GSA decided to use its upcoming IT services contract vehicle, known as COMET, to implement its new Contract Acquisition Life-Cycle Management (CALM) system. The decision surprised some vendors.
On Aug. 9, the General Services Administration sent out a request for informationfor the next iteration of its government wide IT acquisition contract for small business vendors.
Source: GSA issues STARS III RFI — FCW
Increasingly the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are looking to “other transaction authority” agreements to acquire emerging technologies. Procurements made under OTA are exempt from many Federal Acquisition Regulation rules and are typically limited to research, prototypes and in certain cases follow-on production.
The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency is going to be doing significantly less small business contracts after the National Background Investigations Bureau moves from the Office of Personnel Management to DOD.
Source: Small business cuts coming amid NBIB merger — Defense Systems
Increasingly the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are looking to “other transaction authority” agreements to acquire emerging technologies. Procurements made under OTA are exempt from many Federal Acquisition Regulation rules and are typically limited to research, prototypes and in certain cases follow-on production.
Source: OTAs set for growth — FCW
There’s still no guarantee we won’t have another government shutdown two months from now, but Congress and the president removed one of the biggest sources of budget uncertainty last week with the passage of a two year budget deal – a deal that also finally signals the sunset of the Budget Control Act. So what does it mean for contractors? For more on that, we spoke with Larry Allen, managing director of the Federal Market Access Group at BDO. Hear more on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.
Source: 2-year budget deal passage brings some relief to federal contractors | Federal News Network
The list of top federal contractors hasn’t changed much. BGOV’s Dan Snyder joined the show to talk about the rankings and the trends behind this year’s data.
Source: Despite strong spending, list of top federal contractors hasn’t changed much | Federal News Network
The Government’s evaluation of bidders’ past performances sometimes seems murky. In submitting their proposals, bidders are given the opportunity to put their best foot forward – to identify “relevant” past performance and objective assessments of how well they performed the work. But what if the Government ignores the past performance submissions and uses something else to evaluate past performance? That’s what happened to JMark Services in a bid to provide intelligence instructor services for the Air Force.
SOURCE: GAO Rules Air Force’s Past Performance Evaluation to be “Irrational”
No, the government isn’t trying to figure out how it can bundle home and auto coverage to save on its insurance premiums. Instead, “consolidation” in the federal government contract context refers to the action of collecting requirements being performed under discrete small business set-aside contracts into a single procurement. Before an agency may consolidate contracts, it must consider the impacts the proposed consolidation will have on small business participation. Recently, however, GAO was asked to determine whether consolidation analyses are required for Blanket Purchase Order (“BPA”) procurements, and its decision did not adopt the SBA’s position.
SOURCE: GAO Disagrees with SBA: Consolidation Analysis Not Required for BPAs
Agencies spent $559 billion on prime and unclassified contracts.
