Posted by
Cost Estimating NewsBrief: March 28, 2025
FAR overhaul: The challenges in tackling federal procurement’s 5,000-page beast
(NextGov/FCW) A major revamp of the Federal Acquisition Regulations is coming and those reforms will certainly touch every facet of doing business with the federal government. tephen Ehikian, acting administrator for the General Services Administration, said Monday that the agency is pushing to streamline the procurement process and reduce compliance burdens. GSA’s goal is to increase efficiency and competition. The process seeks to bring in more of he called “best-in-class” enterprises and a higher number of small businesses into the federal market. GSA is working with the FAR Council and other stakeholders on changes to the acquisition regulations. Read More
GAO Sees Lessons for Agencies in Private Sector Cloud Computing
(FEDweek) GAO has said that in a survey of 18 private sector companies, it found widespread use of leading practices when adopting and implementing cloud computing solutions, providing lessons for federal agencies in their own efforts. “Given the evolving nature of cloud computing, identifying leading practices used by the private sector could provide valuable insights. These insights could help inform federal policymakers and program managers in their efforts to adopt cloud solutions,” it said. Read More
Defense Leaders Discuss Skills-Based Hiring at DOD
(ExecutiveGov) The U.S. military’s transition to skills-based hiring requires an overhaul of existing processes, according to defense officials. At a recent event, hiring managers from the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines shared required changes to improve personnel recruitment processes at the Department of Defense. The Marine Corps has already implemented skills-based hiring practices, with hiring managers conducting a pre-employment test that consists of work samples, case studies and skills-based interviews, shared Jing Deng, the service branch’s chief human capital officer for intelligence and cyber and workforce director. Read More
Federal CIO launches effort to ‘rationalize’ government’s web footprint
(NextGov/FCW) The Trump administration is planning to streamline the government’s web presence as part of its effort to eliminate waste, Federal Chief Information Officer Gregory Barbaccia told CIOs across the government in a Tuesday email obtained by Nextgov/FCW. “Our current foodprint is both inexusably inefficient to operate and unnecessarily burdensome on the American people,” wrote Barbaccia, who formerly worked at Palantir but now oversees technology across the federal government. “We have to get control of the sprawl, rein in wasteful spend, and deliver the world-class digital experiences that Americans deserve.” Read More
The Cost of Federal Uncertainty: How Government Leaders Can Guard Productivity (and Employee Wellbeing)
(FEDweek) It is obvious that federal employees across agencies are facing a climate rife with anxiety and uncertainty. In addition to the shifting policy priorities, budget fluctuations, technological modernization initiatives, and updated workplace policies that have been underway for a few years, the recent workforce reductions and resignations have amplified anxiety. As government leaders scramble to navigate rapid changes in federal mandates and operational requirements, the current environment is proving very different from any previous period of change. Read More
When Team Accountability Is Low: Four Hard Questions for Leaders
(MIT Sloan Management Review) I once had to take a bleeding coworker to urgent care. It was a harrowing incident. He had cut himself on a broken mug that tumbled from a kitchen cabinet, and his hand wouldn’t stop gushing blood. What struck me wasn’t how hurt you can get from a silly accident but how hard it was to nail down who should help him. It’s not always immediately clear who’s accountable at work. I think about this incident a lot as I hear leaders tell me, over and over, that a lack of accountability on their team is the workplace behavior that concerns them the most. These leaders, sometimes exhausted and despairing, feel that their teams cannot take ownership of even the smallest tasks. Read More
Dialing in the temperature needed for precise nuclear timekeeping
(Space Daily) For decades, atomic clocks have been the pinnacle of precision timekeeping, enabling GPS navigation, cutting-edge physics research, and tests of fundamental theories. But researchers at JILA, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and University of Colorado Boulder physics professor Jun Ye, in collaboration with the Technical University of Vienna, are pushing beyond atomic transitions to something potentially even more stable: a nuclear clock. This clock could revolutionize timekeeping by using a uniquely low-energy transition within the nucleus of a thorium-229 atom. This transition is less sensitive to environmental disturbances than modern atomic clocks and has been proposed for tests of fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model. Read More
ICEAA’s NewsBrief is a collection of articles relevant to the cost estimating and analysis community that is delivered weekly to current ICEAA members. To advertise in NewsBrief, contact iceaa@iceaaonline.org.