Two Missouri men have been indicted for allegedly perpetrating an SDVOSB “rent-a-vet” scheme to fraudulently obtain 20 contracts totaling more than $13.8 million.
According to a Department of Justice press release, the veteran in question nominally served as the company’s President, but did not control the company’s strategic decisions or day-to-day management–in fact, the veteran apparently was working full-time for the DoD instead of managing the SDVOSB.
There is a lot of excitement brewing here in our neck of the woods. We are cautiously awaiting a potential ice storm that is expected to hit town today and roll through the weekend, our Kansas Jayhawks are in action against Oklahoma State on Saturday and a win will likely seal them as the new number 1 seed in the polls and of course the Kansas City Chiefs have their AFC divisional round game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday. I’m no fan of cold weather, so I’ll be watching the Jayhawks from Allen Fieldhouse and the Chiefs-Steelers game from the comfort of my living room.
While we await “icemaggedon” here in Kansas, it’s time for the SmallGovCon Week In Review. This week’s government contracting news includes three updates to the FAR affecting, a new survey shows that small businesses are spending more time and money trying to win contracts, a federal court rules that a large prime’s subcontracting plan was exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, and more.
The government’s policy encouraging prompt payment to small business subcontractors has been extended to December 31, 2017.
In a Memorandum issued on January 11, 2017 by the Office of Management and Budget, OMB Director Shaun Donovan ordered that the popular policy be extended to the end of the year, and provided additional direction to agencies regarding their quarterly reports on implementing the accelerated payment policies.
An agency’s decision to award a contract as an 8(a) sole source is a “business decision” for which the agency has broad discretion–and a potential protester challenging the agency’s use of that discretion will have an uphill battle.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO confirmed that government officials are presumed to act in good faith, and that the presumption extends to the decision to award an 8(a) sole source contract instead of competing the work in question.
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.
President Obama signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act into law on December 23, 2016. As is often the case, the NDAA included many changes affecting government contractors.
Here at SmallGovCon, my colleagues and I have been following the 2017 NDAA closely. Here’s a roundup of all 16 posts we’ve written about the government contracting provisions of the 2017 NDAA.
An offeror’s proposal was properly rejected as late because the proposal exceeded the agency’s email file size limit.
In a recent bid protest decision highlighting the importance of not submitting electronic proposals at the last minute, the GAO held that a small business’s proposal was late because the emails transmitting the proposal exceeded 10 MB–even though the solicitation didn’t mention a file size limit.