WT 360: The market from all angles (Nick Wakeman, Ross Wilkers)

In each year from 2004 and onward, WT publishes a report and augmenting analysis that catalogs merger-and-acquisition activity in the government market as a way to trace the history of GovCon and the companies in it.

Nick and Ross begin this two-folded episode by going over the 2024 edition of that report and their highlights from it, both in terms of what we can gauge about the individual companies and the overall market at-large.

Part two shifts the discussion to all that is going on with President Trump’s return to office and the related transition activities, which are roughly 11 weeks in. Contractors are still left guessing a lot in terms of how the new administration wants to achieve its agenda and what is expected from industry.

Our 2024 M&A roundup is now available

Defense tech, digital modernization drive GovCon M&A in 2024

How consulting firms acquire to iterate, and sometimes reinvent themselves

The public company acquirer remains a unicorn in the M&A action

Venture investing is part of the M&A conversation too

ANALYSIS: Federal contractors navigate Trump administration uncertainty

Trump’s ‘pincer maneuver’ reshapes federal contracting landscape

Billions are on the line as DOGE, GSA increase scrutiny

COMMENTARY: The chainsaw approach to cutting government promises more damage than results

Trump administration asks agencies to cull consultants

Pentagon launches consulting contract review process

FAR overhaul: The challenges in tackling federal procurement’s 5,000-page beast

Centralized federal procurements bring plenty of risks, potential rewards

In this episode, we explore disruption in the market and the keys to managing and thriving through times of great change with our guest is David Kriegman, former executive with SRA International and author of Zero to A Billion, the story of how SRA become a government contractor with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
Many talk about how today's market undergoing great change and disruption. There are new competitors, new customer demands and new technologies that are creating fundamental shifts in how business is conducted in the federal market.
But as Kriegman quickly points out, this is the first time the market has undergone a period of disruption. But there are principles for managing change so join the discussion in our latest episode of the Project 38 podcast.

A pair of big-ticket programs focused on health care for veterans, soldiers and their families is the focus of this newest WT 360 Info Session series of episodes that bring together reporters from across the GovExec media team.

FCW's executive editor Adam Mazmanian and NextGov reporter Edward Graham join our Nick Wakeman and Ross Wilkers to update the current situation regarding the ongoing electronic health record integration programs at the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments.

On the surface, both programs appear to be going on very different tracks. But nothing in the world of government technology at this scale we're talking about is simple.

Mazmanian and Graham explain where both departments are looking to go with their EHR programs, how they got there and the roles of the companies involved in each. The common thread between them is in how both adopting variants of Oracle Cerner's electronic health record.

Leidos is the lead contractor for DOD's EHR program with Oracle Cerner, Accenture, Henry Schein One and 35 other supporting businesses as teammates. Oracle Cerner is the prime for the VA EHR program with Leidos and Accenture included as teammates.

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.

As one of the federal government's primary carriers, Lumen Technologies also takes on the mantle of layering the latest innovations on top of the core network to make it more complete and well-rounded.

Jason Schulman, national vice president of federal government sales at Lumen Technologies, explains in this episode how the company works with agencies to make that happen regardless of where they are in their innovation comfort levels.

For Company No. 38 on our 2024 Top 100, that also means looking beyond the current Enterprise Infrastructure contract vehicle as the government is already thinking about its successor. Schulman tells our Ross Wilkers all about how the work begins now on that front for carriers and agencies alike.

Dive into the rankings and more surrounding them by clicking the links below:

The 2024 Washington Technology Top 100

How we got our numbers

Our 2024 Top 100 reader's guide

Trends driving today's Top 100

Diversity gaps persist among the Top 100 C-suites

Maximus is just getting started on its new strategy for the next three to five years after a series of large acquisitions to reposition the company for new opportunities.

Those have taken place as the pandemic exposed multiple weaknesses in how services are delivered to citizens, but company no. 19 on our 2022 Top 100 sees those gaps as space to grow.

For this episode, CEO Bruce Caswell and federal business leader Teresa Weipert talked with Editor Nick Wakeman about the changes at the company and how Maximus is melding its old culture with new ones.

It goes without saying that success in the government contracting ecosystem requires more than just having good methodologies and processes, both of which are significantly enhanced by strategy and knowledge.

Amber Hart and Lisa Shea Mundt, cofounders of The Pulse of GovCon, believe that taking a true “BD 360” approach to the market means enhancing all aspects of the federal sales process with the goal of achieving an intuitive understanding of how agencies buy things.

They have now put permanency to their concept in the form of a book aptly named BD 360, from which the ideas in it are the foundation for this episode with our Ross Wilkers.

Legislation, policy and knowing how people work is where much of the conversation centers around. Yes, they talk about proposals too.

What business and technology macrotrends are going to dominate the agendas of companies in the government market for 2023?

This episode is all about answering that question in the form of a discussion featuring our Ross Wilkers and Stephanie Smith, government contracting industry senior analyst and valuation services director at the global professional services firm RSM.

Analysts and reporters have similar jobs: take in information, find the larger narrative and context, then present their findings to the respective audiences.

Smith does that at RSM to help its government contractor clients make informed decisions on strategies. Consider this conversation between Smith and Wilkers as an exchange of notes on what they have heard across the industry regarding what is important and gaining in prominence.

Booz Allen Hamilton is now at No. 6 on the 2021 Washington Technology Top 100 and the company is coming off of its Vision 2020 strategy that transformed it from a management consulting firm to a technology company. 

For this episode, Editor Nick Wakeman shares excerpts from his interview with Booz Allen Executive Vice President Karen  Dahut. They talk about the strategy that will drive Booz Allen for the next decade as well as the value the company places in diversity and inclusion. 

They also talk about what it will take for Booz Allen Hamilton, now 107 years old, to make it to the firm's 200th birthday in 2114.

GovCIO's starting point for its journey in the market might as well be the acquisition of Salient CRGT in 2020 that greatly multiplied both key measurements of scale: revenue base and workforce.

Joe Cormier, both chief operating officer and chief financial officer at GovCIO, explains in this episode how the technology integrator has become what it is today as a result of that transaction. For context: GovCIO was at 500 employees when its private equity owner entered the investment and now has 3,000 on staff.

Company No. 41 on our 2024 Top 100 is now almost solely focused on organic growth, including its capture of a recompete almost four times the size of its predecessor. Cormier describes that win to our Ross Wilkers in their wide-ranging conversation that also covers how GovCIO approached the integration and is thinking about what's next for itself.

Dive into the rankings and more surrounding them by clicking the links below:

The 2024 Washington Technology Top 100

How we got our numbers

Our 2024 Top 100 reader's guide

Trends driving today's Top 100

Diversity gaps persist among the Top 100 C-suites

ManTech’s shift to the government technology company it is today has been in the making for several years. More signs of that show in its climb of two spots to No. 26 on this year’s Top 100.

But how does ManTech go about the tagline in its logo of “Bringing Digital to the Mission?” In this episode of Project 38, Chief Operating Officer Matt Tait tells Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers about how that mantra explains both today’s work for customers and ManTech’s longer-term direction.

Acquisitions, talent and technology focus areas all feed into that overall approach for ManTech. Tait breaks all of those aspects down and explains how ManTech seeks to ensure the links between them stay connected.

Huntington Ingalls Industries just completed its largest-ever acquisition, the $1.65 billion deal for Alion Science & Technology, and is now at work integrating that big piece into the shipbuilder’s technical solutions segment.

This episode of Project 38 both functions as an update on that integration and a big-picture explanation of HII’s strategy for its technical solutions segment from its president Andy Green.

Much change and portfolio shaping has taken place since HII stood up the technical solutions segment in late 2016 to house its government services work, of which our Ross Wilkers has discussed with Green a few times since.

This latest conversation between Green and Wilkers includes a discussion on where HII looks to make sure its shipbuilding and solutions sides contribute to what the other is doing and the company at-large, plus some of the technical challenges they work on together and particularly in the emerging unmanned maritime domain.

A shortlist of today's stressors on the federal technology ecosystem include not enough high-quality computer chips to go around and other supply chain shortages, which are taking place amid the digital transformation push inside government.

But as part of this Project 38 episode, World Wide Technology's public sector leader Bryan Thomas tells our Ross Wilkers that commercial enterprises are going through much of the same dynamics as government agencies.

The main difference is found in the tools and methods businesses have to navigate those challenges, which Thomas points to as a matter mostly of policy and buying practices within government.

He also triangulates how technology, talent and investments relate to one another with the goal of both bringing government IT systems into the modern age and bringing more workers into the public sector ecosystem.

Cybersecurity started to evolve into an enabling technology area more than a decade ago, which means today it is in the core of what government technology companies do for federal agencies.

Dr. Sarbari Gupta founded Electrosoft in 2001 to focus on helping agencies with their own postures in cyber, the evolution of which she describes in this episode that also goes over what the government is asking of industry in today's cyber landscape.

Gupta explains to our Ross Wilkers how companies such as hers have carried out their own cyber practices and cultures amid the emergence of standards like CMMC as the final rule is in-the-works for that particular program.

She also shares her lessons learned along the way on growth, entrepreneurship and industry teaming as a small business founder.

Click here to watch Gupta's Ted Talk that was discussed in this episode.

Walter Barnes III, founder of PM Consulting, shares his small business journey with Editor Nick Wakeman in this episode and offers advice on overcoming the hurdles and challenges he’s faced in the federal market.

Many small businesses share the same challenges in achieving growth and success. Barnes shares his experiences and why he made some of the choices he made, including recently teaming with private equity firm Enlightenment Capital to fuel his company's next stage of growth.

All companies have to eventually decide if they want to race with stronger and faster runners, or stay in their comfort zone. Barnes has definitely chosen the former. He also knows big decisions lie ahead -- strategic hires, acquisitions and winning bigger contracts.

Washington Technology Editor Nick Wakeman and Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers see little slowing the pace of mergers and acquisitions in the federal market with buyers of all types continuing to make big deals.
In this episode, they discuss several reasons for the strong M&A activity including the availability of credit and other financial resources, a customer who favors larger and more consolidated contract vehicles and ever-bigger task orders, and the continuing demand for capabilities that support digital transformation efforts.
Wakeman and Wilkers review some of the major deals of 2020 and the big deals so far this year. Their prediction -- more is to come in 2021.

Booz Allen Hamilton wants to show the startup community it is serious about helping take their technologies into the U.S. public sector ecosystem.

So much so that Booz Allen has stood up a venture capital organization to invest in emerging tech firms and given that team an initial $100 million in funding to start out with.

Why formalize it after having already made three such investments? Here to explain why and the gameplan for Booz Allen Ventures is Brian MacCarthy, vice president of tech scouting and ventures.

MacCarthy explains the goals of Booz Allen Ventures as including finding dual-use technologies that can be scaled for government missions, letting product development companies remain such and keeping customers at the forefront of tech adoption.

The continuing acceleration of the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with the simultaneous revival of diversity and social justice movements in the United States can be overwhelming. In this episode of Project 38, we attempt to distill what it all means with the help of Capitol Hill veteran and GovCon community leader Tonya Saunders.
Saunders watches how policy sets the environment in which government contractors operate and how events in society often dictate policy as a government relations specialist and advocate for mid-tier firms. She is the founder and head of both Washington Premier Group and Mid-Tier Advocacy.
While today’s ongoing events are a lot to take in, Saunders share her professional and personal experiences with Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers to help make some sense of what's going on and what the future might hold.

Artificial intelligence is not just a technology that government contractors provide their customers, but also is becoming a bigger piece of internal operations.

Kim Koster, vice president of product marketing at Unanet, joins WT Editor Nick Wakeman for this episode to discuss how and where contractors are adopting AI in their own operations as found in the newest edition of her company's GAUGE report.

Unanet and CohnReznick work each year to release GAUGE -- Government Contract Compliance, Accounting, Utilization, Growth and Efficiencies.

In explaining the 2024 GAUGE findings, Koster shares insights on AI usage trends, maturity levels and implementation strategies. Still not on your AI journey yet? Koster has some advice on how to start that as well.

Bryce Technology has been named to the Washington Technology Fast 50 list for four consecutive years, climbing to No. 11 in 2024.

For this episode, Bryce Tech's founder and CEO Carissa Bryce Christensen shares the secrets behind her company's rapid growth and success in the federal market.

Christensen discusses Bryce's strategic approach to building a scalable business, focusing the pipeline on the right opportunities and nurturing a company culture that empowers employees. She also tells Editor Nick Wakeman about the firm's ability to apply its expertise across both government and commercial sectors, especially in the dynamic space industry.

She also provides advice for aspiring entrepreneurs that emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, building the right partnerships, and staying true to your vision.

Arcfield is a company whose name is slightly more than one year old, but also touts at least six decades of history behind it through the heritage of its former parent Peraton.

How Arcfield has come to be and where it is looking to go is the focus of this episode featuring chief executive Kevin Kelly, who explains to our Ross Wilkers the systems engineering provider's overall thesis and approach with the backing of private equity firm Veritas Capital.

Peraton and Arcfield both share Veritas as their owners but with a slightly different twist. Arcfield's strategy and execution is supported by on Veritas' Vantage Fund that focuses on mid-sized companies in the government technology landscape.

Kelly describes how Arcfield identifies and decides on the right larger opportunities to pursue, plus how the company thinks about further acquisitions and his perspective on overall trends in the space and national security domains.

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.

Explore the impact of COVID-19 on the GovCon supply chain in Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers' interview with Chris Meissner, founding partner with the 202 Group, a data analytics and market intelligence firm.
Meissner's firm specializes in using rich analytics tools to examine tech trends and develop competitive intelligence, particularly around the supply chain.
There are still a lot of unknowns, but Meissner explains the areas to pay attention to as the market moves forward.

An unusual set of circumstances looms over the entire public sector landscape with two sets of federal funding slated to run out on different dates in early 2024.

What those deadlines mean for government contractors is the starting point for this episode featuring David Berteau, CEO of the Professional Services Council, one of the main trade associations representing the GovCon industry.

A second major signpost on GovCon's roadmap for 2024 is the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, the emerging industry-wide standard for protecting information and systems. Berteau tells our Nick Wakeman and Ross Wilkers all about what contractors are looking for in the final version of CMMC's draft rule, whenever the Defense Department is ready to unveil it.

The agenda for this episode also includes discussion about technology trends and the National Defense Authorization Act, a key piece of policy legislation that also helps set the tone for how contractors work with their agency customers.

Listen to our interview with SAIC CEO Tony Moraco as he shares how buying Engility accelerates SAIC's strategy, what its integration plan is, and where he sees opportunities for growth.
Moraco shares about lessons learned from SAIC's acquisition of Scitor and how Engility brings SAIC critical mass in the intelligence and space markets.
He also talks about what he sees as the key factors that will drive SAIC's success over the next several years.
This is part 1 of a two-part podcast. In part 2, Moraco shares more about SAIC's goals and strategic approach to the market.

Aerospace, defense, government services and space represent four key focus areas for the private investment firm AE Industrial Partners and also cover practically all of the government market.

Our guest for this episode in Kirk Konert, a partner at AEI, joined the firm at around the time it started to further scale out its investments in the mid-2010s.

Konert describes to our Ross Wilkers how that approach has evolved, why AEI focuses much of its portfolio on companies that are founder-led and what the firm looks for an investment.

The discussion also includes Konert's observations on what is driving private investment activity across the entire government market landscape, plus the attributes that make for successful leadership teams at companies.

Washington Technology Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers joins Editor Nick Wakeman in a review of the major trends and issues driving today's market, including major acquisitions, procurement trends and what JEDI says about contracting today.
They take a look back at 2018 and discuss how the market is transforming. A major talking point is how the influx of commercial technologies is changing business models and the need for traditional contractors to adapt. They also discuss why having a healthy stable of public companies is important for the government market.

Aeyon did not even call itself by that name when Sunny Singh joined the company as chief executive in the winter of 2018.

Fast forward to 2023 and what is now Aeyon is pushing to be a leading integrator of robotic process automation and other similar technologies for federal agencies.

In this episode, Singh joins the WT 360 conversation to explain why Aeyon decided to partner with the investment firm Enlightenment Capital in support of that ambition and what that backing has done for the company so far.

Singh also gives our Ross Wilkers a glimpse at how Aeyon blends its integration and consulting roles, plus what federal buyers are looking for with respect to RPA and other technologies under the umbrella of automation.

Government contractors reside in the unique intersection of macroeconomics and industrial policy, both of which are relevant in the conversation surrounding President Trump’s use of tariffs.

Tariffs are very relevant for companies that mostly focus on services to their government customers as explained in this episode featuring Larry Sher, a government contracts attorney and partner at Winston & Strawn.

Sher tells our Ross Wilkers that while companies may not know what the tariff rates will be in the long-term, they still must be foundational in how they operate and support the business of government. The regulatory framework and policy tools contractors have to get some relief for increased costs also feature in their discussion.

For more information, check out these client alerts from the Winston & Strawn team:

Prospective Tariffs on Goods from Mexico, Canada, and China

Summary of America First Trade Policy

Eighteen months ago, Sagewind Capital began a series of deals that have led to the creation of the newest mid-tier company in the market – Axient. Led by CEO Patrick Murphy the company is poised for more deals as it pursues opportunities that require systems integration, digital engineering, software development and the development of complex systems.

Murphy explains to Editor Nick Wakeman the strategy behind the acquisitions as well as the kind of contracts and customers the company will pursue going forward. The growth will come from more acquisitions as well as expanding the work it does with the Army, Air Force, NASA and Missile Defense Agency.

As larger entity, Axient will now be chasing larger contracts as it also looks to close more acquisitions. Murphy predicts the next deal could come before the end of the years.

Listen in on our Top 100 interview with General Dynamics executive Chris Marzilli, who leads the company's MIssion Systems and Information Technology businesses, as he shares the company's strategy and outlook in Part 1 of a two part podcast.
In this part, Marzilli talks about the changes that GD has been going through in recent years including acquisitions, divestitures and restructuring of the company.
The goal is quality revenue and growth and as he explains that means picking what businesses the company wants to be in and what it doesn't.
Marzilli also talks about how the market is changing and what the means to General Dynamics.

How much stress on the system is created by the so-called “need for speed” with regard to advanced technology adoption and deployment in federal agencies?

In this episode of Project 38, we pick up on the second half of Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers’ discussion with a pair of chief technology officers at federal systems integrators on the right methodologies to help government customers wanting to shrink timelines from years to months and sometimes weeks.

Peder Jungck of BAE Systems Inc.’s intelligence and security sector and Cameron Chehreh of Dell Federal conceded that the shift does create stress on the system, but also explain ways to work through it.

Wilkers closed the conversation by asking Jungck and Chehreh for their views on the global computer chip shortage that has disrupted substantially the entire economy, plus what that could mean for the federal technology landscape and the future global supply chain.

This Government Accountability Office decision illustrates the challenges small businesses face when moving a technology or solution they developed during the first two phases of a Small Business Innovation Research grant to production in phase three.

WT Editor Nick Wakeman sits down with attorney Stephen Bacon to discuss what and how GAO made its ruling, plus what it means for small businesses looking to move their SBIR solutions to the next level.

Phase one and two SBIR awards are common, but a phase three award is not guaranteed. The onus is on companies to educate and convince a potential government customer about their SBIR product and how it meets that agency's needs.

Advent International's acquisition of Ultra Electronics in the summer of 2022 was one in a series of investments the private equity firm has made in defense and government contractors: $28 billion to be exact within the past three-and-a-half years.

For this episode, we turn the lens on the Ultra Intelligence & Communications business unit by hearing from its president Jon Rucker on how that team contributes to the larger whole that is Ultra Electronics.

Rucker is six months into this role in leading Ultra I&C, whose core product and service lines also include cybersecurity and electronic warfare. Where the business is looking to invest is a main focus of this conversation between Rucker and our Ross Wilkers, as is how Ultra balances honoring its nearly 100-year brand amid the push into new markets.

Hot technologies come and go, but building person-to-person relationships is ultimately what drives success.

Marketing experts Mark Amtower and Sheri Ascencio share the story of their mentor-protégé relationship with Editor Nick Wakeman. While Amtower is the mentor, they describe a relationship where the value flows in both directions.

Their bottom-line advice is that everyone needs a mentor and everyone eventually should look to be a mentor. No one succeeds alone.

In episode 4, we talk to John Wood, CEO of Telos Corp. as we continue our exploration of innovation and disruption in the government market. John shares his views on the challenges and obstacles to bringing innovation to the government market. He brings nearly 30 years of government contracting experience and holds the the point of view that the challenges to innovation aren't about the technology but the culture and the vested interests that resist change.

Infrastructure becoming increasingly digitized and federal agencies showing a willingness to try new ways to buy goods and services are two trends that Siemens' federal leader Tina Dolph lives and works with everyday. In this episode of Project 38, the CEO of Siemens Government Technologies explains to our Ross Wilkers how those topics are changing conversations with customers.

One line of discussion gaining increasing prominence that Dolph sheds light on is how cybersecurity is no longer just an information technology problem, but one that also poses a threat to operational technology.

Digitization of doing business kept things running during the pandemic. And Dolph also shares how she, the SGT team and their clients want to incorporate all they have learned from that experience.

In this interview Professional Services Council President and CEO David Berteau shares what he is hearing from industry on the impact of the government shutdown and steps contractors should be taking now to get ready for when the government reopens. Whenever that is.
Government contractors have been sharing a sense of confusion and uncertainty with Berteau and PSC as the government shutdown pushes into its fourth week.
Contractors who are working are uncertain if and when they'll get paid. Contractors who aren't are faced with the challenge of hanging onto employees while customer sites are shuttered and projects languish.
The uncertainty also extends to what to do when the government reopens. As Berteau says, you can stop work in five minutes but it might take days to restart.

Debbie Opiekun can rattle off a list of big wins for Leidos as the company's chief business development officer, a job that carries the responsibility of feeding growth for the federal technology market's largest contractor.

In this Project 38 episode with Editor Nick Wakeman, Opiekun explains Leidos' philosophy for pursuing contracts and what they mean to the missions of federal customers.

Opiekun also provides insights on how Leidos decides to bid for a business opportunity, including those times where the company decides not to go for it.

Companies in the government market always cast glances at the budget, but now they are zeroed in on whether they will see a key piece of legislation to help them manage through the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode of Project 38, Kea Matory of the National Defense Industrial Association updates us on where the situation is regarding Section 3610 of the CARES Act economic stimulus law that expires Sept. 30.
NDIA is one of the major trade groups that represents companies in the government market. As director for legislative policy, Matory tracks developments on Capitol Hill and helps government contractors make sense out of laws and policy that govern the industry.
CARES Act Section 3610 lets contractors seek reimbursement from agencies if employees cannot get to their worksite because of a pandemic-caused closure or if COVID-19 directly impacts them. But as Matory explains, there is still ambiguity across industry on how to go through the process and especially if companies are considering the Paycheck Protection Program.
Part of that ambiguity is also rooted in how the clock is running down on Section 3610 and where the money comes from. We recorded this episode Wednesday, Aug. 26.

Whether 2021 is the “Year Of The GWAC” remains to be seen, but government-wide acquisition contract vehicles will be high on the agenda for the companies pursuing them and the agencies that will be using them.
In this episode of Project 38, Senior Staff Ross Wilkers goes to three leading market research and proposal specialists to get their views and insight into the overall GWAC landscape and what companies must take into account when pursuing them.
For Part 1, Amber Hart and Lisa Shea Mundt from The Pulse of GovCon break down one hotly-anticipated vehicle in CIO-SP4 that will be ready for industry to bid on any day now and deliver some hard-hitting truths on how not all vehicles are created alike.
Part 2 begins at 26:03 with Martin Hicks of Global Services and the focus of that conversation is on how the General Services Administration is proceeding with its own GWAC portfolio, and in one case making a second attempt at bringing small business IT companies into the fold.

It is not just appearances that suggest a robust government technology market, in fact there are numbers and patterns we can point to here in week number four of federal fiscal year 2025.

Where agencies are putting most of their technology budget dollars to work is the starting point for this episode featuring John Caucis and James Wichert, public sector analysts at the market intelligence firm Technology Business Research.

Caucis and Wichert take our Ross Wilkers through how companies are positioning themselves for that spend, including their organic investments and acquisitions that are signposts for where they want to go.

Also on their discussion agenda: how some companies are looking to wear both the integration and consulting hats, the future of Peraton with a new CEO in place and realities of the artificial intelligence landscape.

The U.S. government goes right to the top of the food chain regarding enterprises and the amounts of data they take in and distribute.

Which naturally leads to the problem of data generation outpacing the technology needed to make sense of the volume.

For this episode of Project 38, Babel Street CEO Michael Southworth takes our Ross Wilkers through what dual-use technology companies such as the one he leads are up to in working with agencies on solving that data challenge.

Some of the data volume statistics Southworth cited are overwhelming but illustrate the point of what problems need solving.

Private capital is a broad umbrella term for several different types of investment and ownership models in business, but private equity is the one that looms the largest over GovCon and tech-centric companies there.

Tiffanny Gates has a front row seat to that as an operating partner at Capitol Meridian Partners, an investor that touts itself as at the nexus of government and commercial markets. Gates joins our Ross Wilkers in this episode to go over the unique role of private equity in bringing innovations to the public sector ecosystem.

Also on the agenda for their conversation: the U.S. government’s data problems and solutions from them, sorting artificial intelligence hype and substance, and workforce trends across the market.

President Biden's customer experience executive order signed in December 2021 puts technology at the center of efforts to improve how citizens obtain services from federal agencies.

Which brings up these questions that are the focus of this Project 38 episode: What tech tools are best for certain efforts? How do agencies apply those tools? How do agencies go about buying them?

Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers got some answers to those questions and more from Greg Gershman, co-founder and CEO of a digital services company looking to be a part of the citizen experience transformation.

Gershman was one of the core team members responsible for fixing HealthCare.gov after its troubled launch and helped start Ad Hoc with the idea of using some of those lessons learned to improve government service delivery.

Some jobs will require college degrees for as far as the eyes can see.

But in this episode, NextgovFCW’s tech workforce reporter Natalie Alms describes how what government and business leaders call “skills-based hiring” is becoming more of the norm for certain tech jobs.

As Natalie tells our Ross Wilkers, some agencies and contractors are de-emphasizing educational requirements for those roles and replacing them with other means.

Three big government contracts are now all about skills-based hiring. “Nat,” as some of us coworkers call her, gives some signposts to watch for how much further that approach could expand across public sector and more.

We recorded this episode before Nat’s next big story she teased toward the end landed on Nextgov/FCW. That article is link number one in the list below.

Trump’s first White House debated the role of USDS. What will Trump 2.0 do?

Major federal IT contracts to remove ‘unnecessary’ degree requirements

Harris touts skills-based hiring for feds on the campaign trail

Mace sponsors bill to ban educational requirements for government contractors

Goodbye degree requirements? Biden administration pushes skills-based hiring for tech talent

White House looks to eliminate college degree requirements for cyber jobs with federal contractors

Never mind the degrees – here's skills-based hiring

OPM issues guidance on implementing Trump-era hiring policy

Data is a huge challenge for government customers. It is also a missed opportunity.

This episode of our podcast has Editor Nick Wakeman talk with Dominic Delmolino, vice president of field technology and engineering for Amazon Web Services' public sector business, about advances in cloud computing technology.

Delmolino explains how those advances can enable agencies to get better use out of the massive amounts of information they generate each day.

BlueHalo hit the market hard with six acquisitions in 2020 and as CEO Jonathan Moneymaker explains to Editor Nick Wakeman, this latest platform out of Arlington Capital Partners is pursuing opportunities around the transformation of modern warfare.
BlueHalo's acquisition strategy has focused on capabilities around space superiority, directed energy, missile defense, C4ISR, cybersecurity and intelligence solutions. The goal is to create a mid-tier player that can have an impact on how the U.S. and its allies engage and deter near-peer adversaries.
As Moneymaker explains, the strategy is multi-faceted and one to watch in the years ahead.

Plenty of hype and skepticism surrounds the metaverse, but the substance is there to be found underneath the surface.

This episode of Project 38 sees Chris Copeland and Kyle Michl, respectively chief technology and chief innovation officer at Accenture's federal subsidiary, introduce our Editor Nick Wakeman metaverse and explain how the physical and digital worlds are converging.

As they see it, everyone is already in the metaverse to a certain degree. The metaverse is merely new way of interacting with data and making use of it. It’s a new way of working that will touch nearly every aspect of government operations and how contractors deliver solutions to clients.

Companies and agencies are already adopting the principles of the metaverse into solutions for training, modeling and simulation, and other areas. Even if they call it something else other than the metaverse.

Cracking the code of the federal market is a dual exercise of first learning the extensive rules of the road and then finding what works in achieving business success.

In this episode of Project 38, Mike Sanders, founder and CEO of small business contractor Interactive Government Holdings shares his roadmap and playbook with our Ross Wilkers.

It is true that some of the challenges to success in the federal market are unique for small businesses, but Sanders sees the sector’s biggest challenge as one that companies of all shapes and sizes share in along with their agency customers.

Some of the are the same as well as Sanders sees a common goal: the market’s tent becoming more open and wider.

The market has rarely seen the level of merger-and-acquisition activity that we see today with a plethora of large and small buyers.

To breakdown what’s driving the deals, Editor Nick Wakeman spoke with Bob Kipps of the investment bank KippsDeSanto. 

Kipps shares his views on why the market has been so good to buyers and sellers as well as the critical role being played by private equity firms, who drive nearly half of the transactions.

The expectation is that the pace of mergers and acquisitions will continue and Kipps explains why.

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.

LMI was chartered during the Kennedy administration in 1961 as a provider of logistics management services and research to the federal government, work that remains core to the firm's vision and strategy.

That has not changed for LMI, but its change in 2022 from being a nonprofit to for-profit appears significant on the surface. In this episode, LMI's chief executive Doug Wagoner explains the rationale for making that shift and who the investors in the company are.

Of course, the conversation between Wagoner and our Ross Wilkers works its way toward what LMI plans to do with its private capital backing. 

LMI now has more resources for acquisitions and support for its continued push to lead in logistics, an area that has become paramount for federal agencies in light of all that has happened to supply chains during the past three years.

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.

The final phase of one of the federal government’s largest contract restructurings is on the horizon, but the consolidation of GSA's Multiple Award Schedule will take time and effort.

So ahead of an upcoming key deadline in mid-September, this episode of Project 38 goes over everything companies need to know at this juncture of the schedule consolidation with the help of Global Services President and CEO Courtney Fairchild.

All 24 Multiple Award Schedule contracts are becoming one as the General Services Administration pushes to simplify the program so industry and government alike have fewer burdens.

But phase three of this effort is the most complex and is more than just an administrative action, as noted GSA Schedule watcher Fairchild points out in this conversation with our Ross Wilkers. 

Fairchild and her company work with clients pursuing these very contracts, so Wilkers went over some of the most common questions she is asked about the consolidation, frequent misconceptions over what it means for companies and what it will portend for the future of government contracting.

Initial public offerings in the government market are a rare event, so it was natural to focus much attention on Telos Corp.'s IPO in the fall of 2020 and where the company wanted to go next.

Telos' chief executive John Wood spoke to us shortly after the completion of that IPO and returns for this episode to provide an update on the security technology company's execution since then.

A significant aspect of Telos' journey as a public company can be characterized as a transition. As Wood describes to our Ross Wilkers, that also involves going toward a destination and not just an exit from something.

The overall security landscape for government and industry also features prominently in their discussion, both in the cyber realm and elsewhere.

PROJECT 38: Inside Telos' path to its IPO and what's next

Telos lays out plan for its year of transition

Where to now for Telos & its IPO proceeds?

Why Telos decided the time is now for its IPO

Already somewhat public, Telos' IPO further illuminates strategy

Frustration builds up when things go wrong in the world of government acquisition and that feeling is true on both sides: the customer and contractor alike.

Adam Rentschler and his partners started Valid Eval in 2011 to help agencies make better evaluations at scale. All throughout this episode, the latter two words of that sentence come up frequently in the conversation between Rentschler and our Ross Wilkers.

Rentschler’s vision is for the acquisition ecosystem to have more humanity in it and the use of data to help lead that effort.

Those concepts may seem contradictory on the surface, but Rentschler brings them together throughout the discussion.

Peraton’s transformation into a $7 billion-annual revenue business by integrating three big pieces -- itself, Northrop Grumman’s IT services business and Perspecta -- includes an applied research organization that can claim lineage to Bell Labs.

In this episode of Project 38, Peraton Labs President Petros Mouchtaris speaks with our Ross Wilkers about the three-decade history of the team he leads and how fits within the parent company.

Getting a head start on the federal government’s hardest problems is a paramount focus for Peraton Labs and this conversation goes over three big areas: cybersecurity, 5G and networks, and everything under the umbrella of automation including artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Mouchtaris also explains how Peraton Labs works on this existential idea: figuring out how with a little customization and refactoring, federal agencies can use many of the same technologies that the commercial sectors do.

A great amount of planning went into ASRC Federal's acquisitions of a supply chain and logistics business from Science Applications International Corp. and Broadleaf, an IT services firm. The transactions closed within two weeks of one another.

What led ASRC Federal to those two businesses and where does it want to go next? In this episode, ASRC Federal's chief executive Jennifer Felix describes the strategy and market-wide trends behind both of those moves.

In speaking with our Ross Wilkers, Felix also explains how federal agencies are working with companies like ASRC Federal to position for the future in terms of supply chain reliability and the adoption of next-generation technologies.

The pace of change across the entire federal landscape is not getting slower, but the partnership between government and industry is ramping up as Felix described it.

As president of General Dynamics IT, Amy Gilliland runs one of the federal market's largest technology services businesses. She also oversaw one of the biggest integration efforts when GD doubled its portfolio through the acquisition of CSRA in 2018.

In this interview with Washington Technology Editor Nick Wakeman, she overviews the mechanisms put in place to combine the two businesses and how they laid the foundation for how the company responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Chief among those is a focus on people. They were important for the integration post-merger, but will be even more crucial for the long-term success of GDIT.

Understanding technology and customer priorities are just “table stakes,” according to Gilliland. People are what differentiates a company from the field.

Multiple-award contract vehicles are where a majority of the government's buying activity seems to take place these days, but the "Rule of Two" that tells agencies how to work with small businesses did not apply there.

The White House has started to work on changing that through a Jan. 31 memo that tells agencies to use that golden rule of government contracting for multiple-award vehicles and their task order business.

What that means for small businesses is the focal point of this episode featuring Stephen Bacon, government contracts attorney at the law firm Rogers Joseph O'Donnell.

Bacon tells our Ross Wilkers all about what the memo does and doesn't do, plus what comes next for the directive to become final and how small businesses can use it as an informational tool for their customers.

These links below have more on the Rule of Two expansion memo: 

Stephen Bacon on LinkedIn: OFPP Memo Small Business Participation on MACs

GovCon's 'rule of two' is about to widen in scope

Private equity in the government market is a two-way street in that many companies are looking for a investment partner to resource them, the latter of which also is looking for a business opportunity.

For this episode of Project 38, Sagewind Capital's founding partner Steve Lefkowitz and managing partner Raj Kanodia take our Ross Wilkers behind the scenes of how their private equity firm works with contractors to build and grow.

The conversation naturally turns to how the search for acquisitions goes for Sagewind's portfolio companies: Axient, By Light, Federal Advisory Partners, Gcom and Sigma Defense Systems.

But in a portfolio company is also step one in many ways, so Lefkowitz and Kanodia also explain how Sagewind works with businesses on organic growth and infrastructure they need to succeed.

It’s been a year since Science Applications International Corp. made one of the biggest acquisitions of 2020 and this conversation between Editor Nick Wakeman and Bob Genter, SAIC's defense and civilian president, starts with the question: Was the Unisys Federal acquisition worth it?
​Then they dive deeper into market opportunities, impacts of COVID-19 and lessons learned how to prepare for and execute an acquisition. Whether or not you are in a pandemic.
Genter shares how he sees the $1.2 billion Unisys Federal acquisition paying off for SAIC, how it has shaped the kind of work it can pursue and what might be next on the company’s target list for acquisitions.

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.

What does a “whole of government” approach mean in terms of how agencies and their industry partners respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? Find out in this episode with Jerry McGinn, executive director of George Mason University’s Center for Government Contracting.

That response is not just about where the contracting dollars are going, though McGinn and the GMU GovCon team are tracking that closely. It is also about how the entire public sector ecosystem of agencies and government contractors are functioning today and how that is shaping what the environment looks like for the long-term in a post-COVID world.

McGinn formerly led the Defense Department’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy and before that worked in industry himself. No one can exactly predict the future, but McGinn does share some of the broader questions and trends he thinks will be a big part of that future.

This episode was recorded before the Senate’s Tuesday passage of the latest CARES Act relief legislation and the GMU GovCon Center’s most recent executive update that was released Wednesday.

Information technology has long been both an enabler of and disruption to business operations, plus a target for cyber breaches by people and organizations trying to do some disrupting of their own.

But what of the world of operational technology that controls industrial equipment and processes? In this episode of Project 38, Forescout public sector executive Tim Jones takes our Ross Wilkers through the intersection of cyber and OT.

Part of that conversation also means learning how IT and OT are becoming increasingly converged, or sometimes one-and-the-same. As a regional vice president of systems engineering, Jones sees that first-hand not just with federal agencies but many of the systems integrators that Forescout partners with on large technology programs.

Jones explains what the Biden administration’s cyber executive order and series of sprints means for the entire government OT ecosystem and the kind of starting point it could be.

Silicon Valley has long been seen as the bread basket of commercial technology but a new book by Margaret O'Mara traces the Valley's roots to major investments by the federal government following World War II. Listen to our conversation with O'Mara as she recounts some of the lessons learned and why the relationship may ebb and flow but it'll never fade away.
While the amounts of money in research grants and contract spending was important, the greater impact was on how the government spent those funds that helped foster an environment of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Her book explains how the companies and technologies developed but also the people and relationships that drove the tech world forward.
Today, we face a different world but what the government needs from the Valley and what the Valley wants from the government have never been more critical to national security and economic growth.

Military matters lead the agenda for this latest in WT 360's series of Info Session episodes that bring together reporters from across the GovExec media team with our own Nick Wakeman and Ross Wilkers.

Lauren Williams and Marcus Weisgerber of our partner publication Defense One jump in to share what they heard and wrote about at Sea-Air-Space, a Navy-focused trade show and one of a handful of the defense industry's largest conventions. The topics there represent key areas of interest for government contractors.

The group also goes over the impacts of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse and other banking sector difficulties on the industry. Also up for debate are the emerging cybersecurity rules and practices for companies and where L3Harris Technologies' acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne stands. The JADC2 networking construct also gets discussed and how the military is moving on its integration of commercial cloud computing.

Click here and go to page three to see the Defense Department's rendering of the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control vision. It is exactly as complicated as we said it was.

In part 2 of our interview with General Dynamics Chris Marzilli, we dive deeper into the strategic direction of the Mission Systems and Information Technology businesses, including the integration of CSRA and how Mission Systems and IT go to market together.
Marzilli shares how the No. 2 company on the 2019 Washington Technology Top 100 sees the evolving opportunities in the federal market.

Noblis' goal is to be at the intersections of research, science and technology for federal agencies as they think beyond just adopting "what's next."

For this episode, Noblis' chief executive Mile Corrigan explains how company No. 76 on our 2023 Top 100 is carrying out the seven-year blueprint for itself that the team calls "Vision 2030."

Vision 2030 at its core is all about aligning everything inside Noblis to those common goals, including its many teams of employees and how Noblis recruits the people for them. Corrigan describes to our Ross Wilkers how Noblis focuses on both how new hires get onboarded and the experiences prospective candidates have when applying to join the firm, including so-called "boomerang hires."

Corrigan also updates Wilkers on the continuing shift in Noblis' delivery model they went over on this podcast nearly two years ago, where the firm finds itself writing "more code than papers."

Chuck Harrington, chairman and CEO of Parsons, shares the strategy behind their move to the public market after years as an employee-owned company.
In our conversation, he talks about the IPO process but also why it was important to make that move for the company as it targets more growth in the federal market.
The company has been active acquirer in recent years and the pubic offering only adds more fuel for Parsons to make deals.
Harrington shares this and more in a conversation with Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers.

Price and cost will always be a factor for U.S. government agencies in deciding who to choose for a contract, but not all of them just go with the lowest-bidding company for an award.

How the government buyer goes about its purchasing is of equal importance to knowing what the customer is asking for, as explained in this episode featuring FedSavvy Strategies' founder and managing principal Brian Lindholm.

In speaking with our Ross Wilkers, Lindholm goes over the work that business development teams can do in understanding the buyer profiles of prospective customers before starting to write proposals. That pre-bid exercise also shapes business decisions on whether to compete for a certain contract or not.

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.

The impacts of COVID-19 coupled with emerging technologies translates to government customers having different expectations and being more open to new ways of addressing challenges.
John Goodman, chief executive of Accenture Federal Services explains in this conversation with WT Editor Nick Wakeman what those challenges mean to his company and where he sees the market moving forward.
Goodman's perspective is largely optimistic because while the customer needs are great, he sees the technology being there to address those needs. COVID-19 has also opened government agencies to new ways of doing business and pulled them away from traditional approaches that have slowed progress.
You will hear Goodman share Accenture Federal’s strategy and what he sees as challenges and opportunities ahead.

In another podcast from our partner Government Marketing University, the Real Talk explores the $2 trillion stimulus package and what it means to federal contractors.
Tom Suder, president and founder of the Advanced Technology Research Center, and host Matt Langan of L&R Communication review how this sweeping legislation is impacting the market.
They talk about questions such as:
• What does the $2T Coronavirus stimulus mean for federal employees and contractors?
• Can all federal agencies benefit? Are there key areas focused on Civilian, DoD, Intel?
• Breaking down the IT portion of the stimulus package a bit more…what areas will industry see the most need from federal agencies?
• Are there any agencies that have jumped in and accelerate connecting with government industry to maximize this new funding?
• How prepared is industry to respond quickly to this new demand for IT related support?
• What are the key takeaways for government industry to be aware of when it comes to stimulus package?

What does AT&T’s broad strategic reset to focus on technology and connectivity mean for its public sector and public safety businesses?

Part one of Project 38 gets some answers to that question from two AT&T executives responsible for carrying out that vision in the government market -- Jason Porter, president of public sector and FirstNet; and Jill Singer, vice president of defense and national security.

Two particular threads help illustrate AT&T’s re-casted vision: the sales of the media businesses (which we did not go over) and divestiture of the defense IT professional services business (which we went over in detail).

Porter and Singer explain to our Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers how they see AT&T’s return to its connectivity core as making more room to invest in the public sector and FirstNet public safety network businesses. They also lift the curtain on AT&T’s vision for the post-pandemic future of work.

Washington Technology and FCW staffers offer their early views on President Biden’s address to Congress where he proposed trillions in spending to create jobs and address myriad issues around climate change, national security and the nation’s infrastructure.

That wasn’t the only big news to hit this week. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that Amazon’s challenge of the JEDI cloud award to rival Microsoft can continue. FCW also published a special report highlighting the trends driving activity at the Defense Information Systems Agency, one of the larger IT buyers in the federal market.

Washington Technology Editor Nick Wakeman and Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers are joined by FCW Executive Editor Adam Mazmanian and Senior Editor Lauren Williams discuss what these events mean and what’s coming next, including some topics that aren’t getting as much attention.

Parsons Corp. was born an engineering company in 1944 and remains such today in a world vastly different than the one it started in.

Company number 39 on our 2022 Top 100 rankings is also equally a software business in both its government and infrastructure markets as told to us by Peter Torrellas, president of the company's connected communities business.

Our senior reporter Ross Wilkers spoke to Torrellas in conjunction with Parsons' official unveiling of a new solution set and delivery model, which helps explain where the company is going and how it sees markets as becoming converged.

Regarding that word "converged" -- do any lines exist anymore between what is digital and what is physical? Wilkers asks that question too and Torrellas answered.

Many of us are practicing social distancing as the world deals with the coronavirus pandemic: either with being hunkered down at home or in offices that are very sparsely populated. It’s a different way of working that all of us are adjusting to.

That also means many are working with little to no face-to-face contact with customers and partners. Marketing expert Mark Amtower shares how social media tools can build and enrich those critical relationships even when you can't be in the same place.

The COVID-19 pandemic is raising several wide-ranging questions and implications for both government agencies and the industry that supports them, which we examine in this first of a two-part interview with ICF CEO John Wasson.
Public health has also been brought to the forefront in ways rarely, if ever seen before, and is an area ICF is heavily involved in thanks to its work with many agencies on the front lines of the pandemic response. Think Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health.
In this part one, Wasson shares his views to Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers on what this crisis means for the country’s public health ecosystem going forward and how an event such as this could lead to a very different way of responding to future pandemics. They started by talking about ICF and other professional services firms like it maintain their connections with federal customers in a world where so many have shifted to remote work.

IBM showed its prioritization of public sector and federal markets through its $1.2 billion acquisition of Octo Consulting, which closed in the spring and is the largest such transaction in the history of Big Blue's consulting business.

This episode features an update on the integration and where that combination fits into IBM's larger, global vision for itself. The guests are Susan Wedge, managing partner for the U.S. public and federal market at IBM Consulting; and Mark Johnson, vice president of technology for the U.S. federal market at IBM.

One way IBM characterizes that vision is in its push to make a bigger impact for its clients, including those in U.S. government. Wedge and Johnson explain to our Ross Wilkers what that means and how they see the combined IBM-and-Octo team contributing to Big Blue's larger strategy and vision that centers around artificial intelligence and hybrid cloud computing.

IBM ranked at spot No. 28 on our 2023 Top 100.

In part two of our interview with SAIC's Tony Moraco he shares his views on the extra value he looks for from merger and acquisition targets and how that creates opportunities for growth.
In part one we focused on SAIC's Engility acquisition and in part two we take a broader look at the company's M&A strategy and how SAIC' is organized to pull capabilities from across the company to chase new opportunities.
Moraco also explains how critical mass with a customer is defined and how that measure informs the company's strategy.
Between parts 1 and 2 of our interview with Moraco, you can gain valuable insights into what SAIC is doing and how it reflects broader trends in the GovCon market.

Jerry McGinn, executive director of the Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University, shares the findings of a new report that identifies areas of concern and offers advice for improvement across the defense industrial base.

Some of the key findings that McGinn discusses with Editor Nick Wakeman include the importance of leadership, government and industry collaboration, and the need to design systems for more rapid production.

The U.S. industrial base has responded before, as McGinn says. He offers some of those important lessons from World War II, COVID-19 and the U.S.' response to Ukraine.

The full report is available here.

The ongoing White House transition is unprecedented because before Donald Trump’s (re)-election in November, Grover Cleveland’s win in 1892 was the last time a president was voted into office with a gap between terms. 

David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, and his team are fielding many questions on the transition from government contractors they represent as one of their leading trade associations.

In this episode, Berteau explains to our Nick Wakeman and Ross Wilkers what contractors are asking the PSC team about and all the key indicators that matter to industry when a new administration moves in.

Some priorities are poised to carry over like the CMMC cybersecurity standard, but time will tell if others continue on. The Biden administration also has priorities to work on as it moves out and Berteau goes over those as well.

(We recorded this conversation before the final 2025 National Defense Authorization Act's text was released. The reading list below includes coverage of it from our GovExec colleagues.)

FY2025 NDAA angles to enhance DOD’s AI and quantum sciences capabilities

FY2025 NDAA targets spyware threats to U.S. diplomats, military devices

Could Biden’s recent strategy to streamline government hiring be scuttled under Trump?

Trump teams to deploy throughout government after reaching agreement with the Biden administration

OMB releases federal tech impact report as Biden admin winds down

How the federal CIO is prepping for the presidential transition

‘Shock the system’: Startups and DOGE take over Reagan forum

Defense officials hopeful incoming administration keeps funding cutting-edge tech

Vectrus and Vertex joined forces in the summer of 2022 to form what is now V2X -- a global government services provider roughly double in size to approximately 14,000 employees.

For this episode, V2X's chief growth and client service officer Sue Deagle describes to our Ross Wilkers how the combined company is looking to build off that foundation and expand into new areas of the market.

One significant leg of the corporate strategy is converged infrastructure, which V2X defines as integrating digital offerings into large physical assets with the end goal of creating smarter buildings including many military bases.

V2X also has to be a scout for technologies and partners to make that converged infrastructure a reality. Deagle also explains how V2X thinks about technology and goes about identifying the right tools and partners for more than just an individual program.

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.

Generative artificial intelligence is only the newest example of how federal agencies have different comfort levels with adopting new technologies and in this instance, intelligence agencies appear to be bolder in charting their path forward.

Frank Konkel, editor-in-chief for GovExec's publications including us, wrote a deep dive article earlier this month that includes his conversations with some intelligence community leaders on where their agencies are at in Gen AI.

In this episode, Frank tells our Ross Wilkers all about what they told him and what else he found in putting together that story to explore what IC agencies are up to in Gen AI and their grander visions for the technology.

As you will hear from Frank, they want to go fast and also be thoughtful about mitigating some of the risks in doing so.

The US intelligence community is embracing generative AI

The CIA is taking a ‘crawl, walk, run’ approach to GenAI

2023 was just the start of generative AI’s rise, government and industry leaders say

Proceed with caution: Industry advises a careful approach to generative AI

3 in 4 Americans Worry AI Will Take Their Jobs

CIA Awards Secret Multibillion-Dollar Cloud Contract

Pentagon awards $9B cloud contract to Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle

BigBear.ai spent much of 2022 undertaking a reset and restructuring effort, all with the goal of placing itself at the forefront of artificial intelligence adoption for its government and commercial customers.

This episode covers what BigBear has done and where it wants to go as told by chief executive Mandy Long and Tony Barrett, president and general manager of the federal segment.

BigBear is 15 months into its life as a publicly traded company, while Long joined in October 2022 as CEO. Long, Barrett and other BigBear leaders have since been at work explaining to investors the company's strategy and where it sees itself in the broader AI landscape.

Also on the agenda for their interview with our Ross Wilkers: distilling fact from fiction in the world of AI, how BigBear works to keep its federal and commercial segments in sync, and how making AI a greater reality for federal agencies requires multiple companies.

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.

Rebrandings are a constant in the government market and the company now known as Everfox is the newest example of that after its acquisition by one of the world's largest investment firms.

The cybersecurity business formerly known as Forcepoint Federal, and before that as Websense, now exclusively focuses on global government and critical infrastructure clients as a portfolio company of TPG. 

In this episode, Everfox's chief executive Sean Berg goes over some of the 700-employee company's investment priorities and the overall cyber landscape's current state of play.

Everfox has two decades of history behind it and to say that cyber has changed over that timeframe would be an understatement, but the emergence of nation-state actors is one of the trends Berg explains to our Ross Wilkers.

Also on their agenda: the new name itself of course, commonalities between Everfox's government and critical infrastructure customers, how and where the company plans to grow its talent base.

Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers speaks with Peder Jungck, BAE Systems Inc. vice president and general manager for intelligence solutions, about how technology is remaking the defense market and what it'll take to win the future.
This is the second in a series of interviews by Wilkers with defense executives about how the market is changing and how their companies are adapting.
Critical issues include the pressure to manage data and extract value from it, the evolving role of the systems integrator, and how to track emerging commercial technologies.

Deloitte's Dan Helfrich shares his views on how the migration to the cloud, blockchain, machine learning and IT modernization will spell the end of traditional IT services. The changes will impact business models, customer relationship, partnerships and hiring for the next decade and beyond. Helfrich shares how Deloitte approaches these trends and how the key to success will be successfully combining people and technology assets. To maintain and gain market share companies need to master that combination.

Our guest is Stan Soloway, former president and CEO of the Professional Services Council and founder of Celero Strategies. Soloway sees a market at the crossroads with new ways of doing business emerging and many traditional government contractors being challenged to change their ways or be left behind.

Soloway brings a perspective from both inside government based on his time inside government as a high-raking Defense Department official as well as his decade and a half of leading PSC and being the voice for industry.

The challenge for customer and contractor is grasping the technological disruptions in the market and understanding what that means for their customers and employees as well as the future.

One of the government market’s most-anticipated transactions closed on Sept. 30 when what we can call “Old Amentum” joined forces with Jacobs’ federal-facing units.

This episode sees Steve Arnette, chief operating officer at what we can now call “New Amentum,” take our Ross Wilkers through all that went into putting this larger company together and where everyone wants to go from here.

Underpinning this new version of Amentum’s vision and goals is what it calls a “technology-enabled growth strategy.” Arnette walks through that very strategy, how it applies to the company’s priority markets and what all of this means for Amentum’s 53,000 employees around the world.

Deloitte's identity as a global professional services firm means it looks to be more than just a provider of advisory support for its clients and particularly with federal agencies.

Jason Salzetti, who leads Deloitte's government and public services practice, explains in this episode how that 26,000-employee team is working with its federal clients today on navigating the increasing speeds and rates of change with technology and how they operate.

A big component of that approach means Deloitte looks to be at the intersection of implementation, integration and consulting. In speaking with our Ross Wilkers, Salzetti goes over how Deloitte does that and why he sees federal clients now thinking differently about risk when it comes to innovation.

Other topics on the agenda included how the "GPS" team will work with Deloitte's space practice, and Salzetti's perspectives on human capital macrotrends his colleagues at the Deloitte Center for Government Insights studied.

Deloitte ranked at No. 15 on our 2023 Top 100.

It definitely feels like the tide is turning against noncompete agreements across the country: five states ban them outright, while many others have restrictions on when they can be enforced and on whom.

The Federal Trade Commission's effort to make these pacts illegal in the U.S. has a long runway ahead of it before becoming official, but is still a move that the government contracting ecosystem should take note of as it unfolds.

In this episode, attorneys Marlena Ewald and Grace Williams of the national security-focused law firm Fluet explain the bigger economic-wide picture of the FTC's push to ban noncompetes and then take the conversation to GovCon.

Both attorneys told our Ross Wilkers that questions about what this already means and could mean for the employer-employee relationship are starting to come up, so they provide some answers to them here. They also provide some key signposts to watch as the FTC's effort progresses.

The Proposed Nationwide Ban on Non-Competition Agreements by the Federal Trade Commission

Will the FTC Finalize a Complete Ban on Noncompetes?

Noncompete agreements explained

The presence of private equity firms continues to grow in the government market because as Zach Hester says in this conversation with Editor Nick Wakeman: “It just works." Plain and simple.

Most of the largest companies in the market have used acquisitions as a catalyst for organic growth. But according to Hester, the director of merger and acquisition strategy and deal generation at Bluestone Investment Partners, there are plenty of opportunities for the small and midsized players to be active in M&A as well.

Hester says the critical element a mission focus and using that to drive your acquisition choices. Buyers can add capabilities, talent and broaden your depth. It can send a signal to customers that you can take on larger opportunities.

The volume of deals may ebb and flow from year to year, but there is little doubt that M&A has become a powerful force.

Even with its status as the No. 1 company on the 2021 Washington Technology Top 100, Leidos is focused on what's changing in the market and the priorities and needs of its customers. 

On the cusp of his retirement, Chief Financial Officer James Reagan talks with Editor Nick Wakeman about what a change culture means at Leidos and why that is a critical element of growth strategy. That outlook drives its decisions around acquisitions, divestitures and where it invests its research-and-development dollars.

The result has been a track record of organic growth in the double digits.

Rarely does a blue chip defense hardware company close two deals it views as transformational in the same calendar year. In this episode of Project 38, BAE Systems Inc. Tom Arseneault explains the thinking for why the company moved quickly to put its best foot forward for a military GPS business and airborne radio unit formerly of Raytheon Technologies.

The British defense company’s U.S. subsidiary has a lot on its agenda right now beyond integrating those acquisitions. Managing through the coronavirus pandemic remains a fluid situation with many moving parts, so Arseneault shares what the subsidiary known as “Inc.” internally has done on the supply chain and workforce front.

While it too early to make firm conclusions, Arseneault sounds fairly certain that BAE as a company and the industry as a whole will have a different work cadence and environment in a post-pandemic world. Arseneault shares with Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers what BAE has done to take in everything it is learning now, plus how the company thinks about several broad uncertainties hanging over the industry.

Often coverage of mergers and acquisitions focuses on the buyer and what it means to them, but in this episode of Project 38 Brandee Daly tells Editor Nick Wakeman why she decided the time was right to sell her company to Smartronix.

Daly isn’t retiring, but the sale of D2S Consulting Group means she can continue to focus on her customers’ missions as a new executive at Smartronix. She describes the acquisition as more of a partnership and that’s just the kind of deal that CEO Peter LaMontagne likes to make.

They explain the opportunities ahead, why sometimes selling your company is the best thing to do and for other instances the bravest thing is to not sell at all.