Centre Law & Consulting

By Hon. Jack Delman Last week, the Federal Circuit rejected a protest filed by Oracle that challenged the legality of the multi-billion dollar Defense Department JEDI Cloud solicitation. An overview of the key issues follows. THE SOLICITATION The DOD issued a solicitation known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Cloud procurement. The solicitation contemplated a single award for a ten-year IDIQ contract for the provision of enterprise-wide cloud computing services. The solicitation included several “gate” provisions that bidders needed to satisfy. The primary gate in

By Hon. Jack Delman Last week, the Federal Circuit rejected a protest filed by Oracle that challenged the legality of the multi-billion dollar Defense Department JEDI Cloud solicitation. An overview of the key issues follows. THE SOLICITATION The DOD issued a solicitation known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) Cloud procurement. The solicitation contemplated a single award for a ten-year IDIQ contract for the provision of enterprise-wide cloud computing services. The solicitation included several “gate” provisions that bidders needed to satisfy. The primary gate in

By Edward W. Bailey, A recent decision from the GAO serves as an important reminder to contractors that, while agencies typically have broad discretion in determining the scope of any corrective actions they take, contractors may nonetheless challenge an agency’s corrective action if its scope is unreasonably narrow. In Matter of: Peraton Inc., B-416916.8, Peraton challenged the State Department’s award of a task order to a competitor on a number of grounds including that the letters of commitment the awardee provided for its key personnel did not conform to the requirements of the solicitat

By Edward W. Bailey, A recent decision from the GAO serves as an important reminder to contractors that, while agencies typically have broad discretion in determining the scope of any corrective actions they take, contractors may nonetheless challenge an agency’s corrective action if its scope is unreasonably narrow. In Matter of: Peraton Inc., B-416916.8, Peraton challenged the State Department’s award of a task order to a competitor on a number of grounds including that the letters of commitment the awardee provided for its key personnel did not conform to the requirements of the solicitat

Written by: Heather Mims, Associate Attorney, Centre Law & Consulting Each year, the Small Business Administration (SBA) publishes an annual scorecard to assess how well federal agencies are performing against their small business and socio-economic prime contracting and subcontracting goals. In addition to reporting agency-specific progress, the scorecard provides accurate and transparent contracting data. The SBA works with each agency specifically to set their prime and subcontracting goals and then grades their performance in the resulting scorecard based upon these agreed upon goals

Written by: Heather Mims, Associate Attorney, Centre Law & Consulting Each year, the Small Business Administration (SBA) publishes an annual scorecard to assess how well federal agencies are performing against their small business and socio-economic prime contracting and subcontracting goals. In addition to reporting agency-specific progress, the scorecard provides accurate and transparent contracting data. The SBA works with each agency specifically to set their prime and subcontracting goals and then grades their performance in the resulting scorecard based upon these agreed upon goals

By David Warner, In XTec, Inc., B-418619 (July 2, 2020), the GAO rejected the incumbent contractor’s assertion that the Department of State erred in assessing technical weaknesses that were at odds with the agency’s purported familiarity with XTec’s solution given its performance of the incumbent contract. The GAO decision is a reminder for federal contractors suffering from “incumbent-itis” that agency knowledge of the contractor is no substitute for compliance with solicitation requirements and a well drafted proposal. The solicitation in XTec related to the development, deployment and ope

By David Warner, In XTec, Inc., B-418619 (July 2, 2020), the GAO rejected the incumbent contractor’s assertion that the Department of State erred in assessing technical weaknesses that were at odds with the agency’s purported familiarity with XTec’s solution given its performance of the incumbent contract. The GAO decision is a reminder for federal contractors suffering from “incumbent-itis” that agency knowledge of the contractor is no substitute for compliance with solicitation requirements and a well drafted proposal. The solicitation in XTec related to the development, deployment and ope

By JW Butler Effective August 1, 2020, the General Services Administration (GSA) has provided contractors the ability to update their offering classifications by adding subgroups for products and services under specific Special Item Numbers (SINs). Under the GSA MAS, SINs play a critical role in the organization of vendors and their offerings. SINs serve to clarify the product and services offered by specific vendors. Subgroups allow contractors to better classify where their offerings fit within those broadly defined SINs. The GSA is inviting contractors to self-identify applicable SIN sub

By JW Butler Effective August 1, 2020, the General Services Administration (GSA) has provided contractors the ability to update their offering classifications by adding subgroups for products and services under specific Special Item Numbers (SINs). Under the GSA MAS, SINs play a critical role in the organization of vendors and their offerings. SINs serve to clarify the product and services offered by specific vendors. Subgroups allow contractors to better classify where their offerings fit within those broadly defined SINs. The GSA is inviting contractors to self-identify applicable SIN sub

Written by: Heather Mims, Associate Attorney, Centre Law & Consulting As we’ve previously written, COVID-19 funding for government contractors is fraught with enforcement and audit risks (while False Claims Act penalties continue to increase). To document this funding, the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) recently issued a report to Congress titled COVID-19: Opportunities to Improve Federal Response and Recovery Efforts. In the Report, the GAO gathered available obligation and expenditure data from various federal agencies and found a staggering total of $1.3 trillion in obligatio

Written by: Heather Mims, Associate Attorney, Centre Law & Consulting As we’ve previously written, COVID-19 funding for government contractors is fraught with enforcement and audit risks (while False Claims Act penalties continue to increase). To document this funding, the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) recently issued a report to Congress titled COVID-19: Opportunities to Improve Federal Response and Recovery Efforts. In the Report, the GAO gathered available obligation and expenditure data from various federal agencies and found a staggering total of $1.3 trillion in obligatio

By Barbara Kinosky, I finally retrieved my dry cleaning that I had deposited at the cleaners in March. Then Virginia shut down with my dry cleaning hostage in a remote dry cleaning storage location. I was reunited with my clothing this month, but my suit looked like an artifact from another era. It was like retrieving a time capsule of clothing that contained zippers and buttons and had “dry clean only” labels. There were no elastics of any kind. What will the business future look like? Will men ever wear ties again or will those become the attire of yesteryear? I went into my office fo

Written by: Barbara Kinosky, Managing Partner, Centre Law & Consulting I finally retrieved my dry cleaning that I had deposited at the cleaners in March. Then Virginia shut down with my dry cleaning hostage in a remote dry cleaning storage location. I was reunited with my clothing this month, but my suit looked like an artifact from another era. It was like retrieving a time capsule of clothing that contained zippers and buttons and had “dry clean only” labels. There were no elastics of any kind. What will the business future look like? Will men ever wear ties again or will those bec

By JW Butler Section 889 legislation initially introduced as a part of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has now been released in Part A and Part B. Both parts have been incorporated into the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) as FAR subpart 4.21 to combat national security and intellectual property threats against the United States. This legislation will impact any company doing business that uses equipment or services in their day-to-day operations from five specifically named companies, as they will no longer be able to sell any products or services to t