B2G Blog - Policy & Legislation

Deltek releases annual state-of-the-states analysis: Webinar to be held this Thursday

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:06:00 -0400

Every year, Deltek analysts carefully comb through all 50 governors’ state-of-the-state and budget addresses to identity crucial trends in rising and falling priorities. Understandably, the past few years haven’t been so fruitful, with states cutting key programs, canceling major projects and shifting efforts to stay afloat amid recession’s strapped-budget undertow.

Fortunately, states are successfully weathering the storm, and this year’s report contains a bevy of potential vendor opportunities as governors’ agendas increased project items for the first time since 2008. Overall, the total number of governor agenda items rose a sharp 11.6 percent from 2012.

In addition to the report, Deltek is presenting a free webinar this Thursday at 2 p.m. EST so vendors can learn how to align technologies with current and emerging policy trends. Go here to register for the free event.

Major take-aways from “State of the States, 2013,” include:

Governors’ renewed interest in performance-based management, particularly in education
More effort to cut corrections and incarceration costs by investing in probation, parole and electronic monitoring programs
Heavy focus on Medicaid expansion (both for and against), and how to reduce its costs
Increased dedication to developing a strong future workforce by establishing a wealth of present educational opportunities, led by digital learning platforms
Amplified justice and public safety initiatives due to natural disasters (Hurricane Sandy) and national tragedies (the Newtown shootings)
Continued plans to streamline and consolidate government operations through technology

The report also breaks down governors’ 2013 goals per vertical market, with several charts detailing the number of agenda items mentioned year to year and technology-specific projects.

The full list of report graphs include:

2013 by vertical
2011-2013 comparison by vertical
2008-2013 average by vertical
2013 Agenda Item Popularity vs. 2011-2013 average by vertical
Top 25 cross-over agenda items
Agenda items with mention of technology, 2013
Agenda items mentioned by state, 2013
Community development, economic development/regulation, natural resources/environment, and transportation agenda items, 2013
Education agenda items, 2013
General government services and public finance agenda items, 2013
Health care and social services agenda items, 2013
Justice/public safety agenda items, 2013

To read the full, 33-page report, please go here. Deltek clients that subscribe to State & Local Industry Analysis (SLIA) may also request (via their Deltek Client Advisor) the Excel workbook containing all of the agenda data compiled for the report.

Lastly, please register for our free webinar this Thursday to learn more about the initiatives and implications of 2013’s state-of-the-state addresses.

OMB Report Charts Growth in Discretionary Spending

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:15:00 -0400

The Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) submitted its reports on discretionary spending cuts to the President and Congress just ahead of the release of the President’s Budget Request. Along with a the review of spending caps, OMB also released a preview of sequestration in the spending plans for fiscal year (FY) 2014, which looks at discretionary spending out to 2023.

The Final 2013 Sequestration Report provides estimates of discretionary spending limits for each category in the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (BBEDCA), OMB’s scoring of the enacted 2013 discretionary appropriations bill, and comparisons with estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in its Final Sequestration Report for Fiscal Year 2013. Examining appropriations legislations enacted through April 4, 2013, OMB found that the enacted appropriations are within the discretionary spending limits for 2013 and a sequestration of discretionary budget authority is not required. (Note: The assessment by OMB is distinct from the Joint Committee sequestration.) The chart below shows the caps after various re-categorization adjustments.

BBEDCA provides caps for discretionary program spending each year through 2021. Originally, discretionary programs were separated into “security” and “non-security” categories, which are shown above in the funding levels for fiscal years 2012 and 2013.

· The security category included budget accounts for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Intelligence Community Management Account, and all accounts in the international affairs budget function.

· The nonsecurity category covered everything else. After 2013, BBEDCA provided a single category for all discretionary spending.

The Budget Control Act (BCA) allowed for revision of the spending caps if the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction proposed legislation to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion was not enacted by January 15, 2012. Since legislation was neither proposed nor enacted, the caps were revised in OMB’s Final Sequestration Report of Fiscal Year 2012, which was issued January 18, 2012.

· The revised security (“defense”) category included only funding for discretionary programs in the national defense budget function: Department of Defense, portions of Department of Energy (including NNSA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

· The revised nonsecurity (“non-defense”) category covered all other discretionary programs.

· The discretionary category for 2014 to 2021 was replaced by caps for the defense and non-defense categories. While the budget caps were adjusted to reflect the redefined categories, the overall discretionary spending limits were not changed.

The spending caps were changed again, under the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA), which reinstated the security and non-security categories for 2013 and reduced the limits by $4 billion, split evenly across the two categories. The limits for defense and non-defense spending were left in place for 2014 to 2021. However, the 2014 levels were lowered by $8 billion, split evenly across the defense and non-defense categories.

The preview report sheds light on several proposed revisions to the spending caps in the President’s Budget. The 2014 Budget includes savings in the mandatory and revenue categories, reducing the discretionary limits, restoring the 2013 sequestration amount, cancelling the 2014 mandatory sequestration order, and increasing the 2014 discretionary levels to those agreed to by Congress in ATRA. The Budget Request also proposes extending the spending caps through 2023. The reductions continue to be split between defense and nondefense categories and are set to take effect in 2017.

While discretionary spending at the budget proposal levels shows less growth, the levels are higher overall. According to the FY2014 Budget Proposal figures in OMB’s Sequestration Preview Report for FY 2014, the discretionary funding levels from 2013 to 2012 average $25.9 billion above those in the Final Sequestration Report for FY 2013.

The gap between the two plans for FY 2014 leaps out as a notable difference in the two series. The $97 billion increase from the Final 2013 Sequestration report is comprised of several changes. In the budget proposal, both the discretionary categories see an increase from restoring limits from ATRA. The revised security category receives an additional $54 billion, and the revised nonsecurity category receives $37 billion. While the proposed budget shows less of a drop than the Final Sequestration figures, spending rebounds a year later. If the proposed budget is accepted (though, there's ample reason to doubt that it will be), spending would approach 2013 spending levels in 2019.

Originally published for Federal Industry Analysis: Analysts Perspectives Blog. Stay ahead of the competition by discovering more about GovWin IQ. Follow me on twitter @FIAGovWin.

NIST to Hold Workshop Series on Cybersecurity Framework

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:36:00 -0400

Based on early reviews of the 2014 budget request, it appears agency efforts to improve cybersecurity will receive continued attention for the foreseeable future. Considering the As part of the executive order for cybersecurity, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) was given the responsibility for developing a cybersecurity framework. The first in a series of workshops on developing this “living framework” was held in Washington, D.C. on April 3, 2013. Much of the discussion revolved around risk management and the role of industry in identifying best practices. (Not surprisingly, these are issues that government agencies have been facing too.)

Mid March, we looked at the role of private industry in implementing the cyber executive order. For government, the goal of partnership with industry is to strengthen national security both within government and across private industry. To that end, the public sector has been reaching out for input from industry, academia and the public. As Rebecca Blank, Deputy Secretary for the Department of Commerce, phrased it in her opening comments: “Government cannot and should not do this alone.”

It’s clear that improved information sharing, situational awareness, and public-private partnership have roles to play in moving forward. For the most part, government and industry agree that there’s a need to build on existing capabilities, to identify solutions that provide flexibility and that can adapt across varying sector requirements.

For many companies, cybersecurity has become an integral part of discussion around risk-management practices. Opinions vary about how to define “best practice,” and rightly so. Organizations do not have a consistent answer for how to measure the success of security practices. For the most part, risk levels are evaluated at the tactical level, rather than compared to strategic benchmarks. Raising risk and security management to a strategic level would clarify its role in business strategy. During an industry leadership panel discussion. Patrick Gallagher, the Undersecretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Director of NIST, described this challenge as the need “to learn about the balance between good cybersecurity and good business.”

In all likelihood, the best practices captured in the framework will illustrate range of approaches to security implementation. This brings us to another sticky wicket: incentives. While there’s no certainty around the success another organization might have following another company’s lead, effective policies and procedures around risk management can contribute to a competitive position. There is no current barrier to sharing practices. So what is going to change? What will motivate the private sector to adopt new security standards voluntarily? What role can the government play to facilitate the exchange?

For starters, they’re asking for input. The Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce and Treasury are working together to report on industry incentives. The Commerce Department posted a Notice of Inquiry on incentives for getting industry involved in the framework development process. Public comments are open until April 29, 2013.

Beyond that, several multiday workshops are being scheduled. The next session will be hosted at Carnegie Mellon, held from May 19th through 31st. Other sessions will be held in July and September, further informing the framework. The first draft of the framework is due in October 2013, allowing 8 months from the release of the executive order for draft to be crafted.

Surviving Sequestration: The 2nd Half of FY 2013 Could See $300 Billion in Federal Contract Dollars

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 09:49:00 -0400

Increasingly, we hear from companies in the federal marketplace that they struggle to plan and forecast their business prospects. There have been so many delays, false starts, and misaligned priorities that it is sometimes hard to know what opportunities are real and how to position your firm to compete. Now, the impacts of sequestration are beginning to ripple through an already skittish market, adding to the uncertainty. Yet, there are some things to consider that might indicate the contracting potential for the rest of fiscal 2013 and beyond.

Whenever things get unbearably uncertain it is important to have access to good data and information, plus a little creative thinking. It is the only way I know how to keep from making reactionary decisions and to get into proactive mode. So when it comes to thinking about the business prospects for the remainder of fiscal year (FY) 2013 it helps to build some historical context.

To get a sense of the historical pace and relative magnitude of federal spending for the remaining two fiscal quarters of 2013 I looked at the reported quarterly contract obligations across the federal government for the last five years. As I have noted in the past, we have seen a shift in federal spending to later and later in the fiscal year. Spending in Q1 and Q2 (in varying degrees) has shifted to Q3 and Q4. Even with some yearly fluctuation, the trend has been fairly stable. (See chart below.)

These shifts have occurred during a period where we have seen increasing use of continuing resolutions (CR), omnibus appropriations and other delays to funding federal agencies. FY 2013 is not particularly unique in this respect, so it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that the trend will hold this year as well.

Projected Spending for the Rest of FY 2013 – a Possible Scenario

Now that we have received data for the first two quarters of FY 2013 it becomes possible to perform some rough projections of what might be still on the table for Q3 and Q4. I used FY 2012 data as a basis to make these projections. For FY 2012, adding together Q1 and Q2 departmental obligations and then dividing that sum by the department’s total obligations gave me the relative percentage of total obligations that occurred in Q1 and Q2. (See the table below for the top 20 federal departments and agencies.)

Assuming that agency contracted spending in FY 2013 will be at least 90% of what it was in FY 2012 (sequestration may represent about a 7% cut, so this 10% difference seemed reasonable to me) I followed a similar approach to calculate estimates for Q1 and Q2 percentages and potential remaining obligations for the remainder of FY 2013.

For example, in the table below the Army had combined FY 2012 Q1 and Q2 obligations of $41.6 billion, which was 38% of their total FY 2012 obligations. The Army had a total of $17.8 billion in contract obligations for Q1 and Q2 of FY 2013, which represents 18% of the projected potential total FY 2013 spend, using my 90% of FY’12 assumption. Applying the percentage left over (i.e. 82%) to my total FY 2013 estimate results in a potential remaining obligation balance for Q3 and Q4 of $79.6 billion for the Army.

Granted, performing estimates at this macro level has its limitations and it requires certain broad assumptions for consistency, like a comparable year-over-year obligation rate and that, to some degree, these expenditures are for recurring needs. Some departments have a measure of cyclicality that is underrepresented in a chart covering just a few years. For example, Energy tends to run cyclically between 40% and 68% for Q1 and Q2 every other year or so like a pendulum. Further analysis into the specific contracts is needed to understand why.

Implications

Comparing the 2012 and 2013 percentages reveals that nearly all of the top 20 departments are behind in obligating funds, even with an assumed 10% reduction in spending from FY 2012. While the one-two punch of delayed budgets and sequestration might explain much of this it still remains that these agencies will need to obligate their remaining budgets by the end of the fiscal year. Even (or especially) in this uncertain budgetary environment, agencies will not likely leave money unspent. It is still a “use it or lose it” world out there. So there may likely be some significant pent-up demand that we could see play out in the remaining two quarters.

If this simple analysis holds even close to reality the potential remaining total contract obligations across all federal departments and agencies could be over $300 billion in Q3 and Q4, or 70% of total FY 2013 contract obligations. The second half of fiscal 2013 could potentially see federal contract dollars really flow.

Achieving comprehensive case management with SACWIS

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:59:00 -0400

This month, Deltek’s Health Care and Social Services team is taking a closer look at Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information Systems (SACWIS). A SACWIS provides an official case record on all children and families served by the Title IV-B/IV-E State agency. According to the National Resource Center for Child Welfare Data & Technology, “By law, a SACWIS is required to support the reporting of data to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System (AFCARS), the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) and the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD).” Furthermore, “A SACWIS/TACWIS is expected to have a bi-directional interface with a state's or tribe's title IV-A (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF), title XIX (Medicaid), and title IV-D (Child Support) systems. SACWIS/TACWIS also must collect and manage the information necessary to facilitate the delivery of child welfare support services, including family support and family preservation.”

According to our data, 24 states have active procurement plans related to SACWIS, while 36 states and the District of Columbia have an operational SACWIS. One state moving toward implementation of a federally compliant SACWIS is Mississippi. Last month, the state’s Department of Human Services (MDHS) released an RFP for independent verification and validation (IV&V) services. The selected IV&V vendor will assist the state in the procurement of a design, development and implementation (DDI) vendor and will oversee the DDI vendor’s replacement of the legacy system, in place since 2001.

Deltek’s GovWinIQ database contents a wealth of information about other SACWIS replacement and modernization projects across the nation. Not a Deltek subscriber? Learn more and sign up for a free trial here!

Stay tuned throughout the month for additional blogs featuring SACWIS projects taking place around the nation!

Cyber Security & Critical Infrastructure Protection ? Themes from TTC?s Symposium

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:10:00 -0400

I had the opportunity recently to attend a two-day symposium on Cyber Security & Critical Infrastructure Protection, hosted by the Technology Training Corporation. The event brought together federal government and industry cyber security experts from the various critical infrastructure sectors, including Energy, Homeland Security, Defense, Transportation, Communications/IT, Postal, Emergency Services, and Financial Services. The recurring theme throughout the event was the ongoing vulnerability that these sectors share and what they are doing about it.

The symposium agenda included presenters from a range of governmental, quasi-governmental, non-profit, and private industry organizations with one underlying commonality – their interest in protecting critical infrastructure that is vulnerable due to the growing threat to the information technologies that have permeated this infrastructure. As has been the case with their other events that I’ve attended, the TTC team assembled a very broad array of leaders and experts across the field to provide a really comprehensive coverage of the topic. As events go, I get some of the best information in one place and at one time. Way to go, TTC!

Key Themes

As I heard from the presenters and interacted with them and other attendees, several themes and commonalities emerged. Here are just a few.

Threats – the Changing Landscape

The threat vector has dramatically changed at the same time that laws are changing that put penalties on not securing your data. More is changing in this environment than is staying the same.
Some security practitioners have dropped the word “advanced” from the description of advanced persistent threat (APT) because they observe the vast majority of attackers using common attack approaches – the “open door” rather than “breaking a window.” The disparity in security capabilities is greater than the disparity in threat.
Mobility – The number of new mobile vulnerabilities being detected is growing almost exponentially each year, making mobility the biggest growing threat vector.
Cyber arms race is unlike any other arms race in history because it is frictionless. For example, it took 3 days for Stuxnet to be reverse-engineered, reproduced, and propagated. It taught everybody how to attack a SCADA system. It has also given rise to the private cyber arms manufacturer – people who build cyber-attack capabilities and sell them on the black market.
Personnel training to avoid risky behavior is the most important element of cybersecurity. NSA statistics show that 80 percent of exploitable vulnerabilities are a result of poor cyber hygiene. The other 20% is the APT.
Social engineering is a growing threat because, among other things, it gives the attackers a deeper understanding of how users and organizations behave, respond and think.
Growing cyber threats in the aviation sector target in-flight operations, ground support operations, air traffic managements systems, etc.

Cloud Computing Security – Key Challenges

Some agencies are moving to cloud services because of financial constraints, knowing of security risks and hoping security will follow soon afterward.
Some key challenges in effectively implementing Cloud include:
- Contract structuring: How do you structure a contact offering when you don’t own the asset? How do agencies (GSA, etc.) effectively strengthen cloud acquisition policy and build in security into SLAs?
- Clearance: what types of clearance levels are needed for people around the world who are supporting agencies or have access to their data, but are not necessarily part of a secure sector? Information sharing on threats, etc. is sensitive.
- Incident response: When there is an incident, who do I call? The Cloud Service Provider (CSP) or the agency?

Information Sharing – Culture Change is Needed

Information sharing is not an ends, it’s a means to an ends. In this context, it is needed to gain an effective shared situational awareness among shared stakeholders.
One challenge to information sharing stems from a sense of human preservation. We have a culture of not sharing information, while hackers have a culture of sharing widely.
Electricity Sector Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ES-ISAC) – Allows electric providers to share information in a non-compliance framework and encourages free flow of information without fear of compliance threat hanging over you. Effective sharing requires the freedom from the threat of sharing.
Cyber Federated Model (CFM) – the warfighter has great command and control (C2) information and the CFM intends to enable C2 for cyber indicator information. For example, an infected site is sent into the CFM and within a few minutes all other sites within the CFM get the information. Some sites have automated updates and the information sharer gets to control with whom they share.
One key to effective sharing includes the ability to be able to do it securely, i.e. share with assurance. Also, data must be anonymized to be shared, especially if the data is classified, sensitive or contains private information. Sensitive but unclassified information will need cooperative agreement between government and industry to set the boundaries for what each can do with the information they receive.
Automated information sharing should focus on machine-readable threat indicators to automate data flow and get people out of loop where possible. Currently, high-priority threat-level information is XML-based, but going forward organizations will need more visual analytics.

SCADA Systems – Unanticipated Vulnerabilities

SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems, and other industrial control systems (ICS) were never designed for networking, but they have been extensively. So we are now building monitoring capabilities in an attempt to detect and defend against attacks on systems that were never designed to withstand such attacks.
Attacks like Stuxnet and Shamoon targeted energy sector systems and disclosed SCADA system vulnerabilities.
The patching treadmill – These control systems were never designed to be patched and/or shut down regularly. This patching can mean an entire plant must be shut down to complete the patch. This has the potential for unforeseen domino effects and implications for supply interruptions and other complexities.
Different organizations and unrelated sectors currently have different architectures and protocols for collecting and sharing threat information. What is needed is a common open-standards XML schema to communicate attacks in industrial control and other systems.

Regulation Versus Collaboration

There is not currently a consensus on how to proceed with administering cyber- and critical infrastructure protections, with significant polarization existing between competing regulatory/compliance and collaboration/incentive approaches.
Comprehensive legislation (Lieberman-Collins, and others) that failed in the Senate included new and expanded regulatory and compliant elements over the private infrastructure community.
Some industries, like nuclear energy, have very mature regulatory environments and some assert that the success in this area is an example of positive regulation that should serve as a prototype for other infrastructure industries.
Public-private partnerships are essential. The Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC) and HSPD-7 were the predecessors to the latest Executive Order (EO) and Presidential Policy Directive (PPD-21).

Impact of Budget Limitations

Budget constraints multiply the challenges that disparate critical infrastructure sectors and federal agencies face as they look to secure their assets and protect their information. This is driving some federal agencies to look to shared services to establish a common security approach and leverage their collective buying power.

As for the current budget sequestration, several government representatives at the symposium noted that they had been fortunate so far, with the greatest impact being to restricted travel budgets for speaking and outreach. (They were based here in D.C.) But they could still travel to perform their site assessments as needed. We will see how ongoing budget constraints shape cyber and infrastructure protection plans going forward.

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Originally published for Federal Industry Analysis: Analysts Perspectives Blog. Stay ahead of the competition by discovering more about GovWin FIA. Follow me on Twitter @GovWinSlye.

NASW?s Social Work Month coming to a close

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:46:00 -0400

This year’s annual Social Work Month and its theme of “Weaving Threads of Resilience and Advocacy” are coming to a close. The month-long event, which is spearheaded by the National Association of Social Workers (

NASW), has been celebrated each year since the 1960s, and is an opportunity for communities nationwide to highlight the profession and the important contributions social workers make each day.

NASW is the largest membership organization of professional social workers in the nation. Its mission is to enhance professional growth and development of its members, create and maintain professional standards, and advance sound social policies. To honor Social Work Month, Deltek is taking a look at how New Mexico has immensely improved its Child Support Enforcement Division.

In June 2012, New Mexico was recognized by the National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA) for having the most improved child support enforcement program in the country. The award is determined through an extensive look at a state’s child support program performance over three years to ensure consistent, broad-based improvement. In that time, New Mexico improved its Paternity Establishment Percentage (from 54th in the nation to 29th). The state’s child support enforcement system, eChild, is a Web-based solution that works in conjunction with the existing state legacy mainframe. New Mexico contracted with Health Management Systems in June 2012 to provide child support enforcement customer service.

New Mexico’s Child Support Enforcement Division (CSED) continues to provide child support enforcement services to the general public, as well as recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Medicaid. The mission of CSED is to reduce the impact of poverty on people living in New Mexico by providing support services that assist families in breaking the cycle of dependency on public assistance.

To learn more about New Mexico and other social services-related projects throughout the country, check out Deltek’s Vertical Profiles. Non-subscribers can learn more about GovWin IQ and sign up for a free trial here.

WIC program funded through Appropriations Act

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:20:00 -0400

With last week’s passage of the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 (H.R. 933), the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s state-administrated Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) will receive $6.8 billion in discretionary funding. This will provide an additional $250 million for WIC and help alleviate the approximately $350 million cut from the program due to sequestration. Of this total, $35 million is appropriated for management information systems (MIS), and $14 million for infrastructure upgrades. The passage of H.R. 933 funds the government through September 30, 2013, and prevents a government shutdown.

According to the National WIC Association, “With this new higher funding allocation, WIC contingency funds, unspent SNAP transfer funds carried over from the previous year, and unspent recovered funds available for reallocation, WIC will likely be able to manage through the rest of the fiscal year without cutting any participants.” This is a turnaround from the 600,000 women and children projected to lose benefits as a result of the sequestration cuts that went into effect March 1.

Georgia, Indiana, and Rhode Island are just three of many states actively planning to replace or upgrade their MIS. As discussed in previous blogs, Montana and California are two states working to implement new or upgraded electronic benefits transfer (EBT) systems for WIC and other public benefit programs. Recently awarded WIC contracts include New Jersey’s Automated Client Centered Electronic Service System (WIC ACCESS) contract to CMA Consulting, Florida’s EBT contract to eFunds (FIS), and Indiana’s EBT planning services contract to JRW Service Corporation.

Deltek’s GovWin IQ database contains more than 80 pre-RFP opportunities relating to WIC information technology projects and related consulting and quality assurance (QA) services, as well as detailed award and contract information for nearly 100 awarded WIC contracts. Deltek is also closely tracking sequestration’s impact on government contracting and providing insight on how the vendor community can overcome the cuts and continue to win government business at the state, local and federal levels.

Non-subscribers can find out more about GovWin IQ and sign up for a free trial here!

Congress Passes FY 2013 Funding ? No Shutdown, Sequestration Intact

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:00:00 -0400

This week the Congress passed a fiscal year (FY) 2013 funding bill that provides budgets for a handful of federal departments and continuing resolution (CR) level funding for the remaining departments and agencies through the end of fiscal 2013 on September 30. The final bill averts the potential for a government shutdown and funds key priorities while leaving intact the sequestration rules set under the Budget Control Act (BCA).

When all was said and done, the House passed a Senate amended version of the original H.R. 933 House funding bill. The House original appropriated new budgets for the Department of Defense (DoD), military construction (MilCon) and the Veterans Affairs department.

The Senate added new budgets for Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Homeland Security, NASA, and select other agencies. All others will be funded at FY 2012 levels. (For our take on the overall impacts of the House bill check out this recent blog and for some DoD, VA and DHS implications see this blog.)

Year-over-Year Changes

Of the handful of appropriations bills that were finally passed, Congress did make some changes to fund select departments and agencies to reflect current priorities and give some flexibility in dealing with spending caps. A summary of these appropriations are presented in the table below.

Department of Defense

Total FY 2013 discretionary spending for DoD is set at totals $604.9 billion, including $87 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations. This is roughly $30 billion less than the FY 2012 appropriations, representing a decrease of 4.5%. Other highlights and funding priorities in the bill include:

Complies with the Budget Control Act spending caps by eliminating unneeded, unrequested funding that would be provided if the CR was extended
Directs 671 cuts to unnecessary or under-performing programs and eliminates excess funding due to schedule delays, program terminations, redundancies, and budgeting errors
Rescinds nearly $4 billion in unspent prior year funds
Aligns funding to new Defense strategy to fund current needs and reprioritizes funds to address known shortfalls
Fully complies with Senate Rule XLIV for transparency and maintains earmark moratorium
Bill provides the necessary funding for training and military health care
Adds $1.5 billion to the National Guard and Reserve Equipment account
$486 million to repair aging base facilities
Adds $463 million to mitigate shortfalls in day-to-day operation costs for installations
Increases funding for nanotechnology, advanced materials, silicon carbide, and manufacturing technologies

Homeland Security

Overall FY 2013 discretionary spending for DHS is $39.6 billion, excluding $254 million for Overseas Contingency and $6.4 billion for the disaster relief cap adjustment.

Coast Guard: $10.4 billion overall, of which $9 billion is discretionary spending. The bill also provides targeted increases above the FY 2013 request to support front line personnel with resources, including $8 million for initial acquisition planning and design of a new polar icebreaker and $20 million to reverse cuts proposed in the request for critical operational assets.
Transportation Security Administration (TSA): $7.5 billion for TSA is reduced by $2.4 billion in offsetting collections and fees. The bill includes funding for investments in explosives detection systems, passenger screening technologies, and air cargo security. The bill includes several funding oversight requirements including expenditure plans for checkpoint security technology investments, explosives detection systems for checked baggage, and air cargo security. In addition, language is included requiring TSA to provide a five-year investment plan forecast for passenger screening technologies.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP): $11.9 billion, which adds $79 million above the request for procurement, operations, and maintenance of critical air and marine assets used to defend our borders – including one additional multi-role enforcement aircraft, enhanced radar for unmanned aerial systems, and $28 million to increase flight hours.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): $5.7 billion for ICE, primarily supporting personnel and operations, including border patrol, special agents and immigration officials.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS): $112 million in direct appropriations for USCIS and fully funds the E-Verify employment eligibility verification system.
United States Secret Service: $1.6 billion, adding $3.5 million for priority domestic and electronic crimes investigations and continues the multi-year modernization of critical White House and other Secret Service information technology and communications systems.
Science and Technology (S&T): $835 million, returning to FY 2011 levels, for R&D in biological defense, explosives defense, cyber security, first responders, border security, chemical countermeasures, and interoperability.
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO): $318 million, including $28 million for handheld portable radiation detectors and $75 million for research and development of next-generation detection technologies.
National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD): $1.4 billion, including the following:
- $232 million for a new account, the Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM). Instead of realigning the US-VISIT program as proposed in the FY 2013 budget, the bill creates a new account for OBIM, the DHS lead responsible for biometric identity management services.
- $756 million for cybersecurity programs including Einstein intrusion detection and a critical cyber diagnostic strategy for the 118 federal agencies. Also included in cybersecurity funding is $16.8 million for cyber education programs.
- $260 million in infrastructure protection programs to bolster against natural and man-made disasters, including $78 million to implement the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program.
Office of Health Affairs (OHA): $132 million, including $85 million for the Bio-Watch Program and $2 million to complete demonstration projects through the Chemical Defense Program.

Veterans Affairs

The VA receives $134 billion for FY 2013, which consists of $72.9B for mandatory programs ($9.1B above FY 2012) and $60.9 B for discretionary funding ($2.5B above FY 2012.)

Homeless Veterans Programs: $5.76B for health care and support services for homeless veterans.
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans: $3.28b to meet the health care needs of veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, a $510M increase over FY 2012.
Long Term Care: $7.2M for long term care for the nation’s aging veterans as well as severely wounded combat veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Information Technology (IT): $3.3 billion for IT projects.
- $1B for pay and associated costs
- $1.8B for operations and maintenance
- $494B for DME including $169m for the iEHR and $38.5m the development of paperless claims systems. Requires approval for iEHR spending over 25% of total allotted.

Health and Human Services

National Institutes of Health: Provides $1.5b for NIH, a $71m increase including $165m for the National Children’s Study.
Food and Drug Administration: Provides $2.5b for the FDA including $50m for implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act.
Child Care and Development Block Grant: Provides $2.3b for the program, which is a $50m increase for grants to states to improve working families’ access to quality, affordable child care.
HHS Lease Assistance: Provides additional funding to address imminent lease expirations and consolidations to allow HHS to save millions in annual lease costs and reduce its real property portfolio.
Head Start: Provides a $33.5m increase for the Head Start program.

Transportation

Section 1801 of the legislation increases funding for highway, highway safety, and motor carrier safety programs to make them consistent with the levels previously authorized under the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) Act. Total funding provided by MAP-21 was $561 million in FY 2013 and $572 million in FY 2014.
Normalized MAP-21 funding potentially has an impact on initiatives related to the improvement of travel data collection and safety management. These initiatives would include active procurements for Compliance Test Procedures for Electronic Logging Devices and the Road Inventory Program, as well as task orders under contract # DTFAAC09D00081 held by SAIC for NextGen Initiatives Support Services.

Commerce

Department of Commerce will receive $7.7B in total funding.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will receive $5B, including funding for satellite programs.
The Patents and Trademark Office (PTO) provides $2.88B.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) receives $809M for laboratories and research.
Bureau of the Census will receive $906M.

Justice

Department of Justice will receive $27.3B in total funding.
Grants to State and Local Law Enforcement and crime victims total $2.2B. This includes funding for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) improvements.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) receives$8B for salaries and expenses for national security and counterterrorism investigations, combating cyber threats.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) receives $2.36B.

Energy

Energy Department funding was reduced by a total of $44M.
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy reduced by $11 M
Nuclear Energy reduced by $10M.
Science reduced by $13M.
Advanced Research Projects Agency –Energy reduced by $10M to $265M.
Atomic Energy Defense Activities, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) $7.577B, an increase of $363M.
Atomic Energy Defense Activities, Defense Nuclear Proliferation receive an additional $110M.

Agriculture

USDA’s operating budget is a winner this time around as FY 2013 discretionary funding of $20.5 billion represents a 5% increase over the FY 2012 level of $19.5 billion. Funding includes:
$24 million for USDA Departmental Administration to provide for necessary expenses for management support services and general administration. These support services include enterprise IT services provided by the National IT Center (NITC) and investments in enterprise IT modernization called for by the USDA’s Optimized Computing Environment (OCE) initiative.
$44 million for the Office of the Chief Information Officer and $6 million for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer.
$89 million for the Office of Inspector General that the legislation states may be used for contracting.
$811 thousand for the Office of the Under Secretary for Food Safety and calls out that funding shall be directed to the Public Health Data Communication Infrastructure System (PHDCIS) until expended. This potentially affects the following vendors and contracts: General Dynamics, # AG3A94D090194 & Dell, # AG3A94D090137.
$75 million for the Risk Management Agency (RMA), including funding that may be used for the Common Information Management System (CIMS). This affects the IT Support Services contract, # GST0011AJ0019, held by SAIC.

NASA

National Aeronautics and Space Administration receives $17.5B in total funding.
Space Launch System receives $2.1 B including funding for ground operations and construction and related test facilities.
Funding for the International Space Station (ISS) includes $515M for commercial crew transportation to the ISS and $2.9B for operations and research.
NASA Science includes $630M for Space Technology to support human and robotic missions.

Education

Safe Schools and Citizenship: Allows funds available under the Department of Education Safe Schools and Citizenship account to be used to assist educational institutions impacted by school violence.

Interior

Bureau of Land Management $951M for Management of Lands and Resources, $0 for construction.
US Fish and Wildlife Service, $1.2B for Resources Management

Labor

Job Corps Program: Provides an additional $30m for the program.
Unemployment Insurance: Decreases funding for grants to state agencies that administer federal and state unemployment insurance (UI) by $60m.

Fellow GovWin Federal Industry Analysis (FIA) analysts Kyra Fussell, Angela Petty, and Alex Rossino contributed to this entry.

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Originally published for Federal Industry Analysis: Analysts Perspectives Blog. Stay ahead of the competition by discovering more about GovWin FIA. Follow on twitter @GovWinFIA.

Cost-type Contracts in the Cross-hairs at DoD

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:15:00 -0400

Although the current focus in the federal market centers on budgetary issues like sequestration, continuing resolutions, and the outlook for the fiscal year (FY) 2014 budget there is another aspect that will push agencies to spend less and achieve economies and value for their contract dollar. Here I am referring to acquisition policy – how agencies contract for goods and services with private sector suppliers. Legislators and policymakers have been looking for ways to drive costs out of the system and one recent mandate targets the use of cost-type contracts.

Background

Cost-type, or cost-plus, contracts exist when a contractor is paid for all of their allowable expenses to a pre-set limit plus an additional payment to allow for a profit. These are sometimes referred to as cost reimbursement contracts. By contrast, fixed-price contracts are those in which the contractor is paid a pre-negotiated amount for the work or product regardless of their expenses. Cost-type contracts may include several sub-types, including Cost Plus Fixed Fee, Cost Plus Award Fee, Cost Plus Incentive Fee, Cost No Fee, and Cost Sharing. These cost-type contracts are popular for programs that have unclear or fast-changing requirements or for technologies that are so new that there is insufficient information to accurately estimate development or production costs. Due to these uncertainties, the agency driving the requirement assumes the financial risk of programs changes – often resulting in cost overruns and schedule delays.

Congress Targets Cost-type Contracts

Given growing budget pressures, Congress, OMB and federal agencies are looking to shift some of this risk back to contractors and limit the potential higher-cost implications of cost-type contracts. In fact, Congress recently put limits on their use at the Department of Defense (DOD). In the FY 2013 National Defense Authorization Act that was enacted in January, Congress set in motion several provisions addressing various areas of federal acquisition and contracting policy that will impact major procurements, including one singling out Cost-type contracts.

Section 811 on the Limitation on Use of Cost-type Contracts requires the Secretary of Defense to modify acquisition regulations by May 2013 to prohibit the DoD from entering into cost-type contracts for the production of major defense acquisition programs. The limitation is not all-encompassing. It does not include individual line items for segregable efforts or contracts for the incremental improvement of systems that are already in production (other than contracts for major upgrades that are themselves major defense acquisition programs.) The law allows the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (USD AT&L) to grant exceptions if justification is provided to the relevant congressional defense committees. The policy change will apply to contracts effective on or after 1 October 2014, (i.e. beginning in FY 2015.)

IT Cost-type Contracts at the Department of Defense

To gain a perspective of the potential impact of the new regulation on IT contracts at the DoD I pulled up data on the reported IT contract obligations over the last five years for the various contract types used. (See chart below.)

Observations

Cost-type contracts are second only to Fixed Price contracts as far as total dollar obligations are concerned.
While the percentage of yearly total obligations made up by Fixed Price contracts grew modestly from 47% to 53% over the period the percentage of total yearly obligations made up of cost-type contracts grew from 21% to 37%.
Cost-type contracts have grown by more than 65% from FY 2008 to FY 2012, compared to Fixed Price contract types which have increased 8% during the same period.

Recent Cost-type Contract Usage for IT

Drilling a bit deeper specifically into the use of cost-type contracts at the four major defense components provides a more focused perspective. (See chart below.)

Observations

Army’s use of cost-type contracts doubled over the period where Navy’s cost-type use increased by nearly 60%. OSD’s usage has grown most dramatically at 3X, but the relative dollars in this category is modest by comparison. The Air Force’s usage has been most modest of the four at roughly 10%.
On average, the Navy makes up more than half of DoD’s yearly IT cost-type contract obligations over the period, compared to Air Force and Army making up approximately 20% each.

Implications

There are several implications for defense IT programs that may result from the new restriction. The limitation may reinforce the growing trend of using short-term fixed-price contracts to meet program milestone goals. Naturally, using firm fixed-priced contracts for long-term IT investments increases the risk for vendors. This has been an explicit goal of several federal agencies that are feeling the pressure of increased scrutiny for poorly performing IT programs.

The limitation may also multiply the effect of budget constraints in prolonging the lifespan of outdated legacy systems over the development or acquisition of updated technologies and systems. This could further delay needed modernization and/or consolidation of legacy systems and reduce efficiencies.

In our broad analysis of the federal IT market implications of the FY 2013 NDAA we identified this and several other areas of federal IT market impact, including cybersecurity, network operations, software use and licensing, and additional areas of IT procurement. The impact is not all negative from a spending perspective. Congress is prepared to fund key IT priorities, but competition is likely to be intense as funding shifts.

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Originally published for Federal Industry Analysis: Analysts Perspectives Blog. Stay ahead of the competition by discovering more about GovWin FIA. Follow me on Twitter @GovWinSlye.

House passes FY 2014 Budget Resolution; Senate Kicks Off Its Own

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:42:00 -0400

On March 13, the House Budget Committee passed the FY 2014 budget blueprint from Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). The structure of the plan drives a $7 billion surplus by 2023. According to The Hill, the plan is based largely on $600 billion in new tax revenue established in the American Taxpayer Relief Act (the legislative hook that kept the government from going over the “fiscal cliff” in January), as well as $716 billion in Medicare cuts originally established in the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). Although Ryan opposed those cuts during his stint as Vice Presidential candidate last year, they figure prominently into his approach to deficit reduction.

Meanwhile, the Senate Budget Committee will begin its markup sessions on its own budget plan on March 14. What is interesting to note is that, while the House plan is mum on the subject of sequestration, the Senate version very clearly states an intention to “Fully replace the harmful cuts from sequestration with smart, balanced, and responsible deficit reduction.”

In the grand scheme of things (and on paper), the House and Senate versions don’t vary significantly from each other. The Senate proposal for Discretionary Budget Authority is $80 billion more than the House version, but the difference shrinks down to $16 billion by 2023. While $80 billion is a whole lot of money to me, it’s a rounding error when it comes to federal spending.

Source: Summary tables, “The Path to Prosperity: A Responsible, Balanced Budget” (House), “Foundation for Growth” (Senate)

While the topline numbers suggest a chance at compromise, the two diverge significantly on the path to those numbers. As noted earlier, the Senate version replaces sequestration which won’t be an easy sell. And Ryan’s version basically relies on the elimination of Obamacare (but also relies on the additional revenue that Obamacare would bring in).

Source: Summary tables, “The Path to Prosperity: A Responsible, Balanced Budget” (House

That’s not going to go over well in the Senate, the House will not be a fan of repealing sequestration, so ultimately both versions are likely dead in the water.

House FY ?13 Continuing Resolution Gives DoD and VA Flexibility, Has Select IT Implications

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:20:00 -0400

On March 6, the House passed H.R. 933 which would appropriate funding for the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) and fund military construction projects (MilCon) for fiscal year (FY) 2013. The bill will also avert a potential government shut-down near the end of March by funding the remaining departments at their FY 2012 levels under a continuing resolution (CR) effective until the end of the fiscal year. How the bill fares in the Senate is yet to be seen.

Passage of appropriations for the DOD and VA would mean that those departments can allocate funds to new programs, which is not permitted under a continuing resolution which essentially funds the previous year’s programs at the same levels and schedules.

Specifics of H.R. 933, the Department of Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 include:

Total discretionary budget authority of nearly $1.2 trillion, including
Full-year appropriations for Defense and Military Construction/Veterans Affairs committees
Defense – $518 billion in non-war funding for the DoD, $87 billion for overseas contingency operations (OCO)
MilCon/VA – $72 billion in discretionary funding for military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs, with some shifting of funds away from military construction to support increase in veterans’ programs, which are exempt from sequestration
The remaining federal agencies would be funded at fiscal 2012 levels under a continuing resolution covering the remaining 6 months of fiscal 2013

Sequestration

Citing the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) March 1^st Sequestration report, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) noted In a letter to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan that impact of sequestration on the $1.2 trillion appropriations would be a $68 billion reduction, lowering the overall budget authority for FY 2013 to $1.13 trillion. (An additional $17 billion reduction in mandatory spending brings the total sequestered amount to $85 billion.)

Agency-specific Provisions – Select Details

Although not comprehensive or complete, a quick review of the text of the bill looking for information technology and related acquisition provisions provides the following agency-specific examples.

Veterans Affairs

Veterans Benefits Administration – Provides $3.3 billion for information technology, including $1 billion for staff pay, $1.8 billion for operations and maintenance, and $494 million for systems development, modernization, and enhancement. This DME funding is 2-year money available through FY 2014 but requires the VA Secretary or CIO to submit to Congress a certification of the amounts to be obligated for each project. Further, Congress requires approval of any transfers between the three funding sub-accounts or individual project funding increases/decreases of more than $1 million.
No more than 25% of any joint DoD-VA integrated electronic health record (iEHR) may be obligated until the DOD–VA Interagency Program Office gets the approval of both Congressional Appropriations Committees on the planned costs, timelines, acquisition, etc.
Of the $60.5 billion appropriated for veterans compensation and pension benefits programs no more than $9.2 million “shall be reimbursed to ‘General operating expenses, Veterans Benefits Administration’, ‘Medical support and compliance’, and ‘Information technology systems.’”
$115 million for the VA’s the Office of Inspector General, to include information technology costs and for constructing, altering, extending, and improving any of the facilities.
Only upon approval of Congress may the VA Secretary transfer funds to/from the VA’s ‘‘Information technology systems’’ account to/from the ‘‘Medical services’’, ‘‘Medical support and compliance’’, ‘‘Medical facilities’’, ‘‘General operating expenses, Veterans Benefits Administration’’, ‘‘General administration’’, and ‘‘National Cemetery Administration’’ accounts.
Department of Justice, General Administration, Justice Information Sharing Technology receives $22 million, the National Protection and Programs Directorate, United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology receives $279 million, and the Office of Health Affairs receives $132.5 million, of which $85 million is for the BioWatch program.

Defense

None of the DoD appropriation can be used for new multiyear procurement contracts for any systems or components if the value of the multiyear contract would exceed $500 million, unless specifically provided in the bill. A cursory review finds these are predominantly weapons systems, with some mention of commercial SatCom for naval vessels.
The DoD provisions further stipulate that no multiyear procurement contract can be terminated without 10-day prior notification to the congressional defense committees.
Defense Intelligence Agency funds may be used for the design, development, and deployment of General Defense Intelligence Program intelligence communications and intelligence information systems for the Services, the Unified and Specified Commands, and the component commands, unless otherwise stated.
$12 million for mitigation of environmental impacts on Indian lands resulting from DoD activities, including training and technical assistance, related administrative support, the gathering of information, documenting of environmental damage, and developing a system for prioritization of mitigation and cost to complete estimates for mitigation.
None of the funds in the Act may be used for research, development, test, evaluation, procurement or deployment of nuclear armed interceptors of a missile defense system.
$519 million in multi-year funds for Cooperative Threat Reduction for the elimination and secure transportation/ storage of nuclear, chemical and other weapons; to prevent the proliferation of weapons, weapons components, and weapon-related technologies, etc.
RDT&E New Starts Justification – Funds appropriated under ‘‘Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide’’ for any new start advanced concept technology demonstration project or joint capability demonstration project may only be obligated 45 days after a report, including a description of the project, the planned acquisition and transition strategy and its estimated annual and total cost, has been provided in writing to the congressional defense committees. (The Secretary of Defense may waive this restriction on a case-by-case basis.)
Funds appropriated for research and technology for programs of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence shall remain available until the end of fiscal year 2014.

Homeland Security

Federal Emergency Management Agency receives $35 million for the National Urban Search and Rescue Response System, $22 million shall be for capital improvements at the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, and not less than $5 million directed to the modernization of automated systems.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) receives $112 million for the E-Verify Program.
DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, Infrastructure Protection and Information Security receives $1.1 billion, with $328 million slated for Network Security Deployment and $218 million for Federal Network Security to establish and sustain essential cybersecurity activities, including procurement and operations of continuous monitoring and diagnostics systems and intrusion detection systems for civilian federal computer networks. $213 million (40%) of the combined $546 million is tagged as multi-year funding through FY 2014.

On to the Senate

According to recent media reports, the Senate leadership will go along with the House leadership’s decision to set fiscal 2013 spending at levels reflecting the $85 billion in spending cuts through sequestration. Time will tell whether anyone in the Senate will seek to shift money for agencies within the top-line spending number specified by sequestration. Top agencies on the Senate list to receive similar funding flexibilities include Homeland Security, Justice, State and Transportation, according to reports.

If enacted, H.R. 933’s funding of the DoD would put dollars behind the priorities and policies outlined in the FY 2013 National Defense Authorization Act signed in January. For more details on the acquisition and IT implications of the Defense Authorization bill check out our NDAA analysis report.

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Originally published for Federal Industry Analysis: Analysts Perspectives Blog. Stay ahead of the competition by discovering more about GovWin FIA. Follow me on Twitter @GovWinSlye.

A month-long look at the WIC Program

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:43:00 -0400

This month, the Deltek health care and social services team will be taking a look at the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as the WIC Program. WIC, administered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Nutrition Services (FNS), provides health care and nutrition for low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and infants and children under the age of five.

The eligibility requirement for WIC is a family income below 185 percent of the U.S. Poverty Income Guidelines. The program served 8.9 million people in FY 2012, with the average annual food cost at $45 a month. Unlike other social services programs, WIC is not an entitlement program, as Congress does not set aside funds to allow every eligible individual to participate in the program. Only a specific amount of funds is authorized each year for the program.

Numerous studies have shown that pregnant women who participate in WIC have longer pregnancies that lead to: fewer premature births; fewer low and very low birth weights; fewer fetal and infant deaths; prenatal care sought earlier in pregnancy; and higher consumption of key nutrients such as iron, protein, calcium, and vitamins A and C.

According to research by West Virginia’s WIC Program, every dollar spent on pregnant women in WIC produces $1.92 to $4.21 in Medicaid savings for newborns and their mothers. Medicaid costs were reduced, on average, between $12,000 and $15,000 for every very low birth weight incident prevented by participation in WIC.

In most states, WIC is delivered by the state through its WIC management information system (MIS), which typical functions include certification, nutrition referral, food management, benefit issuance, financial management, case load management, operations management, vendor management, scheduling, system administration, and reporting. Electronic benefits transfer (EBT) is now mandated for the program by FY 2020; states are either pursuing an online or offline EBT card.

The WIC Program showed one of the earliest forms of technology replication across states, with the State Agency Model (SAM) project starting in 2004. The Office of Management and Budget began a five-year initiative to plan, develop, and deploy WIC MISs that had the following features:

Modern Web (HTML/HTTP) technology
Standard WIC data elements
Open-system architecture
Modular components
Compliance with federal policy and regulations

Stay tuned this month to see WIC MIS and EBT updates from across the states. In the meantime, brush up on WIC knowledge through our social services vertical profile application! Not a Deltek subscriber? Click here to learn more about Deltek’s GovWin IQ database and take advantage of a free trial.

House Approves FY 2013 Continuing Resolution; Senate Likely to Approve

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:26:00 -0400

Some said it couldn’t be done, but there’s anecdotal evidence that Congressional bipartisanship exists. On March 6 the House passed a Continuing Resolution bill (H.R. 933) that would fund the government through the rest of FY 2013, and according to the Washington Post, there is optimism that the measure will pass in the Senate (with some amendments). The good news is that we may be avoiding yet another drama-filled “fiscal cliff” scenario. The bad news is that this version of the CR does not eliminate sequestration.

Most of the funding is subject to sequestration, which brings the total discretionary budget down to $982 billion. Although the CR sets budgets for civilian agencies at the FY 2012 levels, it specifies funding levels for the Department of Defense and Department of Veteran’s Affairs, providing some cover by mitigating the impact of sequestration on critical areas of national security. According to the House Committee on Appropriations, several of these specifically-funded areas within DoD and VA will be exempt from sequestration (see chart below):

Source: House Committee on Appropriations

The bill also allows DoD to transfer $4 billion in working capital funds to support high priority military functions (except construction).

There were other provisions intended to mitigate the impact of sequestration for some civilian agencies active in national security, homeland security, emergency response and law enforcement, including funding to protect:

· Nuclear weapons modernization for continued safety, security and reliability of our nuclear stockpile

· Staffing at Customs and Border Protection

· Staffing, cybersecurity and surveillance at the FBI

· Embassy security

· Wildfire suppression funding for Department of Interior

· New weather satellites to support weather warnings and forecasts

H.R. 933 also includes some effort to protect state funding by establishing amounts for advance Q1 FY 2014 grant payments, such as:

· Department of Labor, Office of Workers Compensation Programs, Special Benefits for Disable Coal Miners - $40M

· Health and Human Services, CMS Medicaid grants to states - $106B

· Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Payments to States for Child Support Enforcement andFamily Support Programs’ to states - $1.1B

· Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Payments for Foster Care and Permanency to states - $2.2B

· Social Security Administration, Supplemental Security Income Program’ - $19.3B

There will be quite a bit of reporting going on as well. Within 30 days of enactment, civilian agencies (this excludes VA) must submit spending plans at the Program, Project and Activity (PPA) level for FY 2013 to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. One glaring omission, either because it’s simply not there or reader error (legislation is not the easiest thing to read) is a clear definition of PPA. Starting May 1, 2013, OMB must submit monthly reports detailing all obligations incurred by civilian agencies (excludes VA), by account and with comparisons to FY 2012, to the House and Senate appropriations committees.

This measure must still pass the Senate but indications are that, although the Obama administration and Democrats are not over the moon about the bill, they will likely support it. But like a twisted version of Pavlov’s dogs, I think agencies and contractors alike have been trained to think the worst until the signature is on the page.

Hawaii Health Connector continues to advance

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:34:00 -0400

When the Hawaii Health Connector (the Connector) was approved by the state legislature in 2011, Hawaii became one of the first states to declare its intent to establish a state-based insurance exchange to meet requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Now, with its mission in full swing, Hawaii’s first priority is to create a “one-stop shop” marketplace where consumers and businesses can efficiently and carefully consider health insurance options available to them.

The build out of the Connector will be handled by CGI, who won a $53 million contract in December 2012. KPMG has been sub-contracted to provide testing services; Exeter/Oracle to provide its existing insurance exchange software solution; eWorld in Honolulu for local IT resources; and Solutions West for training services. Hawaii also plans to establish an integrated eligibility system with the Hawaii Department of Human Services, which will determine eligibility for all insurance affordability programs. It will serve as the precursor to shopping and purchasing health insurance through the insurance exchange, and Public Consulting Group will be providing project management services.

Hawaii is currently deciding how to go about implementing its Small Business Health Options (SHOP) exchange, and will be determining the business size allowed to use SHOP and potential services that the state could consume.

Be sure to check out Deltek’s newly released “State Health Insurance Exchange Market” report. The report provides a detailed look into states’ quest to implement the insurance exchange models by the fast-approaching 2014 deadline.