Project 38: The Future Of Federal Contracting

2021 has gotten off to a fast start with the new Biden Administration coming in and there has been plenty of business activity as well. In this episode of Project 38, the editorial teams from Washington Technology and FCW talk with WT Editor Nick Wakeman about the news so far. WT Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers shares his insights on what's behind the proposed merger of Peraton, Perspecta and Northrop Grumman's IT business, a mega deal that will create an $8 billion-annual revenue business. FCW Executive Editor Adam Mazmanian talks about the early days of Biden Administration, particularly where the early political appointees are sailing through confirmation and where some of the trouble spots are appearing. President Biden has been very active with executive orders, particularly with his equity agenda, and FCW Staff Writer Natalie Alms shares her reporting about what is in these orders and how they might impact government contractors. Also top of mind for many contractors and especially defense firms is the

In November, Telos Corp. became the latest government technology and cybersecurity company to tell its story to Wall Street and bring in public investors for its next phase of growth. For this episode of Project 38, Telos CEO John Wood takes us inside the five-decade-old firm’s initial public offering and why that path makes sense for them. Much of Telos’ growth leading up to the IPO has been “bootstrapped” in the words of Wood, who also shares how he and other company leaders thought through what next step would be best for Telos. This conversation with Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers also includes much discussion on the trends driving today’s cybersecurity landscape, such as takeaways and implications arising from the SolarWinds hack late last year.

In this episode of Project 38, Smartronix CEO Peter LaMontagne explains a new concept called “More’s Law” that sees agencies demand more data, more often, from more sources, in more formats and with more self-service tools to drive insights. As he tells Editor Nick Wakeman, none of that can happen without a robust cloud infrastructure. Smartronix was an early cloud pioneer in the federal market and with LaMontagne now at the helm, Smartronix is focused on steadily moving up the stack as seen with its recent acquisition of Data Strong. LaMontagne sees the entire industry at an inflexion point because customer needs are rapidly evolving, which means companies need to adapt and ideally get ahead of the curve. There’s never been a more important time to think strategically.

We can finally turn the page to 2021 but any look to the future requires some looking back at 2020. In this episode of Project 38, PM Consulting Group’s founder Walter Barnes gives Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers the ground-floor perspective on both what drove the federal market in 2020 and factors to shape it in 2021. The pandemic remains absolutely central to activity in just about every corner of work and life. But some trends such as the move to “best-in-class” contract vehicles and increases in teaming arrangements between large and small businesses would have remained in play even without COVID-19 in the picture. Barnes sees these drivers first-hand as the leader of a small business himself and brings words of wisdom from his company’s experience to help others down a similar path. He also shares how PM Consulting Group has sought to get creative in keeping employees connected as they are physically separated, plus why 2022 is the year he is really waiting for.

2020 was a year like no other. The pandemic kicked it off in March and continues. The year came to a close with a massive hack of government systems and with a contentious presidential transition underway. In the final 2020 episode of Project 38, Editor Nick Wakeman gathered reporters from Washington Technology, FCW and Defense Systems to review their top stories of the year. Lauren Williams, senior editor of FCW and Defense Systems, brings her views from the defense beat, while FCW’s Mark Rockwell shares important procurement trends. And WT Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers talks the business of government. What’s remarkable is the amount of overlap they see in their respective beats. Much is driven by COVID-19 and the profound changes it has brought to the market. But nothing in government happens in a vacuum and their discussion reinforces that point.

Amentum is a new name to the government market but its people are no strangers given its past history as the former AECOM management services business. In this episode of Project 38, Amentum CEO John Vollmer brings us up to speed on how the new(ish) company navigated 2020 and is integrating its recent acquisition of DynCorp. Nine months after its launch, Amentum closed its deal for DynCorp International, a transaction that was negotiated and agreed upon in almost exclusively virtual fashion given the coronavirus pandemic. A select group of leaders are meeting in-person to spearhead the integration that still has a large digital component to it. Vollmer and Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers both found agreement in this discussion that the world is not going back to the way it was before COVID-19, though many have different opinions on what that world will look like. How to up one’s digital game for success in the future is a question on Amentum’s mind, which Vollmer gives us a glimpse into.

Megan Metzger of Dcode, the organization built to bring commercial technology firms into the federal market, and Editor Nick Wakeman talk about opportunities sparked by the incoming Biden administration. But many of those opportunities have more to do with a changing market than with politics. Dcode's CEO describes in this episode how government buyers are looking for more commercial technologies, while systems integrators are slowly turning in that direction as well and want more direct relationships with emerging tech firms. She sees a shakeup ahead that will favor the companies that embrace commercial ways of doing business as that is what customers are demanding. To succeed, traditional government contractors need to undergo a mindset shift away from putting butts in seats and toward partnership and collaboration with commercial tech providers.

The coronavirus pandemic is one of those situations where collaborations between the public and private sector entities had to accelerate given the situation. In this episode of Project 38, Guidehouse’s two lead executives share their views with Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers on what those partnerships looked like in 2020 and how change going forward. CEO Scott McIntyre and Chief Operating Officer Charles Beard have also have led the company (once PwC’s U.S. public sector shop) through its launch as an independent business in 2018 and acquisition of Navigant Consulting in 2019 to gain equal government and commercial footings. They update us on how that deal has changed Guidehouse and why it was important for them to be present with the regulators and those who are regulated. Also on the agenda: questions to answer in thinking about the future of work and what the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines mean for future teaming between government agencies and companies like Guidehouse.

Many people see little change from the Trump administration to the Biden administration as far as tech priorities are concerned. But in this conversation with Editor Nick Wakeman, 18F co-founder Greg Godbout describes what he sees as an opportunity to accelerate the evolution toward a digital transformation of government. In addition to 18F, Godbout also led digital services efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency. His advocacy for digital transformation continues as part of the executive team leading Fearless. Godbout says the Biden administration needs to focus on delivery and outcomes and that focus will accelerate the transformation of how government agencies provide services to their constituents. He sees an opportunity to supercharge an ongoing evolution.

We are always told that government contracting is a people business at its core even as technology and connectivity loom large. In this episode of Project 38, we hear from the GovCon market’s leading human capital specialists on how COVID-19 has wrought permanent changes to the way companies recruit and develop their work force. Jon Barney and Sam Dinte, respectively of Odgers Berndston and Dinte Executive Search, work with contractors on building their leadership teams and help shape their overall human resources strategies. Their first-person anecdotes shared here illustrate both how companies had to shift and are thinking through the long-term implications. They see the human factor as continuing to be at the core of how GovCon companies operate, but certainly the underlying mechanics will look very different going forward.

From her perch as president of Microsoft’s U.S. regulated industries group, Toni Townes-Whitley looks across both the legacy of the software giant as well as its future. In this episode of Project 38, she speaks with Editor Nick Wakeman about what that future entails and how it is reflected in major wins such as the CIA’s Commercial Cloud Enterprise contract. Whitley also talks about social justice, the incoming Biden administration and how computing at the edge will be a game changer across the public sector. An overarching theme of the discussion with Whitley is the importance of mission resiliency, something the ongoing pandemic has been teaching the entire marketplace.

Even in normal election year, the transition from one administration to the next create uncertainty in the market. In this episode of Project 38, Editor Nick Wakeman speaks with business development and capture management expert Bob Lohfeld on what companies should be doing to successfully move through these next few months. His biggest piece of advice is to realize many IT priorities will not change. Some flavors might be adjusted, but agencies will still rely heavily on contractors. That doesn’t mean standing still however. As Lohfeld explains, you still have work to do and that means taking care of your customers like never before.

A Nov. 30 deadline looms for compliance with the CMMC cyber standard's interim rule, so Washington Technology Editor Nick Wakeman checks in with FCW and Defense Systems Senior Editor Lauren Williams to get her take on what industry should be doing. Williams and Wakeman talk about what compliance with the Defense Department's new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification means, the challenges ahead, and what kind of impact the transition to a Biden administration might have. Williams is an experienced defense reporter who has closely tracked the development of CMMC. Here she offers her insights on what has happened so far and where she is going to focus her reporting going forward.

The presidential transition is underway, sort of, and other issues are weighing on the market. In this episode of Project 38, Washington Technology Editor Nick Wakeman leads a discussion with his colleagues from WT and FCW about what the transition means as well as other issues having an impact on the government contracting market. FCW Executive Editor Adam Mazmanian talks transition, while WT Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers shares the perspective of publicly traded contractors on the upcoming budget as well as what’s behind the increase in merger and acquisition activity. FCW Staff Writer Natalie Alms dives into President Trump’s executive order banning certain anti-bias training, and while it’ll likely be pulled back by the Biden administration, the extraction might not be as simple as the stroke of a pen.

For this episode of Project 38, Katie Bilek and Stephanie Alexander, the founders and matchmakers at Govmates, return (with a Zoom assist) to Project 38 to help us turn a closer lens on small business and non-traditional government contracting amid the pandemic. The Govmates duo say that GovCon has mostly fared well so far through the pandemic. But they are also here to caution that some agencies have a lot on their plate and may not be as vocal, which can be a barrier for small businesses and non-traditional firms seeking more of a government footprint. Bilek and Alexander offer their advice on how to climb that barrier of silence in this conversation with Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers. Also on the agenda: changes to GovCon made permanent by COVID-19 and how companies are getting in tune with the Pentagon’s new CMMC cyber certification program.

Discussions around unconscious or implicit bias have become more common in the months since the killing of George Floyd, and President Trump’s recent executive order banning certain kinds of bias and discrimination training are a pushback against the notion that unconscious bias even exists. In this episode of Project 38, diversity and inclusion expert Minal Bopaiah tells Editor Nick Wakeman what exactly is implicit bias and how impacts businesses and decision making. There are no easy answers. But as Bopaiah explains, our biases shape our behaviors and our technology in ways we might not imagine. So too there are ways to mitigate the impact.

Fiscal year 2020 just wrapped up and that presents an opportunity to both look back upon those 12 months and look ahead to the next. In this episode of Project 38, Bloomberg Government’s senior defense analyst Rob Levinson helps us do just that as we review how civilian agencies put their contracting dollars to work in fiscal 2020. The coronavirus pandemic response led to a 17 percent spike in contract spending by those agencies last year and the final number came out to $228 billion in obligations. Looking under the hood of those numbers also helps reveal the different methods agencies have used to award those contracts and what they have prioritized during the pandemic. Levinson also sheds light on other trends he and his BGOV colleagues are looking at to better understand what the federal contracting environment looks like today and what they are watching for in fiscal 2021, now just in its third week.

Don't sell small town America short. In this episode, Brendan Walsh from 1901 Group talks about how today's tech revolution is creating an opportunity to build a successful business in rural America. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic became a large-scale technology and business disrupter, the Fourth Industrial Revolution was underway with growing adoption of technologies around the Internet of Things and cloud computing. What COVID-19 did was throw gasoline on a fire that was just starting to burn. Walsh, 1901 Group's senior vice president of partner relations, explains to Editor Nick Wakeman how the pandemic has accelerated this revolution and how a great business opportunity awaits in small towns and rural areas across the country.

The COVID-19 crisis has forced agencies and companies to field a dispersed workforce that relies on technology to stay productive and connected. In this episode of Project 38, Gary Hix of Hitachi Vantara Federal discusses how much those change could be permanent. As the company’s chief technology officer, Hix keeps a close eye on the IT challenges government agencies face now and the emerging challenges they'll face in the future. Hix also wears the hat of a solution architect to help customer visions become a reality. In his view remote work does not mean easier work and particularly when it comes to company culture, as he shares with Washington Technology Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers. Different skills and cadences are needed when employees are dispersed -- one of many lessons agencies and contractors need to learn about today’s environment to be successful in tomorrow’s.

NCI Information Systems is navigating its way past some headwinds with a focus on artificial intelligence solutions and a move away from low-price contracts. In another of our Top 100 podcasts, CEO Paul Dillahay tells Editor Nick Wakeman where the company sees its future opportunities and some early signs of success along with challenges he sees on the horizon.