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JTG, inc. awarded contract to provide foreign language training and support to the Defense Language Institute/Washington.

Defense Language Institute – Washington

JTG, inc. announced today that it has been awarded a multiple award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract to provide foreign language training and support to the Defense Language Institute/Washington as the Prime. The contract provides for a one year base period of performance with four, one year option periods of performance. The contract allows for foreign language training, curriculum development and language training support services in the Washington area and at remote locations over a five year period.

JTG, inc. has assembled a team of highly experienced companies – CLCI and Lexicon Consulting – to deliver tailored and focused training in various languages including less commonly taught languages. The team has the flexibility and experience to deliver timely and focused training in response to the clients needs.

As optimism picks up, so does hiring

V. Dion Haynes - Washington Post (May 17, 2010) After a yearlong hiring freeze during which it only replaced employees who left, Vienna-based contracting firm JTG is preparing to more than double its payroll from 23 to 53.

JTG officials said demand for their software, data and language analysis services fell off when the economy tanked in late 2008. Clients, including FedEx and the Defense and Agriculture departments, opted to postpone projects the company was counting on.

But suddenly this year, the phones started ringing again. "We're getting more work from existing clients, more work to bid on and more opportunities to acquire more clients," said Muriel Jérôme-O'Keeffe, the company's president and chief operating officer, adding that she's also seeing more multi-year contracts. "Customers appear to be more confident in the future -- less anxious than they were 12 months ago."

Defense Wants Access to Revolutionary Technology, but Contracting Methods Stifle Innovation

Sandra Erwin - National Defence Magazine (March 8, 2010) The Pentagon’s new industrial policy guidelines call for the Defense Department to tap the commercial sector and niche small businesses for new technologies.

“Although innovations unique to national security often occur within the 'pure-play' defense industrial base, the vast majority of innovative and revolutionary components, systems, and approaches that enable and sustain our technological advantage reside in the commercial marketplace, in small defense companies, or in America’s universities,” said the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.

The QDR calls for establishing “requirements and pursuing specific programs that take full advantage of the entire spectrum of the industrial base at our disposal: defense firms, purely commercial firms, and the increasingly important sector of those innovative and technologically advanced firms and institutions that fall somewhere in between.”

Those “in between” companies offer many of the niche products and services that the Pentagon needs to counter the enemy’s rapidly changing tactics and technologies. At an AFCEA industry conference in February, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright, USMC, lamented that current conflicts “have a duty cycle of about 30 days.” The Pentagon’s lethargic procurement cycle cannot keep up. "That's part of the frustration that you'll hear day in and day out both from myself and the Secretary of Defense [Robert Gates] as we try and move this department to a footing and a risk calculus that is commensurate with the war that we're actually in, not the war we'd like to be in,” Cartwright said.

But it is not clear how the Pentagon plans to go about changing the status quo. Small businesses and commercial firms typically have been skeptical of the Pentagon’s rhetoric because the procurement system remains stacked against those “in between” firms cited in the QDR.

“The reality is that the procurement process cannot be changed so dramatically as expressed in the QDR ... The utility and innovation of this unique sector of the defense industry must be better understood and incorporated in the short-term strategy,” said Muriel Jérôme O’Keeffe, president of JTG inc., a small woman-owned company based in Vienna, Va., that specializes in multilingual services and cultural analysis for intelligence and homeland security agencies.

There are potentially hundreds of firms fall in the “in between” category, but as a rule these companies are not able to score defense contracts unless they are subcontractors to the large primes, said O’Keeffe in a recent interview. “If you’re providing a niche service or product, it’s hard for small businesses to get contracts,” she said. “We depend on large companies for our survival.”

If the Defense Department is serious about recruiting agile small companies, it needs to change its business model so that it compensates contractors for performance, not for labor hours, O’Keeffe said. The government would get more bang for the buck if contracts were awarded for a specific product or service, to be delivered as soon as possible, as opposed to the government agreeing to pay for labor hours regardless of what is accomplished during those hours, she said.

But changing contracting methods so that the government pays for deliverables, instead of labor hours is not likely to happen overnight, she said. “It is going to be a big shift.” Government officials talk about their desire for better contractor performance but are not taking action to incentivize suppliers to produce faster. In areas such as information technology, companies sell labor hours, which is very different from selling a finished product, said O’Keeffe.

“At the moment, the procurement process doesn’t reward agility,” she added. “For certain high-tech products, the government should look at a different way of procuring the service.”

Another problem for small IT or analysis firms is that many of the niche services they offer have been bundled into larger intelligence or logistics contracts, so the Defense Department may not be able to draw on their talents unless it hires the prime contractor to do the work. “After 9/11, anything dealing with cultural and language shifted into larger procurements and that expertise is now with large companies that provide larger services,” said O’Keeffe. That may not be the best deal for the government.

Information technology consultant Anand Datla offered similar observations in a recent article in National Defense. He said government contracts that pay for labor hours instead of performance are stifling innovation and hindering progress in areas such as cybersecurity. “The traditional acquisition economy is not giving the government the best value for taxpayer dollars,” he said.

JTG Sponsors Advanced Linguistic Studies for a Decade of Scholars

VIENNA, VA (February 12, 2010) – JTG, inc., a US federal professional services provider specializing in mission support, analysis and intelligence, announced today, for the tenth consecutive year, its funding of a scholarship for students enrolled or planning to enroll in a degree program in scientific and technical translation or interpretation. JTG considers investing in the future of our nation’s linguistic analysis capabilities essential and has been funding this $2,500 non-renewable scholarship since 2001.

The scholarship award recipient for the 2010-2011 academic year would join the ranks of past winners from such esteemed graduate programs as the Monterey Institute of International Studies and Kent State University. “We are very proud to contribute to the education of the JTG scholarship recipients past, present and future,” commented JTG inc. President, Muriel Jérôme-O’Keeffe. “JTG believes that investing in the advanced education now will pay enormous dividends for the future of our linguistic capabilities and positively impact our global competitiveness and national security.”

All applicants who meet the eligibility requirements are encouraged to visit www.afti.org/award_jtg to apply via the American Translation Foundation for Translation and Interpretation (AFTI) no later than June 4, 2010. A national award committee will announce the award recipient by August 2010. The committee’s decision will be final and then followed by the disbursement of the award at the start of the Fall Semester of 2010.

AFTI was incorporated in 1997 in the Commonwealth of Virginia and received tax exemption in 1998 under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Ms. Jérôme-O’Keeffe was recently elected President of AFTI, a non-profit foundation affiliated with American Translators Association (ATA). For more detailed information regarding AFTI and ATA please visit www.afti.org and www.atanet.org, respectively.

JTG, inc. supports homeland security, intelligence operations and global business. JTG enables companies and government agencies to achieve their mission by creating, collecting, analyzing and extracting multilingual information through mature and proven processes. JTG is a woman-owned business, headquartered in Vienna, Virginia. For more information, please visit www.jtg-inc.com / JTG on Twitter.

JTG Executives Available to Discuss Implications of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) for the Defense Industrial Base Spectrum

VIENNA, VA (February 5, 2010) - JTG, inc., a US federal professional services provider specializing in mission support, analysis and intelligence, commends the Department of Defense for recognizing the variance of the private sector supporting national defense efforts. The QDR outlines a framework that aims to reduce private contractors to a pre 9/11 level, which would require a procurement process that integrates improved criteria, supply schedules, expense analysis and performance standards.

The Department of Defense acknowledged that the dramatic reform goals constructed throughout the QDR would affect not only the large prime contractors and commercial firms but also “the increasingly important sector of those innovative and technologically advanced firms and institutions that fall somewhere in between.” These unique firms, such as JTG, are responsible for the skills, specialization, and technology upon which the prime contractors have come to depend.

“The agile and efficient small businesses are the lifeline of the defense industry,” commented Muriel Jérôme-O’Keeffe, President of JTG inc. “The reality is the procurement process cannot be changed so dramatically as expressed in the QDR, but the utility and innovation of this unique sector of the defense industry must be better understood and incorporated in the short-term strategy.”

JTG at CES!