The Inside Guide to the Federal IT Market , livre ebook

THE                 
Inside Guide
TO THE                  
Federal IT Market         
DAVID PERERA   |   STEVE CHARLES
8230 Leesburg Pike, Suite 800 Tysons Corner, VA 22182 (703) 790-9595 Fax: (703) 790-1371 www.managementconceptspress.com
Copyright © 2012 by Management Concepts, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations in review articles.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number 2012939567 978-1-56726-375-6
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Authors
David Perera has been a staff writer, editor, and freelancer covering federal and military information technology since 2004. He currently is executive editor of the FierceMarkets Government Group, which includes Fierce Government IT . He has written for numerous publications, including Government Executive and Federal Computer Week.
Steve Charles has been advising commercial technology companies about how to grow their share of government business since the late 1980s. He cofounded immixGroup in 1997 and has helped grow the company into a trusted provider of commercial technology products and related services to the public sector through technology sales, contract management, channel development, and IT services. A frequent speaker at industry events, Charles leads immixGroup’s training workshops and has authored a monthly column in Washington Technology .
Contents
About the Authors
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 The Ecosystem
How Big a Market?
Why Agencies Buy Information Technology
Federal Attitudes Toward Technology
The Rise of Services
Who in Government Buys IT
Chapter 2 Strictly Business
The Eight-Step Acquisition Process
The Four Dimensions of the Federal IT Market: POET
Getting Started
The Art of the Approach
Get in Sync with the Acquisition Process
Grow from the Inside
Consultants and Research Firms
Be Strategic
Marketing
Final Note
Chapter 3 The Basics
Get Into the System
Know the Rules and the Players
Start Prospecting
Consider Getting a GSA Schedule Contract
Get Paid
Final Note
Chapter 4 Hoops and Hurdles
Cybersecurity
Approved Products List
Section 508
SmartBuy
Special Considerations for Selling Open Source Software to the Government
Final Note
Chapter 5 The Best Relationships Are Based on Contracts
Contracting Methods
Evaluation Criteria
Fair and Reasonable Pricing
Contract Types
Contract Vehicles
Agreements
Contract Changes and Equitable Adjustment
Final Note
Chapter 6 Sign with Caution
Protect Your Proprietary Information
Stand Up for Your Rights
SAFETY Act
Tell the Truth (Even If Somebody’s Been Fooling You)
Handling Terminations
Chapter 7 Keep Your Nose Clean
Suspension and Debarment
Basic Ethics Requirements
Interactions with Individual Federal Employees
Interactions with the Government
Interactions with Your Employees
Interactions with Third Parties
Chapter 8 When You Lose
Debriefs
Protests
Protest Forum: The GAO
Protest Forum: Court of Federal Claims
Final Note
Chapter 9 Import with Care
Buy American Act
Trade Agreements Act
Domestic Preferences for Defense Department Contractors
Determining Country of Origin of a Product or Service
Domestic Preferences for Small Business Set-Asides
Foreign Ownership, Control, or Influence
Final Note
Chapter 10 Getting On a GSA Schedule
What the Schedules Are and Aren’t
The Case For and Against a Schedule Contract
Basic Price Considerations
The Industrial Funding Fee
At the Center of the Vortex: Most Favored Customer and the Price Reduction Clause
Schedule Proposal Nuts and Bolts
Taming Most Favored Customer: The CSP-1
Taming Most Favored Customer: The Labor Rate Matrix
Taming the Price Reduction Clause
Price Adjustment
Schedule Administration
Final Note
Chapter 11 Let’s Get Small
Federal Small Business Basics
You Must Be This Small
Types of Socioeconomically Defined Small Businesses
The 8(a) Business Development Program
Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer
Protests
Life as a Small Business Subcontractor
Growing Your Small Business
Final Note
Chapter 12 The Root of All Money
On Any Given First Monday of February
Authorizers and Appropriators
All Systems Big and Small
Life During a Continuing Resolution
Effect of the Budget Cycle on Sales
Final Note
Index
Foreword
F ighting myths and stereotypes is often thankless. Most of us like our versions of the truth and cling to them with tenacity. Dave and Steve attempt to take you down a road to real truths and keys to success in the federal IT market. I had the experience of being one of the people they interviewed in their quest to explain, dissect, and recommend actions in this arena. Their questions seemed endless but focused: What is it? How big is it? How does it operate? How does one succeed in it?
As a former chief information officer, commissioner, engineer, and program manager, I have thought about those questions, but perhaps not organized, vetted, debated, or reached conclusions. If you don’t know why you failed or succeeded, you are not likely to get better or even to repeat successful outcomes. Dave and Steve have done a wonderful job of starting the process that will enable us to get better and to repeat our successes.
In any great endeavor, the devil is in the details. Oftentimes we work on those details with great energy but aim in the wrong direction. Other times we pursue our objectives with lofty goals but miss the details. I believe we are most successful when we have lofty goals and pursue the details with obsessive energy. Reality may later set in regarding how naïve we were, but also how committed we were—and how wondrous the results were.
As you delve into this book, try to keep in mind the loftier, more noble goals, but also pay attention to the details that must be attended to for those dreams to come true. Dave and Steve have labored to alternate between the lofty and the details to ensure you don’t forget what the goal is and how to get there.
In the first days of my federal career, I thought I needed to be much more sophisticated and worldly than I was (or ever became). The reality is that most of government is about getting the mail there on time. Failures are noticed, publicized, and criticized. Successes often go unnoticed and unappreciated. Yet, those who can understand the practical and human way government works are more likely to succeed and prosper.
Dave and Steve have sought to educate us in the critical success factors involved in doing business in the federal market. This is not the work of ideologues. They have boiled down the hard lessons of experience and presented the keys to operating in a large, complex, legally entangled, and above all technical market.
Although the market can appear daunting, the chance to serve the public has a special appeal. It can be challenging, expensive, demanding, and sometimes thankless, but it offers the chance to make a real difference to the people we serve.
It’s why soldiers don’t talk about battle. It’s why we do what we do in the federal arena.
Robert J. Woods Founder and president, Topside Consulting Group Vienna, Virginia May 2012
Preface
F rom afar, the federal government may seem pervasive but unreachable. Opportunities appear to abound. Government websites post solicitations for procurements the size of a small nation’s gross domestic product; articles proclaim that the government spends millions of dollars every second of every day. Surely, many technology executives wonder in frustration, why can’t their company get just a few minutes’ worth?
That vision of the federal government as a shimmering pool of money is indeed an illusion. But, when one fantasy gets shattered by reality, many executives construct a new one: the federal government as impenetrable labyrinth. Many companies stay hopelessly lost for years within such a maze of ignorance.
What both fantasies share is a disconnect from the reality of how and why the federal government buys information technology. Explaining both matters is why we wrote this book. Our hope is that we can raise the level of discourse between government and industry—and shave years off the learning curve of those seeking to play a meaningful role in this highly regulated market.
At the start of writing, we had our own illusions. Two people, we thought, who had spent most their professional lives studying and selling to the federal government could finish this project in less than a year. It took us close to three.
The reason is that we were determined to do our best to not let ambiguities creep in, to keep picking at generalizations until we could decompose them into certainties. Some things we thought we knew required additional research to understand fully, and in some cases, the more we researched a topic the more the ambiguity grew; sometimes there just is no certainty.
Also, no matter how complex things got, our objective was to lay out the mechanics and mores of the federal IT market in an accessible way. Just because something is complicated doesn’t mean it can’t be sorted through and understood.
Based on what we learned along the way, we hope this book will find an audience not just with the contractor IT community but within the government IT community. Like us, there may be federal IT professionals whose knowledge can be deepened or refreshed.
We organized the book to give in the first two chapters a big picture about what the government is about and how its processes work—to answer the why and give an overarching description of the how . Starting in Chapter 3 , we get techn