Page 15 - FCW, March/April 2021

SPONSORED CONTENT S-13
Key channels for purchasing emerging technology solutions
As agency executives look for the most effective ways to buy technology to support their new projects, here is a short list of acquisition vehicles that Carahsoft offers to speed that process. Robert Moore,
vice president at Carahsoft, recommends that agencies start with a business conversation about the challenge they are trying to address. “It’s best to start at an operational framework and then look at how the application of technology can improve the agency’s operation and mission,” he said.
General Services Administration’s Schedule 70 — Open to federal, state and local government customers
• Centralized contracting vehicle with distributed servicing
• More than 7 million IT products, solutions and services
• Restructured in fiscal 2020 to simplify the categories
• Purchase-card holders may buy up to $10,000 under a micro- purchase threshold
• Industrial Funding Fee included in the price of an item (75 cents per $100)
• Fiscal 2020 revenues of $17.8 billion in IT purchases and $10.2 billion in professional services
• Vetting and standardization for terms of service
ITES-SW2 — Part of a family of contracts managed by the Army’s Computer Hardware, Enterprise Software and Solutions office
• Awarded in August 2020
• 14 product categories
• $13 billion purchase ceiling
• Mandatory for the Army
• Available to all government agencies worldwide with no fee
NASA’s SEWP V (Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement)
— Created in 1993 to acquire scientific workstations for federal agencies; now offers a broad range of software, hardware, networking and services
• SEWP V contract extended to April 2025
• 140 contract holders, 110 of which are small businesses
• Revenues reached $9 billion in fiscal 2020, a 40% increase over fiscal 2019
• Fee of 0.34% included in contractor price
• Agency-specific catalogs
• Purchase data and supply chain verification provided to agency CIOs
Army’s Enterprise Software Initiative — Part of the Defense Department’s ESI, which was created in 1998 to leverage DOD’s buying power through blanket purchase agreements
• Offers a range of IT products, including network management, security management, DevSecOps and IT asset management
• The Army must use the ESI contract for the products offered
• The Navy and other military services offer some additional products
OTA consortiums — Carahsoft has access to nine other transaction authority (OTA) groups, which enable an agency to bypass the Federal Acquisition Regulation to get new technology into production quickly
• Duration is negotiable, from days to several years
• Intellectual property rights may be negotiable
• Wide range in size of projects; up to $100 million for a Navy project
• Focus areas include information warfare, space, medical technology, energy, border security technology and national armaments
Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation Program — Managed by the Department of Homeland Security and developed in 2012 to support cost-effective solutions for protecting federal civilian networks
• Offers tools to perform cyber monitoring and improve decision- making and incident response
• Provides a dashboard with data gathered by the agency’s CDM tools
• Manages hardware and software assets as well as security configurations
• Handles identity and access management credentials
• Manages network security perimeter components, including data at rest and user behavior
For more information, go to www.carahsoft.com/buy.