Deals & Deadlines
GSA awards $100 million BPA for E-Authentication The General Services Administration awarded WidePoint Corp., a subsidiary of Operational Research Consultants Inc. of Fairfax, Va., a blanket purchasing agreement under the Federal Supply Service IT schedule for E-Authentication products and services.
Agencies can buy digital-signature services, public-key infrastructure and security engineering services, certificate authentication and validation products, user hardware token products and a host of other similar items under the BPA, which has a $100 million ceiling.
Contractors face the same HSPD-12 scrutiny as fedsThe Federal Acquisition Regulation Council earlier this month issued an interim rule directing agencies to require contractors to submit to the same background investigations federal employees go through under Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12.
The interim rule is backdated to Oct. 27, requiring all solicitations issued and all contracts awarded on or after that date to adopt the same procedures feds installed Oct. 26. The rule applies to all contractors and subcontractors with access to federal facilities or federal information systems.
Agencies have to authenticate through the National Agency Check or other Office of Personnel Management or National Security investigations the identities of all current contractors who have not already been cleared. All contractors must be cleared by Oct. 27, 2007, the rule says.
Comments are due by March 6 to
farcase.2005-015@gsa.gov.
Grant Web sites mergedTwo federal Web sites for grant applications merged earlier this month under the auspices of the
Grants.gov E-Government project. The merger eliminated Fedgrants.gov, according to Grants.gov officials.
Grants.gov officials expect online traffic to increase. Last year, the site's number of registered users grew from 12,330 in June to 22,246 in November. In November 2004, Grants.gov received 1,412 grant applications; last month that figure had increased to 20,023 applications.