Tag Archives: 2017 NDAA

Senate 2018 NDAA Re-Introduces Flawed GAO Bid Protest “Reforms”

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Last year, during consideration of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, the Senate proposed to “reform” the GAO bid protest process by forcing some unsuccessful protesters to pay the government’s costs, and (more controversially) by denying incumbent protesters profits on bridge contracts and extensions.

Congress ultimately chose not to implement these measures.  Instead, Congress called for an independent report on the effect of bid protests at DoD–a wise move, considering that major reforms to the protest process shouldn’t be undertaken without first seeing whether hard data shows that protests are harming the procurement process.

But now, six months before that report is due, the Senate has re-introduced its flawed bid protest proposals as part of the 2018 NDAA.

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DoD Micro-Purchase Increase Is Now In Effect

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The increase to DoD’s micro-purchase threshold mandated by the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act is now in effect.

A Class Deviation issued earlier this month provides, effective immediately, that the DoD micro-purchase threshold is $5,000 for many acquisitions.

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Trump: DoD Contracts Should Be Fixed-Price

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We previously have written about the trending preference toward fixed-price contracts, and away from cost reimbursement contracts, in defense procurements.  The Defense Department’s supplement to the FAR (known as DFARS), in fact, already includes restrictions on using cost-reimbursement or time and materials contracts.

Now the President has come out in favor of fixed-price defense contracting. In a Time Magazine article published today, President Trump signaled strong support for the fixed-price contracting preference, going so far as to “talk of his plans to renegotiate any future military contracts to make sure they have fixed prices.”

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GovCon Voices: The Good, the Bad and the Just Plain Ugly Changes That Almost Were!

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Having been a part of the federal contracting community for close to 30 years, I’ve seen quite a few changes in policy and process that have both improved and degraded the ability of small business concerns to participate as contractors and subcontractors. I’m not referring solely to changes where the language targeted small business, I’m also including those intending to change how business is done based on a specific commodity, contract cost type, procurement method, agency mission or government-wide initiative.

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Introducing GovCon Voices: A New SmallGovCon Feature

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In the nearly five years (and almost 1,000 posts) since SmallGovCon began publishing, we’ve grown from a single-author blog written by yours truly, to a multi-author website featuring regular contributions from my colleagues here at Koprince Law LLC.

Growing our authorship base has allowed SmallGovCon to bring our readers expanded content that would have been very difficult for me to manage alone–like the 16 posts we wrote on the 2017 NDAA in little over a month. But as we continue to grow, I think it’s important that we also offer our readers expanded perspectives, as well.  After all, we lawyers aren’t the only ones with interesting things to say about government contracting law.  That’s why I’m excited to announce our new feature, GovCon Voices.

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SBA To Provide Strategy For Small Businesses To Improve Cybersecurity

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By the middle of this year, the U.S. Small Business Administration should have a strategy in place to assist small businesses with cybersecurity.

The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act is chock full of interesting legal changes for government contractors, and although we have chronicled it in depth, that does not mean there is not necessarily more to be mined from the whopping 1,587-page legislation.

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SmallGovCon Weeks In Review: December 26, 2016 – January 6, 2017

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Happy New Year and welcome back to the SmallGovCon Week In Review. I hope that everyone had an enjoyable holiday season and is jumping full force into 2017. We bring you a double edition today, as we took a little time off from delivering you our weekly publication last week.

It may have been the holiday season, but it was still a busy two weeks of developments in the world of federal government contracting. In this week’s edition, the President has signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (click here for SmallGovCon‘s complete 2017 NDAA coverage), alleged procurement fraud results in a whopping $4.5 million settlement, President-elect Trump’s administration may prioritize Buy American policies, Guy Timberlake takes a look at how FY 2016 contracting dollars were obligated, and much more.

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