by Andrea Baker on April 7, 2010
Recently Navstar’s new digs in Reston and our CEO Joanna Alexis were featured in the most recent Bisnow Fed Tech Newsletter.
The feature includes:
What’s a great way for the government to save money? Not fixed price contracts, says NavStar CEO (and founder) Joanna Alexis. When we met in her Reston office, she offered tips to protect taxpayer wallets and help small business.
She says small businesses with cost effective solutions don’t have a chance to save the government money because procurement just takes too long. “Sadly, having a woman-owned designated business status doesn’t help win business. I’ve had to walk away from deals because of the lengthy procurement process. Adapting to a more commercial-like procurement would save time and money.”
Indre, Joanna, and Corinne of Navstar
Admit it—after seeing this, you want to go work for NavStar (which is looking to hire a director of ops). That’s Joanna with Indre Bauza and Corinne Combeau. The company started in 1999 as an IT staffing firm, but four years ago transitioned into an IT subcontractor and teaming partner to large government primes. One cool project: supporting Treasury on a program that monitors and reports on the bank transactions of known bad guys. Back home, Joanna just adopted her fourth dog, enjoys investing in real estate, and will skim the occasional celebrity magazine: “Hang in there, Sandra Bullock!”
by Steven Mandzik on October 21, 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivanomak/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Two years before President Obama took office and in the midst of some heated arguments on global warming president George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13423. The order created on January 24, 2007, establish goals for the Executive branch in its use of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as:
Using renewable energy, reducing water consumption, purchasing sustainable materials, reducing the use of toxic and hazardous goods, designing new buildings that are sustainable, reducing the use of petroleum, and requirements to use energy efficient tools.
Recently, on October 5, 2009, President Obama signed a new order that “builds on and expands the energy reduction and environmental requirements” of the previous order. This new order raises the bar but, in an overarching view, doesn’t drastically add to the requirements laid out by former President Bush.
Nonetheless, its still a landmark order in the government landscape, establishing such requirements as:
- 30% reduction in vehicle fleet petroleum use by 2020
- 50% recycling and waste diversion by 2015
- 95% of all applicable contracts will meet sustainability requirements
- Implementation of the 2030 net-zero-energy building requirement (buildings that emit no GHG’s)
As this order is implemented, President Obama has asked that every Federal agency set a GHG reduction target within 90 days (January 5, 2010). Then within 240 days, they are to develop a longer term plan for the larger projects involved with those agencies.
This is definitely an exciting time as the ‘energy’ for green initiatives in the Federal government is ‘building’ 
