sector. Click through to read the full list of inductees for 2015.