2016's top stories and a look ahead to 2017

The end of one year and the beginning of another traditionally is the time for reflection and looking forward.

With that in mind, I couldn’t help but look at some of Washington Technology’s web traffic for the past year. I wasn’t just looking for the most popular stories, but also for some patterns.

The first one that popped up somewhat surprised me, and that's Leidos’ acquisition of Lockheed Martin’s IT business. It is a story that stretched out for months and continues to resonate, especially because the transaction closed in August but was announced in January.

Over those eight months, we did multiple stories, ranging from the deal’s impact on the market to what drove Lockheed to want sell. There also were ancillary stories such a lost bid protest after the Army Corps of Engineers said the merger made awarding a contract too risky. 

Lockheed Martin has always been a major traffic driver for Washington Technology. It often seemed that any time we had a story dealing with the company, it caused a spike in visits to our website. We haven’t seen that shift to Leidos yet, perhaps because the market is much more diverse now. Leidos isn’t the biggest player in the market, so its importance and influence can’t be discounted.

Another major traffic driver on the site had been our coverage of contract awards, especially the large awards and the protests that often accompany them. Two big winners this base year were the Veteran Affairs’ T4NG contract, which went through several protests, and the Army’s ITES 3-H contract. It also went through several protests.

But it isn’t just the big contracts that attract attention. Our WT Insider Contract database is one of our more popular regular features. In it, we track contract awards that we’ve covered, and we present it in a sortable database that you can also download as a spreadsheet. It is exclusive to WT Insiders, and it goes back to 2013, so we now have four complete years of contract awards.

Also getting a lot of attention on our website has been our coverage of the formation and first year of CSRA Inc. The deal closed at the end of 2015, but our coverage continued as we tracked how CSRA was integrating and what deals they have been pursuing.

Also popular on is our Top 100 rankings of the largest government contractors and the various trend stories and profiles we write around it.

And there are certain topics that consistent get attention from our readers – LPTA and anything to do with source selection and competitive intelligence.

We also see strong traffic to our various guest columnists such as Bob Lohfeld, Stan Soloway and Mark Amtower. Our columnists consistently provide valuable insights into market trends and offer advice about how to make the most of your opportunities in the federal market.

What this tells me is that one of the most important things we can offer our readers is competitive intelligence and insights into the competitive landscape. We’ll try to do more of that in the coming year.

Which brings me to the last topic that will be top of mind with nearly everyone: The transition and the coming Trump administration.

We’ve done many stories and run commentaries exploring what the Trump administration might mean, from market trends to strategic advice to the latest news. Of course, there are still a lot of unanswered questions, and it’ll be months before everything settles into a regular routine.

How the Trump administration changes contracting has yet to be seen, but obviously we’ll have plenty to write about.

Happy 2017, everyone.