The draft 2020 National Defense Authorization Act includes a number of provisions that will affect government contractors, especially small business contractors, including the three provisions featured in this post. Read on for how the 2020 draft NDAA impacts annual small business reporting by the SBA, cybersecurity training for small businesses, and evaluation of past performance to focus on workforce development.
Cybersecurity Assistance
Another proposed section provides additional
The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act put a new twist on potential costs a contractor may incur in filing a GAO bid protest.
While many federal contractors are familiar with the costs arising from a GAO protest, including their attorneys’ fees and consultant and expert witness fees, and some are lucky enough to recoup such costs upon GAO’s sustainment of a protest, under the 2018 NDAA, some large DoD contractors may also be required to reimburse DoD for costs incurred in defending protest
Almost a year ago, we wrote of a memorandum from the Office of Federal Procurement Policy urging agencies to strengthen the debriefing process. OFPP’s rationale was simple: because effective debriefings tend to reduce the number of protests, agencies should be inclined to enhance the debriefing process.
Congress seems to have taken note: the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Department of Defense to make significant improvements to the debriefing process. That said, those im
The HUBZone program has received its fair share of coverage on our blog, from recommended changes in the 35% employee-location requirement to SBA regulatory updates to the program. Well, the HUBZone program is once again undergoing some changes thanks to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act–but note that these changes are not effective until January 1, 2020.
These changes include a requirement for an improved online mapping tool, a mandate that HUBZone verifications be processed in 60 da
The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has generated lots of headlines regarding the so-called “Amazon amendment” and the Act’s prohibition on the Russian IT company Kaspersky Labs products. But gone under reported is a huge change to how the government makes small purchases.
The 2018 NDAA, signed by President Donald Trump on December 12, increases the standard micro-purchase threshold applicable to civilian agencies from $3,000 to $10,000. Last year, the NDAA increased the Departme
In 2017, Congress placed limits on the utilization of Lowest-Price Technically-Acceptable procurement procedures in Department of Defense acquisitions.
The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act continues this trend by completely prohibiting the use of LPTA procedures for certain major defense acquisition programs.
As we covered last year, the 2017 NDAA included a presumption against the use of LPTA procedures for DoD procurements unless certain criteria were met. The 2017 NDAA also cautioned
The holiday season is upon us, time for cherished traditions. If you’re anything like us at Koprince Law, one of these traditions is reviewing the GAO’s annual bid protest report.
The overall picture I got from the report, while perhaps not the best clickbait, is that GAO bid protest figures have remained remarkably steady over the past few years. As it has been for the last few years, close to 50% of protests succeed. This stability is a story worth repeating.
The GAO Bid Protest Annual Rep
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, if signed into law, includes a few changes designed to help small business subcontractors. Among those changes, the bill, which has recently been approved by both the House and Senate, includes language designed to help ensure that large prime contractors comply with the Small Business Act’s “good faith” requirement to meet their small business subcontracting goals.
Section 1821 of the 2017 NDAA is called “Good Faith in Subcontracting,” and is anot
The 2017 NDAA is full of important changes that will affect federal contracting going forward. As Steve wrote about earlier this week, some of these changes relate to government contracting programs (like the SDVOSB program). Still others relate to how the government actually procures goods and services.
One of these important changes severely limits the use of lowest-price technically-acceptable (“LPTA”) evaluations in Department of Defense procurements. Following the change, “best value” trad
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act restores the GAO’s recently-expired jurisdiction to hear protests of civilian task and delivery orders valued in excess of $10 million.
The 2017 NDAA also continues to allow the GAO to hear protests of DoD task and delivery orders–but raises the jurisdictional threshold to $25 million.
As we blogged about in November, the GAO’s authority to hear bid protests in connection with civilian task and delivery orders expired on September 30, 2016. Even th
Congress is taking a hard look at how to promote increased competition in federal contracting.
Among the provisions in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act is a requirement for the GAO to prepare a report on how the DoD enters into and uses indefinite delivery contracts–and recommendations for changes to promote competition with respect to indefinite delivery contracts.
Section 886 of the 2017 NDAA calls for the GAO to study indefinite delivery contracts entered into by the DoD in Fisca
We’ve been covering many of the important changes to federal contracting promised as a result of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. But among the most consequential might be a provision that requires DoD to compile a report that analyzes the impacts of the current bid protest system on DoD acquistions. This report could ultimately form the basis for potential significant changes to the protest system in future years.
As it was originally working through Congress, some versions of th
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act will require the GAO to issue a report about the number and types of contracts the Department of Defense awarded to minority-owned and women-owned businesses during fiscal years 2010 to 2015.
If the 2017 NDAA is signed into law, the GAO would be required to submit its report within one year of the statute’s enactment.
The 2017 NDAA requires the GAO to identify minority-owned and women-owned businesses using the categories identified in the Federal
A small but interesting change in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act will require the DoD to obtain an appropriate justification and approval (“J&A”) before restricting any competition to a particular brand name, or imposing similar restrictions.
In adopting this change, Congress doesn’t mince words, using the term “Anti-competitive Specifications” to refer to instances in which competitions are restricted to particular brand names without appropriate justification.
Section 888
Under the Competition in Contracting Act, the Government Accountability Office is required to issue an annual report to Congress that summarizes the “most prevalent grounds” of sustained protests, identifies the instances in which GAO was not able to decide a protest within its 100-day deadline, and list any protest where the agency did not follow GAO’s recommendations.
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act doubles down on this first requirement: it mandates that GAO provide Congress with
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act will increase the DoD’s micro-purchase threshold to $5,000.
Under the conference bill recently approved by both House and Senate, the DoD’s micro-purchase threshold will be $1,500 greater than the standard micro-purchase threshold applicable to civilian agencies.
A micro-purchase is an acquisition by the government of supplies or services that, because the aggregate is below a certain price, allows the government to use simplified acquisition proce
Coming as welcome news for collaborative R&D, the 2017 NDAA will extend the life of the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.
The conference version of the bill, which seems likely to be on the President’s desk in short order, contains provisions extending both programs for five years.
SBIR and STTR are unique research, development, and commercialization programs overseen by the SBA. Each program calls for a three-phase process. In the first
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act establishes a preference for the DoD to use fixed-price contracts, and will require executive approval of cost reimbursement procedures for certain high-dollar procurements.
Section 829 of the 2017 NDAA is titled, quite simply, “Preference for Fixed-Price Contracts.” Section 829 specifies that, within 180 days after the 2017 NDAA is enacted, the DFARS are to be revised to establish a preference for fixed-price contracts (including fixed-price incent
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act gives certain small subcontractors a new tool to request past performance ratings from the government,
If the pilot program works as intended, it may ultimately improve those subcontractors’ competitiveness for prime contract bids, for which a documented history of past performance is often critical.
For small contractors looking to break into the federal marketplace, a lack of past performance ratings can be a major problem. Without government pas
Good news for small business looking to break into Department of Defense contracting: the 2017 NDAA establishes a new prototyping pilot program for small businesses and nontraditional defense contractors to develop new and innovative technologies.
The DoD is putting its money where its mouth is: the new pilot program is funded with $250 million from the rapid prototyping fund established by last year’s NDAA.
The new pilot program is officially called the “Nontraditional and Small Contractor
Citing an abuse of the protest process, the GAO has suspended a company’s right to file bid protests for a period of one year.
The GAO’s unusual action was taken after the contractor in question filed 150 bid protests in the ongoing fiscal year alone, most of which have been dismissed for technical reasons. The GAO’s decision also cites “baseless accusations” made by the protester, including accusing GAO officials of being “white collar criminals” and asserting that “various federal officials
In August, I wrote about a highly unusual case in which a company–which had filed 150 protests in the current fiscal year–was suspended from filing GAO bid protests for one year. I recently spoke with Tom Temin on his radio show Federal Drive to talk about GAO’s decision.
If you missed the live conversation, you can click here to listen to the recorded audio from Federal News Radio. And be sure to tune in to Federal Drive with Tom Temin, which airs from 6-10 a.m EST on 1500 AM in the Washingto
This is it: the 1,000th SmallGovCon post. And if you’re reading this, you are a big reason why we’ve hit such a major milestone in less than five years.
Thank you, SmallGovCon readers.
Before I launched SmallGovCon, I thought it would be a good idea to read a bunch of other legal blogs, just to get a sense of how others were doing it. A few hours in, and I was ready to beat my head against the nearest wall. While, in fairness, a few of the blogs were quite good, most of them were pretty d
Whether you are a small, medium or even a large contractor seeking to team with small businesses, this course will discuss the different regulations you must follow, the different small business programs set up by the SBA, the advantages and disadvantages of the JV & Mentor Protégé programs, plus other topics of interest. This live virtual event will be hosted by Larry Allen and Nicole Pottroff and Stephanie Ellis will be joining Larry for the afternoon session. We hope you will consider att
The SBA published its annual Government Wide Small Business Procurement Scorecard for fiscal year 2022, and it appears that nearly every type of small business set-aside by the SBA, with the continued exception for Woman-Owned Small Businesses and HUBZone businesses, either met or exceeded their goal. Overall, agencies exceeded their goals for the year, earning an overall score of “A” due to meeting the small business contracting goals with 104.05% of the total goal.
In case you have nev
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