SmallGovCon Week In Review: November 25 – December 6, 2019

The end of the year brings different traditions for different folks. Around these parts, Lawrence is celebrating its old fashioned Christmas Parade downtown. Old fashioned in this case means all horses and no motorized vehicles. It’s a fun event.

But for government contractors (and their lawyers), the end of the year is a great time to reflect on changes to the federal contracting legal landscape. In that vein, Public Contract’s (AKA Pub K) free Annual Review 2019 will take place via webcast on December 12 from 9 am to 4:30 pm. For those looking for some detailed discussion of government contracting issues over the past year from some seasoned presenters, this is the place.

Over the past couple weeks there has also been a lot of interesting updates in federal contracts, including a GAO report highlighting how lack of contractor ownership transparency can mask national security threats as well as other contractor scams, companies vying for the government e-commerce portals, and small contractors are struggling to meet cybersecurity standards. The GAO report will make for good reading as it has a lot of examples of ownership concerns for those looking to avoid fraud issues in government contracting.

Pub K’s Annual Review 2019. [pubkgroup]
What the federal cloud market could look like in 5 years. [federaltimes]
Congress passes deal to avert Thanksgiving government shutdown, but December shutdown looms. [militarytimes]
Frustrations grow with new Beta.Sam.gov. [washingtontechnology]
Amazon, Walmart, eBay Eye Potential $50B Market for Federal Online Purchases. [govconwire]
The US Defense Department lost $875 million to scams involving shell companies. [quartz]
OTA Prototyping Nearly Triples To $3.7B: GAO. [breakingdefense]
Google Cloud gets FedRAMP High authorization.[fedscoop]
Small Contractors Struggle to Meet Cyber Security Standards, Pentagon Finds. [govexec]
Grenade launcher firing pins lead to $1 million settlement against Capco. [gjsentinel]
Small Business Facts: Spotlight On Veteran-Owned Employer Businesses. [advocacy.sba.gov]
Is government’s disability procurement program eroding? [federaltimes]