HSDF THE PODCAST

Procurement Innovation to Enhance Mission Capability 2 of 2

• Homeland Security & Defense Forum

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Welcome to “HSDF THE PODCAST,” a collection of policy discussions on government technology and homeland security brought to you by the Homeland Security and Defense Forum

Our latest episode promises insights into how regular APFS updates not only foster collaboration between government and industry but also bolster competition and resource allocation. We explore the cultural shifts necessary within procurement teams to prioritize these updates and share educational initiatives, such as reverse industry days, that raise awareness among government employees about their vital role.

 Featuring: 

  • Dina Thompson, Assistant Administrator and Head of Contracting Authority, Transportation Security Administration 
  • Jaclyn Rubino, Strategic Programs Executive Director, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security 
  • Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security 
  • Garth White, Director, Intelligence Community, Oracle Corporation 
  • Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security (moderator)

This discussion took place at the HSDF’s Technology Innovation in Government Symposium on September 26th, 2024. 

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Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

It might be a good time for me to go back to, I think, a question that was asked on the prior panel. When we talk about communications and collaboration and keeping up with the speed of industry in terms of where you're at and trying to focus on what we're doing. Someone mentioned, I think, acquisition planning and forecasting in the last session and you know, I think I'm not sure if I know exactly what the question is. The person who asked it can certainly raise their hand to re-ask it, but I will say, feel free, microphone over here. I will say that we realize how important that tool is to you to hear from us, as well as the whole of government, on the planning to enable your ability to you know, direct your resources in a way that are going to be helpful to your efforts. We do have calls to. We expect that to be sort of done throughout the year, right, but there are times of the year where we ask our program offices, through many times through our CAE community, to go in and do kind of a wholesale update to those types of requirements.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

It is hard when you know the budget cycle is challenging and you know that's a challenge and we navigate that and we do the best we can with that, although I will say, as you all know, much of what you find in the acquisition planning and forecasting are things that are recurring, things that we are well aware of, that we're sort of waiting on, you know, the funding to come through. Some things are not that way. There are new initiatives coming through all the time, but we do the best we can there. I think we realize the importance of it. We talk very often to our CAE community, especially for the major programs, so that people understand that you all are looking at this and using it to drive your efforts. So let me just pause there and see what, in case, I didn't.

Audience:

No, thank you, nina. You've highlighted the reasons. The rationale on the industry side is, for example, I've got 29 pages of APFS spread across my office right now because I'm in that cycle of end of fiscal year, as you are. But I'm also getting queried by SVPs, chief operating officers, growth officers, saying why is this APFS not updated? Because a third of the opportunities that I had highlighted are more than 18 months old without an update.

Audience:

So keeping a project or a program alive for that period of time without sustained what we call BNP funds awful hard in industry. You lose them. Your senior leadership will make a decision. We're not bidding this. No update, no real incentive that we can put a finger on and go to our board with or our shareholders. So the importance is APFS has to be updated. When you're in an election and then an inauguration year, there's a few changes there. The percentage of opportunities that drop off from one program or one administration to the next is quite high. There's consolidations and there's other changes. So the bottom line is we need that updated quarterly, bi-annually and, as an AI project, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding near real time, right, sean Yep? That would help tremendously. So that was the message.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

I appreciate that and I certainly will take that back. I will say that I think part of it is incumbent upon us in the procurement community. A tool is a tool and it's wonderful unless it's being used the way it should be used and for the intended outcome right. Unless it's being used the way it should be used and for the intended outcome right, I think it's incumbent upon us in procurement to make sure that our customers, our requirements owners, that they understand the value of doing those updates and what that means to their ability to engage, their ability to gather information in the early stages of their planning. As we all know, doing that effectively is going to result in better competition, better solutions, better RFIs, all of it. So I see Jackie is chomping at the bit here to chime in here. Go ahead.

Jaclyn Rubino, Strategic Programs Executive Director, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Jackie, I am, you know, tom. This is timely. My team did a reverse industry day, focused on this not too long ago, about six months ago, and you know I've been telling my team this not too long ago, about six months ago, and you know I've been telling my team we can't just put these events on. We need tangible products that somebody can take away and remember what they learned and how to apply it, you know, in their work. And so the two pagers I referenced, we created a guide in partnership with many of the industry associations to identify, you know, the top fields that industry looks at within our APFS system and identify what certain, you know certain data means to industry or signals. So if there's an NA in something, say it's a, you know the set-aside, na means okay, this could be open for any and all. So if it's identified as the set-aside and A means okay, this could be open for any and all.

Jaclyn Rubino, Strategic Programs Executive Director, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

So if it's identified as the set-aside for 8As, then certain companies are going to say, okay, that's not an opportunity I'm pursuing, but trying to enlighten the workforce that this is a tool that is of value to industry but just as much to the government, because we're going to have better competition. As Nina indicated, we're going to attract the right providers who are going to bring the right solutions to bear. So it's a cultural shift, but we are working on it and trying to really empower people with the knowledge and the information so that they do timely update it, they do maintain it. It's telling them you've got to take time out of your busy day and all the things that you have to do. And why this is so important? Because industry will benefit and you will benefit even greater from it.

Audience:

And just one feedback this audience would readily participate in your reverse industry days because, looking across this audience, I know a lot of them, like people, ashley, that have tremendous experience and expertise, and it applies to the FSIs on the top, your mid-tier, and especially the small businesses Making decisions on what they can bid and project their funds against. It is life or death for a small business, so this is an area that we really can collaborate on and show significant improvement.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Greatly appreciate this feedback. I know Dina has a comment from an operational perspective.

Dina Thompson, Assistant Administrator and Head of Contracting Authority, Transportation Security Administration:

Yeah, just everything that Jackie said is completely true and accurate and right. But from where the rubber hits the ground it's a little bit harder sometimes. But I will say in my my office if you call me or anybody my industry liaison, anybody on our staff, and you ask, hey, this has been sitting idle for a few months, what's the status? You will get that update and all of us will take your call at any time. We may not return it right away, it may be a few days later because we're busy, but you will always get a return phone call with an explanation, if not an update. So that's always going to happen and I would also.

Dina Thompson, Assistant Administrator and Head of Contracting Authority, Transportation Security Administration:

I've gotten some of those phone calls and people think of something's going on. You've already got something planned. You're gonna take this away. A lot of times I can't even tell you how we're on a path to getting something done and then someone comes up with a great idea something faster, better, smarter, cheaper and we get stuck and we don't want to update APFS with false information. So sometimes it's sitting there while we try to figure out what the heck we want to do. So that's kind of what's going on. Most of the time that's what's going on. But if you see something and it looks a little weird and you're interested in doing some work with us on it, just reach out. We'll get back to you and let you know what's going on for real.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Thank you, deana. Let's move on question right here in the green.

Audience:

If you make it easier for the CEO or whoever you're reaching out to and give as much information, it takes the person that responding two seconds. So if you, if you just say the APFS number and that person is not the point of contact, then they have to go back and do the research and fill in the blank. Or if there's, like me, who is on five different ones and you say APFS number, so, and so I don't remember exactly what it is. So if you make it easier for the person to respond immediately, you're more likely to get a response a lot quicker. Just some.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

CIS feedback. Great tip, thank you. Okay. I think the prior panel also talked a little bit about artificial intelligence, so we're going to talk about it, too, in the context of procurement. Polly, I know you've been at the table a little bit for some of these conversations in the context of procurement and how we're supporting AI efforts. Why don't we punt over to you to share a little bit with this audience?

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Absolutely Well. Admiral Bartz said it well right North Star is collaboration and we're doubling down on that. We recognize that increased collaboration is going to be required for us to really stay lockstep with our programs right with the CIO community and other partners who have AI-related requirements. And so one area we're collaborating with is really around the governance policy and tools for our workforce right. So our acquisition policy and legislation team, led by our executive director, sarah Todd, is currently co-chairing the government-wide CAIO right. Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Council's Procurement Working Group. We're co-chairing that with NASA and the role there is really to look across the regulatory and policy space, understand the implications for acquisition and procurement of artificial intelligence, look at our guidance, our training and resources for the workforce that will be implementing this through the contract process and find out where there's gaps and then help by creating resources around those gaps. And so that's kind of one place that we're leaning in. The goal of doing that government-wide is so that you as industry partners, when you see language and solicitations right around acquisition and procurement-related terms and conditions for our acquisition of AI, maybe it looks and feels more similar than it might otherwise and that hopefully will help kind of level set expectations across the federal government.

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

The other area of collaboration that we're really excited about and just thrilled about is the CIO team stood up, this fantastic DHS AI Corps that is supporting DHS across the department and we were privileged to have a member of the DHS AI Corps supporting the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer and he has been fantastic at helping us do a few things.

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

First he's supporting Sarah Todd's and her team's efforts on kind of advising from kind of an industry and subject matter expert level, all of the review of the guidance and language so that we've got some expertise going in from industry's perspective and how we shape that.

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

But he's also helping us conduct a use case inventory across the procurement line of business for opportunities to leverage artificial intelligence to help our operational procurement workforce do their jobs more readily and easily. A big piece of that is just assessing right appropriateness of technology, viability of the technology for these certain use cases and then helping us prioritize those use cases, recognizing the limited funding that we have available to leverage them and wanting to really build an enterprise-wide structure so that we're building once for all across our department. So those are some, I think. I think first kind of acquisition procurement focus that are going to kind of be relevant to each of you in the room, but also kind of where we're headed internally to help our procurement workforce meet the needs that they have, given ever-increasing workloads, not really ever-increasing resources. How can we have this technology aid them so that we can be better responsive through the acquisition process of meeting mission?

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Exciting stuff I'm sure you all agree, Dina anything going on at TSA on this front.

Dina Thompson, Assistant Administrator and Head of Contracting Authority, Transportation Security Administration:

Sure. So from where I sit in my role, I try to make a distinction and I see some people in the audience who may have heard me say this before, so hopefully I don't bore you but I try to make a distinction between the AI that we buy and the AI that we use to perform our procurement mission. So on the procurement side of things, we're really just getting started with that. We're leveraging a lot of bots that help us populate forms, do contract closeout, de-obligate dollars, things like that, and we're mostly doing the work in-house. Things that are low-code, that our systems guy can figure out how to do those kind of things. But it saves us a lot of time and frees us up to be able to do a lot more critical thinking type work.

Dina Thompson, Assistant Administrator and Head of Contracting Authority, Transportation Security Administration:

We are trying I'm trying to go a little bit bigger and do some things in the in the gen AI space, but there seems to be a lot of concerns about data and giving access to people for our sensitive data and how to do that. So I've hit a couple roadblocks but I'm hoping in in 25 that I might be able to do a little bit more in that space. And then the AI that I buy. We've been doing it at the airport checkpoints for a very long time. So the screening of your equipment, the screening of your baggage through the equipment and even some of our machines that look at your photo IDs, through the equipment and even some of our machines that look at your photo IDs, they go in and they use ALMI so that they can figure out.

Dina Thompson, Assistant Administrator and Head of Contracting Authority, Transportation Security Administration:

AIML. I'm a contracts person, not an IT person, and they try to memorize what a bag should look like. If you have a makeup bag, is that really a makeup bag? All the things that they see regularly is that really a makeup bag? If you have all the things that they see regularly, is that really what it's supposed to be? And that helps us to improve efficiency and time spent at checkpoints.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Thanks, dina. How about you Garth from an industry government perspective?

Garth White, Director, Intelligence Community, Oracle Corporation:

So the adoption of AI, like the other panelists were saying, is not a one-time thing. It is an iterative process. It is a process that needs to have a continuous loop for us to give feedback on its implementation. One of the things for AI is to make sure that it has transparency and is used ethically, and so, with industry and government, I think we should work together to develop a governance framework in which it outlines the clear guidelines for use of AI, particularly when focusing on fairness, accountability and security. Additionally, I feel that there's Collaboration is essential, rather than a one-stop shop. You know, ai is not a one-and-done thing. Ai is an iterative thing. It's constantly changing. It requires industry and government to partner together, use industry as a force multiplier.

Garth White, Director, Intelligence Community, Oracle Corporation:

We are here to help meet the mission. It is no longer a transitory event. We ARE HERE TO HELP MEET THE MISSION. It IS NO LONGER A TRANSITORY EVENT. We ARE HERE TO BE MISSION PARTNERS AND MISSION ENABLERS FOR DHS. So I THINK THAT WHAT SO, in ESSENCE, what WE NEED TO DO IS I CAN'T STRESS ENOUGH THE COLLABORATION EARLY AND OFTEN. For US TO HELP MOVE THE NEEDLE FOR INNOVATION AND DEPLOYMENT IN THE PROCUREMENT early and often. For us to help move the needle for innovation and deployment in the procurement space.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Thank you, gaurav. Great, great insights. I think that's a perfect segue into. You know, how are we continuing to leverage innovation? I mean, ai is a great example, but we're doing a lot at DHS and have for some time in getting to some of these creative and innovative solutions using some sometimes non-traditional methods and authorities. You know in the past well, not in the past every day we are working through the federal acquisition regulations, as you all well know, you navigate them very successfully most, if not all the time. But I would love this panel to talk a little bit about what we're doing in the space of non-traditional approaches to procurement and again, I think this might have come up in the last panel as well.

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

So, polly, let's start with you sure, absolutely well, nina, you kind of touched on. But we recognize that, as we had engagements both with industry and with our acquisition community, that there seemed to be a little bit of a lack of awareness across our buyers and our program managers around the full suite of acquisition authorities that our department has been granted, of acquisition authorities that our department has been granted. So, in addition to the federal acquisition regulation, leveraging I think it was brought up earlier programs like the SBIR and SDTR program, leveraging our commercial solutions, opening pilot program authority, et cetera, that folks just didn't even understand what they were, where they would be appropriate for use and then how to actually structure agreements, leveraging the non-FAR-based authorities. And so Nina and Paul charged a team of us to really get under the hood on that and come up with a strategy to provide better knowledge and support to the workforce. And we really envisioned this almost as a complementary or similar to the procurement innovation lab-like support structure. We know that when you're using new authorities for the first time, hands-on, right, supportive consultation and coaching will be very beneficial to our teams. And we also understand that we're going to have to really explain the clear and appropriate authorities for use and how to get after mission capabilities, using and thinking about the full suite to include the FAR and our non-FAR or our alternative authorities. So we're really excited about how this is shaping up.

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

We've been building this internally but also based on good engagement and feedback from industry as well, and I'm not going to steal Paul's thunder but we really expect to roll the new entity out early in the new fiscal year. So he's gonna come back to Industry after. We share this internally more with our community and and share a little bit about what this will look and feel like. But the end, the end and the important part here is that Across the community, as we do support them better and provide the knowledge more robustly, an engagement wrote more robustly. I think we're gonna see robustly and engagement more robustly. I think we're going to see better consideration of our full suite of authorities as we get after these especially emerging capabilities that our mission needs. So hopefully that helps shed a little light to the earlier question about how we're tackling what we understood to be kind of a problem set and it was really a true disservice on our part to our acquisition community. So we're trying to right that Appreciate that.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Polly, I think you know, a lot of times when we think about, you know, authorities, whether FAR or non-FAR, we often focus on the procurement community primarily, obviously. But what we're learning is that, you know, advancing the knowledge really starts with helping our customers and our program offices understand what appropriate you know use cases there might be for those types of authorities, and so you don't want to wait until the requirement comes to procurement to figure that out, because often the requirement might be written in such a way that isn't lending itself to advancing some of these other approaches and alternatives. So I think we see a need for expanding that knowledge base and that's something that the team is looking at as well. So thank you for your insights there, polly. Dina, how about you at TSA?

Dina Thompson, Assistant Administrator and Head of Contracting Authority, Transportation Security Administration:

Oh, I'm sorry, sir. Yeah, there was a gentleman with his.

Jaclyn Rubino, Strategic Programs Executive Director, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Yes.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Hold on one second, we're going to.

Audience :

MORE GLOBALLY. You GO FROM ONE PROGRAM MANAGER OR ANOTHER, or FROM ONE CONTRACTING OFFICER OR SPECIALIST TO ANOTHER. They OPERATE A CERTAIN WAY INSTEAD OF LOOKING AT WHAT THEY CAN DO. Sometimes THEY LOOK AT WHAT THEY'VE DONE SUCCESSFULLY BEFORE AND STAY THERE. Do YOU HAVE A KNOWLEDGE REPOSITORY OR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM? Some OF THOSE PILLCASTS, of those pill casts great information, but somebody might not be able to go into that video or know what to look in that video. Is it something that documents that they can find a lot easier?

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

No great question, and I think that's been one of the great successes of the BrickSherbet Innovation Lab, because that knowledge is accessible, especially in digestible ways, to the entirety of the workforce. So that's something that this team is working through. Still we're not quite ready to, you know, kind of talk through exactly how we're going to do that, but I think we are learning and leveraging a lot of what we learned from the pill and how the entire community of DHS has been able to learn, including, you know, other government agencies, and you know we've partnered with industry on a lot of this, a lot of it. But I think the model, there's something to be learned and leveraged there. So I appreciate your comment and certainly we see the value in that as well, polly, or anything else on that.

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

No, I mean I think we do. I think have a clear direction that a one-stop shop is going to be really important and a single place to come in and then learn who you need to go talk to. So, yes, all good.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Okay, I know we only have five minutes left, but I'm going to pose a question to Garth, really, about how you think industry can help DHS advance our posture in embracing innovation through procurement, whether it be some of your past experiences or what you envision going forward and what are your thoughts on that.

Garth White, Director, Intelligence Community, Oracle Corporation:

One way that is happening already is through the use of the pill, because they've implemented an iterative development which avoids the pitfalls of the big bank procurement process, where it allows us to provide the government with an iterative approach so we can get that instant feedback, so it could be less risky and it can also deliver on the overall success of the procurement. So I think that is one of the good ways that I've seen.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Iterative is what it's all about. We have all learned that iterating in our processes, iterating in how we engage with all of you through the procurement process, is really yielding some great outcomes. So I want to pause because there's just a couple minutes left, just to see if anyone out here has any other questions, for this amazing panel Went by so fast. Yes, hi, good afternoon. Thank you very much.

Jaclyn Rubino, Strategic Programs Executive Director, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Brandon AllenOS. I AM FROM SOFT TECH GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS, so MY QUESTION IS SPECIFICALLY HOW DO YOU ANTICIPATE IN THE FUTURE USING AI SPECIFICALLY WITH GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT EVALUATIONS?

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

FOR PROPOSALS RISK ASSESSMENTS AND PRICING.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Great question. Anyone want to take a stab? I'll be happy to go.

Dina Thompson, Assistant Administrator and Head of Contracting Authority, Transportation Security Administration:

Go ahead from evaluations and then spitting out data so that it's hopefully that'll reduce protests, reduce questions that come in. We'll see. It's a, it's a proof of concept right now, but we're just playing around with that right now yes, garth, if.

Garth White, Director, Intelligence Community, Oracle Corporation:

I could jump in real quick to foot stop that some more is we have. You have such a broad database of successful procurements. If you could use AI to assess, do risk assessments on the procurement process and also to make sure there's no bias, that can eliminate the risk and the potential for protests. So if you can leverage the successful awards and it could be really a force multiplier or a way to augment your staff to really, you know, grade proposal package, assess the risk and make sure that it meets all the elements of the far, that would be. I think that would be fantastic.

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Holly, anything yeah you know there's there's a tremendous amount of fantastic use cases.

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

You you named three, right, there's more, but I think one of the things we are trying to be very, very attentive to and part of why we are really thrilled with the collaboration with our CIO community that's enabled us to have a subject matter expert here helping us with our assessments is we have a lot of sensitive right, source selection, sensitive vendor, proprietary data in our data sets, and so, as we think about these approaches, you know how are we protecting the security and integrity of the data and also our responsibilities, right, as a warranted government contracting officer? Right, there are decisions that only I can make. I'm not a warranted government contracting officer anymore, so this is just a persona, but only I can make and so I need to make sure that the solutions that we bring to bear reserve those decisions for me, and I can give some other examples right, source selection, official, etc. And so we've got a great number of use cases that have a tremendous amount of promise, but we want to build them right and appropriately.

Jaclyn Rubino, Strategic Programs Executive Director, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Yeah, I will say something that I'm working on that's in the infancy going to be piloting it out soon is we've collaborated to build a GPT to conduct some risk assessment for supply chain risk, and so something that is even more critical for us to be aware of and to empower contracting officers and programs with a tool that could assess what's out there and say is there a potential supply chain risk or challenge that I need to be mindful of and try to mitigate in what I'm buying or trying to deliver, and what are some mitigation strategies and how can I incorporate that into what we're seeking in a proposal response? That's an area that's vast and challenging. That AI is going to bring us some real strength and power and empower our contracting professionals with information they've never had before. I also am serving right now as a source selection authority and I'll tell you.

Jaclyn Rubino, Strategic Programs Executive Director, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Another great area is the development of the you know, source selection documentation and some of the the documents that I need to approve and sign off on. I've got a hundred page document sitting in front of me that I know this team worked tirelessly on to create from scratch, and it's all well-documented information and the ability for AI to help generate a report based on their findings and help alleviate that burden on the contracting officers and others and really help deliver and cut down some of the administrivia where someone can validate yes, this is accurate. Yes, this does make sense, but you know the effort and the legwork that goes in. There is really a great place where I see great applicability.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Thanks, jackie. I think what you're hearing is we see the opportunities as pretty much endless. You can get very excited about the possibilities, excited about the possibilities, but, as Polly mentioned, we have to be very measured, very careful about how we might apply and use this type of technology, because we want to protect your information, we want to make sure that the decision makers are in fact, you know, taking their job as they should and making those decisions as they should. So we're excited, but we're measured, and so I just want to kind of foot stomp on that. So I think, do we have time for one more question or not?

Speaker 8:

Okay, yes, Hi, my name is Naveen from VivSoft. We are a Ciber Phase 3 awardee on the DoD side. I've been following one of your portals for Phase 0. Is that the place? It's sort of like a cyber portal, similar to DVD. Is that the place to look for next year for announcements? That is one question and the second question is is for us to be for cyber phase three work on how we have brought innovation to DVD? Where can I start? Indeed, theyhs, which offers can we brief?

Polly Hall, Senior Advisor, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

I'll take that. If you're talking about the science and technology director at Ciber Portal, that is the place to go for opportunities For the time being. They're also the first place I would go if you have a phase three offering that you're looking to make sure we learn about. That said also, please feel free for the time being to go through Jackie's shop, our industry liaisons to share the opportunity, because we could also not just share that with the team working our internal organization to support, but also across with appropriate program offices.

Nina Ferraro, Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, Department of Homeland Security:

Thank you for the question. Thank you, panel, and thank you everyone for listening to us and we look forward to chatting with you as the day goes on. Thank you for the question. Thank you, panel, and thank you everyone for listening to us and we look forward to chatting with you as the day goes on. Thank you.