We look forward to a new year and new opportunities for innovation and growth in the government contracting community. This past year, we experienced an increased emphasis on big data, insider threat, merging technology with health care, and the internet of things, among others.
WashingtonExec reached out to those most knowledgeable and experienced in the federal contracting space. We asked executives in and around the Beltway for insight on the direction they see the government contracting community heading in 2018. Topics discussed include M&A activity, public/private sector collaboration, cloud computing, the incoming millennial workforce in defense/IT/health care, talent retention and more.
Next in the series is Stephen Gillotte, president and CEO at RGi. He provides the strategic and technical direction to Reinventing Geospatial’s management team focusing primarily on U.S. government and commercial geospatial and aviation sectors. Here are his insights:
The market in the GovCon space I see growing is countering near-peer adversaries coordinated across the multidomain (i.e., land, air, sea, space and cyber) environments. The headline topic is supporting our soldiers, airman, seamen and analysts as they target the adversary in this highly complex battle space.
Our adversaries, both near-peer nation state and rogue nations, are rapidly developing their offensive cyber capabilities. Our nation’s security is dependent on us being able to conduct cyber intelligence, understanding the cyber terrain, and how the cyber and physical world are intertwined.
Providing the commanders with cyber situational awareness, deeply rooted in a multidomain battle space, is key to significantly outmatching our adversaries’ capabilities. At RGi, we’re helping to arm those decision-makers with the information they need to react to cyber threats in time to be impactful to their mission.
As I think about the future of GovCon, one growing concern is how we, as a nation, continue to support ad-hoc asymmetrical warfare, while preparing for the more complex battles with near-peer adversaries.
One thing I’m excited about for our future is the way our government has started looking at new acquisition strategies that will help make us more agile and prepared. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for instance, is using GEOINT services to rapidly address the ever-changing battlefield requirements. For a company like RGi, this means we’re able to build the right capability the first time around to make an immediate impact for our soldiers and analysts.
The shift I’ve seen in the past decade or so is that there is a strong desire from today’s workforce to have work, play and family all coexist. There is no official start or end to the day; work, play and family are all mixed together into a life experience. For a small, nimble company like RGi, this type of structure is fairly easy to achieve; however, some of the IC organizations may find such an overlapping structure more difficult to achieve given good security protocols. Providing the total life experience to today’s workforce will continue to be a growing challenge.