Year in Review: Top SmallGovCon Posts of 2023

Happy New Year to our SmallGovCon readers! While we have already posted some updates from 2024, it’s a good time to reflect on the important posts from 2023.

This post revisits those blog posts from 2023 that were the most popular. Below, we summarize the blogs written in 2023 that were the most popular as well as the perennial favorites from years past that were the most viewed in 2023. It’s a good chance to look back on the important articles from 2023, and those topics of continuing interest to federal contractors.

Here are the top 10 blog posts that were posted in 2023. As usual, our readers were interested in changes to SBA’s rules, including changes to the 8(a) Program and the social disadvantage requirement, as well as our Back to Basics series focusing on issues such as teaming agreements, debriefings, and SAM registration.

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Room for Improvement: Statistics Suggest It is Unclear if Large Businesses are Meeting Small Business Subcontracting Goals.

Just as agencies have established goals to award a certain percentage of their procurements to small businesses and businesses participating in socio-economic programs like the 8(a) Program, large business contractors must establish goals to include small business subcontractors in their pool of subcontractors for unrestricted awards over the applicable threshold in FAR 19.702 ($750,000 for most contracts, $1.5 million for construction contracts). While the specific goal will vary with each contract (or in some cases may be on a company-wide basis), it is rare for a contracting officer to find a large business hasn’t met the given goal. However, an investigation by GAO indicates that large business contractors aren’t meeting their small business subcontracting goals as often as the government would hope. Let’s take a deeper look at these findings.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: November 13-17, 2023

Happy Friday! Next week is Thanksgiving and we want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support of SmallGovCon. We always strive to provide helpful content and we appreciate all the wonderful feedback that we have received from our readers. We hope you have a great Thanksgiving and are able to spend some time with friends and family.

This week in federal government contracting news include a plan to fund the government (hear that one before?), AI and its effect on government, and new GSA acquisitions.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: August 14-18, 2023

Happy Friday! School started this week and I’m not sure who was more excited, the kids or the parents? Seems like the summer school break flew by. It’s really fun to see all those first day of school photos that the parents are posting.

Here in Lawrence, Kansas the university students are also back in town and the energy level is always palpable as the semester is starting. We hope you had a nice summer and were able to get out and enjoy a little family time, prior to the start of the school year. Enjoy the weekend!

And now, the news in federal government contracting, as the fiscal year comes to a close, there are updates on some big MACs, government IT and cybersecurity, and new DOL regulations.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: August 7-11, 2023

Hello, Readers! Many small business contractors and agency personnel are paying close attention to the fallout from the recent court decision on the 8(a) Program, as shown in this week’s articles. For an explanation of the decision, see the post from John Holtz, while Nicole Pottroff has explained SBA’s pause on taking current 8(a) Program applications. Another big story was DOL’s new rules.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend and please refer to our most recent blog posts for additional information on federal government contracting matters.

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Clock Now Ticking on Federal Contractor TikTok Ban

Federal contractors, be sure to ask your kids or a young person what TikTok is (if you don’t already know), because those providing services to the federal government now have to take steps to ban it from employee’s devices in certain situations. A recent FAR rule has now implemented Congress’s ban on use of TikTok on government devices.

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Limitations on Subcontracting: Partial Set Asides

Subcontracting is a hot topic in the federal government contracting world. Large businesses placing bids on federal procurements are often required to have a small business subcontracting plan, while small businesses are limited to exactly how much work they can subcontract out. The FAR and SBA rules contain the details relevant to small businesses’ limitations on subcontracting. These regulations are, in general, pretty straightforward. Well, at least when it comes to total small business set asides for one specific type of work. Further, there are a ton of resources available to help small business federal contractors understand these limits. Just googling “limitations on subcontracting” comes up with webinars, blogs, federal government sites, and even YouTube videos on the topic, but most only focus on the more general limitations. There aren’t nearly as many resources that take on the topic of partial set asides, but these limitations are important as well. In this post, I am going to walk you through how these limitations apply to partial set asides to show that contracts partially set aside for small businesses are not nearly as intimidating as they may seem.

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