Page 8 - FCW, June 2017

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Trump signs cyber order
In early May, President Donald Trump signed a long-anticipated cybersecurity executive order that is broadly similar to drafts that have been circulating for months. It directs federal agencies to adopt the National Institute of Stan- dards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework and includes recommen- dations from a number of other high- level reports.
“It is some-
thing we have
asked the private
sector to imple-
ment and not
forced upon our-
selves,” said Tom
Bossert, White
House homeland
security and counterterrorism adviser, at a press briefing. “From this point forward, departments and agencies shall practice what we preach.”
The order directs agency heads to assume responsibility for cybersecu- rity at their agencies and to provide the White House and Department of Homeland Security with risk mitiga- tion assessments as part of a new federal enterprise risk management approach.
“DHS and Secretary \[John\] Kelly will play a large and leading role in this effort,” Bossert said, adding that “the president has issued a preference from today forward in federal procure- ment of federal IT for shared services.”
The goal is to have innovation and modernization take place in parallel with risk management and cyberse- curity. “We can’t promote innovation without first thinking through risk reduction,” he said.
“If we don’t move to secure services and shared services, we’re going to be behind the eight ball for a very long time,” Bossert added.
— Sean D. Carberry
$228M
is earmarked for a governmentwide IT modernization fund in the president’s fiscal 2018 budget
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6 June 2017 FCW.COM
Tom Bossert
The Defense Department is work- ing on a congressional mandate to split the functions of the Office of Acquisition, Technology and Logis- tics into two domains, one dedicated to research and engineering and the other to acquisition and sustainment. And now the House Armed Services Committee’s chairman has proposed legislation that would further simplify DOD’s acquisition activities.
The Defense Acquisition Stream- lining and Transparency Act, filed by Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), is designed to make the department run more like a business in part by using commercial online marketplaces for more of its purchases.
“If you’re buying office supplies, you ought to be able to go on Amazon and do it,” Thornberry told reporters.
He said DOD currently has a choice between buying non-military items through the General Services Administration schedule — which he described as cumbersome, limited and expensive — or going through a complicated contracting process on its own.
“In 1994, there were three manda- tory and three optional contract provi- sions for commercial procurements,” Thornberry said. “Now there are 84 mandatory and 42 optional provisions.”
If the bill passes, starting in fiscal 2023, the secretary of Defense must give Congress a full breakdown of ser- vices contracts by type and amount for each defense agency.
Thornberry said the law would apply primarily to office supplies or standard commercial items used by DOD, such as treadmills or even MRI machines. How the rules would apply to IT purchases is less clear.
“If some software or hardware could be connected to classified networks, \[DOD officials\] may not want to take the chance because of supply chain concerns,” Thornberry said. “I think when you get into the whole realm of buying IT commer- cially, they’re going to have to think it through.... That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to dictate” that DOD make all IT purchases through commercial vendors.
— Sean D. Carberry
Thornberry introduces bill to reform DOD acquisition
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