Hope everyone had a great holiday season! Now it’s time to get back to the routine. And for those of us in the northern parts of the county–a few more months to walk in a winter wonderland.

To avoid that post-holiday letdown, enjoy some of these federal contracting updates that have been rolling in since my last update. This week, there are interesting stories including the new SBA administrator being confirmed, Space Force seeking innovative tech solutions, and calls for federal purchasing to change more quickly.

As we roll through the holidays, I hope all of our readers are enjoying a wonderful holiday season with lots of good cheer. Lawrence recently got its first snow of the season. While it won’t stick around for Christmas, it provided for some great sledding opportunities and, perhaps even better, was mostly cleared up by the start of the work week.

This week also saw its fair share of news in the government contracting world, ranging from a warning from DOD that it is getting serious on protecting data, to a fraudulent scheme to capture $260 million in federal contracts, to a report that most agencies don’t use FedRAMP to authorize all cloud services.

It’s an exciting time in the federal contracting world. The House and Senate negotiators have resolved their differences on the 2020 NDAA and it should be passed soon. In addition to the article below, you can review our coverage on some of the major provisions that would affect contractors and we’ll also provide updates with any major changes coming out of the final version.

But that’s not the only news. There are are also updates on the flurry of recent SBA rule changes and a new SBA administrator, the DOD’s new cybersecurity model, and a security clearance loophole.

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.