How contractors can prepare for a very big year in contracting
Regardless of what deal Congress figures out, federal spending is going to rise sharply next year. That will mean more acquisition contracts than ever. Some federal contractors might…
An inside look at GSA’s Office of Enterprise Strategy Management
Charlotte Phelan, assistant commissioner of the, Office of Enterprise Strategy Management at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) joins Off the Shelf for a discussion of the role, responsibilities,…
Bid protests Part III: Flawed past performance evaluations
In its first and second parts, this series has explored two of the principal bases for bid protests: flawed technical evaluations and unreasonable cost evaluations. These protests are…
What would happen to contractors in case of a debt default?
Debt default would seem, in some ways, like a government shutdown. But it’s not. The government is fully appropriated for the rest of fiscal 2023. It is the…
One secret of China’s military success is its military business model
If the U.S. is to prevail in the world’s strategic hot spots, the Defense Department will have to adopt some of the strategies China seems to be using…
Industrial funding fee pain relievers
It’s another end of a government fiscal quarter, which starts a number of reporting clocks for government contractors, including for the General Services Administration’s industrial funding fee (IFF)…
Training a new generation of acquisition professionals
As the Pentagon moves to create novel ways of customizing acquisition to make the process faster and more agile, a new crop of acquisition professionals is learning their…
Fake solicitation highlights growing attacks against federal officials
Nagesh Rao was sitting in New York visiting his family when someone on his team at the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Commerce Department headquarters called…
An unnecessary, counter-productive GSA schedule marketplace hurdle
This column was originally published on Roger Waldron’s blog at The Coalition for Government Procurement and was republished here with permission from the author. The General Services Administration’s Acquisition Letter…
Does the GSA have the best data to work with during price negotiations with contractors?
A new report from the General Services Administration’s Inspector General didn’t have many nice things to say about its Multiple Award Schedule’s Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) pilot. First…