GSA car sharing

Following the example of hourly car rental services such as ZipCar, The General Services Administration announced it has awarded contracts to four vendors to provide car-sharing services to federal employees in Boston, Chicago, New York City and Washington, DC.

The pilot program with ZipCar, Hertz, Enterprise and Carpingo “will tell us whether it is more cost-effective and beneficial to use a car-sharing service in lieu of taxi cabs, renting, leasing and/or purchasing a vehicle,” the GSA said.

More information: http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/198603

FBI headquarters

The General Services Administration and FBI are holding public meetings to help select the new headquarters location for 11,000 employees of the FBI from among three finalists.

The GSA and FBI previously announced they had narrowed the selection to sites in Greenbelt, MD; Landover, MD; and Springfield, VA.

More information: http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/195167

DOT amends DBE rule

The Transportation Department issued a final rule to amend its regulations for its Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE) program.

The rule revises the certification application and reporting forms, creates a personal net worth form and collects data on the number of DBEs in each state, as required by the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act.

The rule also strengthens certification-related policies and modifies several other policies.

More information: http://goo.gl/fpfsRn

Three-day disclosure

More federal agencies may follow the Pentagon’s example in requiring contractors to report hacks into company-owned systems within three days, according to a report by NextGov.

Under Defense Department guidelines that went into effect in November 2013, vendors must report compromises of classified information and defense industry trade secrets. Penalties are stiff.

More information: http://goo.gl/b1qAmH

Innovation hot in 2015

Federal agencies will continue to focus on innovation in fiscal 2015, predicts Gunnar Hellekson, chief strategist for Red Hat’s U.S. public sector practice, in a recent FCW article.

He anticipates that agencies will name innovation teams modeled after the GSA’s 18F.

He also predicts more hybrid cloud deployments; development of open source application programming interfaces for federal data; and cost cutting for managing federal databases.

More information: FCW article http://goo.gl/C2aTOc

VA OIG rips FedBid

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GSA card, travel spending drops dramatically

NASA SEWP V starts cooking

Column: Are federal prison programs your competitors or customers?

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