During the Scoop News Group-produced Amazon Web Services Innovate Day event, Skip Jentsch, cloud products manager for GSA, shared that the agency is focused on “new” special ordering procedures implemented for procuring cloud computing on a consumption basis. 

“GSA has stepped in and created this special ordering procedure,” Jentsch said during the event. “And all it does is that any kind of contract or [blanket purchase agreement] led against the GSA schedule, cloud special item number, is firm fixed price.”

Jentsch hinted at potential legislation that would further help address gaps in federal acquisition regulation. He said these regulations do not mention cloud or how to pay for cloud on an incremental basis. 

Separately, Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last month introduced the Federal Improvement in Technology Procurement Act, which focuses on assisting agencies with the procurement cycle for IT capabilities such as cloud computing.

The legislation, which passed through the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee without opposition on Wednesday, would require federal procurement rules to update and get rid of “obsolete, overly burdensome or restrictive requirements” to allow an ease of process for contractors and collaborations between the public and private sectors.

A spokesperson for Cruz said in an email to FedScoop that the senator “believes increasing competition within the procurement process for emerging technologies is essential for lowering government costs, protecting taxpayers, and allowing innovative small businesses to compete on a level playing field for government contracts.” 

A committee aide for Peters told FedScoop that the bipartisan vote “signals its strength to continue to advance” and that the senator will work to continue building support. While there isn’t a House companion yet, the aide said “the committee is hopeful there will be interest for the House to take on this important effort.”

This story was updated May 16, 2024, with information on the committee vote on the Federal Improvement in Technology Procurement Act and comments from Cruz’s spokesperson and a Peters aide.

FedScoop reporter Madison Alder contributed to this story.

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The agency said Friday in a request for information that it is conducting market research to identify a service provider to modernize and “continuously improve” the existing cloud environment provided by Amazon Web Services. 

The department said in the RFI that FSA “must evolve cloud capabilities” for general purpose business use, to meet federal requirements laid out in a 2021 executive order on improving national cybersecurity and to “keep pace with today’s dynamic and increasingly sophisticated cyber threat environment.”

The request states that within the first year of awarding a contract, all on-premise applications and infrastructure that remains will move to the cloud. In the second and third year of the contract, “the entire cloud environment must be optimized and modernized as a dedicated workstream” through cloud native design principles in order to take advantage of the commercial cloud’s full benefits. 

“The preponderance of FSA’s applications will migrate into FSA [Next Generation Cloud], managed by the FSA chief information officer,” the request states.

This effort is unrelated to the recent updates to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which was recently overhauled to leverage cloud technologies for the transmission and delivery of FAFSA data, an agency spokesperson said in an email to FedScoop.

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