Happy Friday and we hope you are looking forward to a nice, long weekend. Monday, May 29 is Memorial Day and an official federal holiday, but do you know when and why it was established? If not, here’s a brief history lesson.

After the Civil war, in late 1860s, Americans in various towns and cities had begun holding springtime tributes to countless fallen soldiers. In 1966 the federal government declared Waterloo, New York as the official birthplace of Memorial Day because it hosted an annual, community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags. In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May and declared Memorial Day a federal holiday. So, now you have the background story of how this day was established. We hope you all have a wonderful weekend and here are some recent articles, including ones on a pending default, VA contracts, and small disadvantaged businsses.

• Biden-Harris Administration to Launch New Initiative to Increase Federal Contracting with Small Disadvantaged Businesses [SBA]
• U.S. Office of Personnel Management Employee Pleads Guilty to Conflict of Interest Violation [DoJ]
• DOJ IG Horowitz reviews a decade of Bureau of Prisons crisis oversight [FedNewsNet]
• Veterans Affairs: Observations on IT Contracting Trends and Management Oversight [GAO]
• OPM employee pleads guilty to steering millions in government contracts to family business [WTOP]
• US Department of Labor Asks Judge to Force Federal Contractor to Provide Documents, Info Needed for Equal Employment Opportunity Evaluation [DoL]
• WHAT THEY ARE SAYING: GSA’s Buy Clean Inflation Reduction Act Requirements for Low Carbon Construction Materials [GSA]
• Infant formula producers probed by FTC over bids for government contracts [FinTimes]
• A default isn’t a shutdown, but agencies could treat it that way [FeedNewsNet]
• F-35 Program: DOD Needs Better Accountability for Global Spare Parts and Reporting of Losses Worth Millions [GAO]
• CIO-SP4 protests move toward final decision [WashTech]
• A Government Accountability Office representative told House lawmakers that Veterans Affairs’ IT obligations have been “increasingly concentrated with a small group of vendors. [NextGov]
• How GSA’s Technology Transformation Services is Harnessing Change in Tech Modernization [GovConWire]

View the full article