This Wednesday, at 9pm EST, president Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union speech.

This year will be extra special as the followup to Obama’s speech viewers will have the opportunity to submit questions (and vote on other users’ questions) in response to the speech on youtube.com/CitizenTube. Next week, Obama will answer some of the questions in an online event delivered live from the White House. From the YouTube blog:

“Presidents have long used new technology to share their message directly with the American people. Calvin Coolidge was the first president to broadcast the State of the Union over the radio in 1923, and President Truman made history in 1947 when he became the first to deliver his address to a live television audience.

This year’s State of the Union speech will also make history. It will be the first time that citizens will have the opportunity to ask follow-up questions during the speech — and to hear the president’s response to those questions.”

Currently, the exact timing of the followup event is unknown.

Why do former military professionals make great employees?

Civilian employees can learn the specifics of a job, but some of these skills cannot be taught as easily. Candidates with military backgrounds make excellent civilian employees because they already possess several intangible skills that can be the most difficult to teach. This is why so many employers go to these individuals time and time again to fill positions. The fact is, finding these traits in the civilian world can end up being difficult as well as costly. It only makes sense that employers would turn to former military personnel to fill their hiring needs.

What kinds of qualities do these military professionals possess to make good hires?

Federal spending for vendors, services and products in 2009 targeted many areas. The largest two areas were Government Contracts and Federal Grants, comprising approximately 70% of the total spent. However, in 2009, 46% of the total spending went into grants, overshadowing contract dollars by almost 20%.

With an overall rise in grant popularity and spending and a federal goal of decreasing in the percentage of overall contract expenditures, the Government is clearly showing the direction of spending trends likely to occur in 2010. As contract companies prepare proposals for Government contract opportunities, the Government is actually working on shifting more funds to Federal Grants and Government Civilians Acquisition Programs, as mentioned in one of our previous blogs.

As contract centric companies target government contract opportunities, they need to be acutely aware that targeting grants, preparing grant proposals and applying for Federal Gants may be as successful, and as profitable, as traditional contract opportunities.

In addition, knowing current trends on how Federal Contract spending is executed can lead to winning profitable contracts while providing the foresight to pass by potentially unfunded, or poorly funded, unprofitable contracts.

Specifically, 2008 and 2009 saw an increase in multi-year contracts awarded using “excess” or “leftover” funds from other contract and spending programs. While this has created additional contract opportunities, it has also created many contracts that have premature funding shortfalls when next year’s “excess” funding is not as large as the previous years. With the new Government Executive Administration, new contracts solicitations are being scrutinized based on necessity, causing a trend of existing contracts to be “expanded” by adding funds into existing programs, instead of trying to justify new contracts.

These trends indicate that existing contracts, specifically multi-award Indefinite Quantity contracts are likely to see an increase in funding, while smaller contracts utilizing excess funding from previous years are likely to be unfunded, or underfunded. Companies providing services to the Federal Government cannot propose all solicitations and grants. As such, understanding which opportunity is likely to be successful and profitable in the coming years is critical in choosing which contract, grant, or opportunity to target, pursue and expend effort on.

About the author: Jason Wilson, the SGIS Division Manager of the Intelligence and Training Division, is a recently retired US Army Warrant Officer with 21 years of military experience. Wilson has strong relevant operational and institutional credentials and subject matter expertise as well as 19 years of experience in leadership and contract supervision positions.

Specific accolades for Jason Wilson include:

Certified Project Manager (CPM)

5 years supporting DoD and US Army level acquisition programs

6 years supporting and participating in Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations and Joint Capability Technology Demonstrations

6 years supervising a theater wide contract for Oracle and MS SharePoint development

If you are interested in reaching out to the author via discussion, visit SGIS on LinkedIn.

This year marks our Fourth Annual Charity Golf Tournament in support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, taking place on October 16 at The Courses at Andrews Air Force Base. We recently held a contest for our employees asking who could raise the most money to benefit Susan G. Komen. The prize for the winners would be an all expenses paid trip to Washington D.C. along with spots to play in the actual tournament. SGIS employees at our Indianapolis office enthusiastically contributed their time and efforts by seeking out sponsorships, collecting raffle items and hosting a local Charity Night, altogether collecting around $2,000. Luke Bosso, a Resource Manager at SGIS, shares his experience putting together a Charity Night for the cause. Bosso is one of the winners for the contest and will be attending the golf tournament on October 16: We’ve all been affected by cancer in some way, whether through a friend, relative or co-worker. When SGIS announced the fundraising challenge for employees, it was a nice compliment to the real prize; contributing to the fight against breast cancer. It’s not everyday that you get a chance to make a real difference in life. Here was our chance.

SGIS supports Susan G. Komen

We came up with the idea of hosting a Charity Night to raise money for the cause. I didn’t realize how easy getting prizes would be when we explained why we were raising the money. From professional baseball players to golf pros, we started making calls and donations came pouring in. Everyone wanted to be involved in some way or another. We had a great setup for the event; we took over two pool tables and had pink EVERYWHERE. I was shocked when people started coming in and giving the amounts of money they did. I thought we would really have to work to sell raffle tickets, but all we had to do was explain that we were raising money for Susan G. Komen. The great thing about it is that every dollar counts and you never know what your dollar can do. The bar, the attendees and all of my co-workers were great. We couldn’t have had a better turn out than we did. So many people were willing to give so much and it was just fantastic.

Bosso & SGIS Employees Celebrate

After we found out we raised over $1,200, that’s when it sank in that we had made a difference. I played football in college and we won some big games, but the rush I got after the event and the fact we raised so much was amazing. It is a satisfying feeling to know we worked hard and all the money is going to a great cause. I am happy to say that on October 1, we made a difference!    
 
 
About the Author: Luke Bosso a Resource manager that has been with SGIS for over a year. Bosso is an alumnus of Franklin College, where he played Division III football while earning a degree in Broadcast.

Ruby is a new, cutting edge, open source programming language gaining popularity in the programming community. It is made up of a combination of other languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada and Lisp) that form balanced functional programming with imperative programming. Ruby has been ranked among the top 10 programming languages worldwide and SGIS experts have been at the fore-front of training with this language to meet the demand and deliver the best technical solutions to our customers.

“Knowing this language allows our employees to handle the demands for emerging technology,” said Marc Mussoline, an Operations Manager at SGIS. A growing number of our customers have expressed interest Ruby’s capabilities because it is an attractive technical solution to customer problems, he said.

The user community for this relatively new, dynamic language continues to grow daily. SGIS employees who are already trained in Ruby have been extremely helpful to our customers. The language offers simplicity and productivity and is viewed as flexible because parts can be freely altered and are non-restricting on the coder.

At SGIS, our experts develop and apply advanced technical solutions to help protect our fellow citizens from threats by aggressors, provide advanced tools to soldiers who defend our nation and develop technologies that enable the further exploration of our solar system.

To learn about our other emerging capabilities, visit our Website by clicking here.

The Department of Defense Website recently underwent a huge transformation. Formerly known as “DefenseLINK.mil,” the DoD page has now become a new-and-improved “Defense.gov.” The reason for the change? A strategy to emphasize two-way, personal communication with the American public, according to Price Floyd, principal deputy assistant secretary of public affairs. The launch is targeted specifically towards the 18- to 24-year-old age group. Defense officials at the Pentagon are hoping to reach and engage these users in a number of ways by allowing them to post questions, provide feedback and participate in other interactive features.

If you haven’t been to the page yet, you’ll definitely want to take a look.

New DoD Homepage

Have you visited the new DoD Website? What security risks do you think should be addressed?

SGIS was recently awarded the largest contract in company history, valued at over $130 million, by the U.S. Army in support of Project Manager, Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems (PM DCATS).

One of our core values is “Work & Play: We work hard. We have fun. We encourage and celebrate success at all levels.” We value our employees and reward them for their exemplary work. One of our SGIS employees recently won a lease on a brand new Mercedes for his work on the contract.