Happy Friday! It’s been another eventful stretch across the federal landscape, as agencies continue navigating everything from sweeping acquisition updates to the lingering aftershocks of the longest government shutdown on record. In other news, SBA has cleared its VetCert backlog for SDVOSB companies. Check out the articles below for the full rundown and enjoy your weekend!
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I recently attended the NAPEX Fall conference in DC this past week. I was able to speak on the topic of The FAR Overhaul and Legal Updates for 2025. It was a great presentation with some insightful questions. Thanks to all the wonderful Apex Accelerator folks for saying hi to me.
It’s Friday and time for another week in review. This week was full of updates about the effects of the government shutdown. In other news, OPM is pushing to boost tech expertise and the DoD is looking to streamline acquisitions and hear from small businesses ahead of new cybersecurity standards (CMMC). You can read more about these stories and other federal government contracting developments in the articles below.
Have a great weekend.
Continue readingAs discussed in a previous post on SmallGovCon, the Department of Transportation (DOT) recently issued a interim final rule removing certain presumptions of disadvantage from its eligibility requirements for the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program. As part of that change, DBE Program participants and applicants will have to submit new narratives discussing their social disadvantage. The DOT has released further guidance on the changes felt by the interim final rule, including impacts on the disadvantage narrative and current contracts.
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In this webinar, hosted by the El Paso Texas APEX Accelerators, government contracting attorneys and authors Shane McCall and John Holtz will discuss the most important legal developments for federal contractors in 2025. Specifically, they will discuss the many FAR changes, important new small business rules and processing for various SBA certifications, recent cases pertinent to federal contractors, and more. This presentation will help federal contractors stay up to date on current federal regulatory and legal changes. We hope you will join us!
Please register: Here
Happy Halloween! We hope you have the candy purchased and are ready for the trick or treaters.
And speaking of scary things, another week of the government shutdown which is creating a lot of uncertainty about when agreement can be reached. One data point: all shut downs in the past have ended. But these stories illustrate how it has created a ripple effect for federal contractors and government personnel.
Our very own SmallGovCon contributor, Nicole Pottroff, was interviewed about the SBA’s 8(a) Program’s internal review and the importance of compliance. You can read that article in full below. Have a great weekend and enjoy the spooky visitors this evening.
Continue readingOn September 10, 2025, the Department of Defense (As all the documents we address use the Department of Defense naming, we will go by that to prevent confusion.) (DoD) implemented the acquisition rules for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program at DFARS subpart 204.75. This follows the federal government’s institution of the CMMC program last year (We explored this a bit with a review of the proposed rules some time before that and noted that initial rules have been in place since 2020.) These rules are present at 32 C.F.R. Part 170. Despite these rules having now been in place for a little while, the scope and complexity of the CMMC program can nonetheless be daunting for contractors to deal with. In this first in a series of posts, we will explore the basics of the CMMC program and what it means for you.
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October and November always seem to be a popular conference season in the federal contracting world. Last week attorney-author Greg Weber was in Oklahoma. This week saw Nicole Pottroff visit the GovCon Kansas City 2025 to present on the topic of the Top 21 Legal Mistakes in Federal Government Contracting. It was a great event with a lot of enthusiastic attendees and interesting questions. Thanks to the organizers including the Missouri APEX Accelerator for inviting us to present!
While news of the shutdown is high on the list of articles this week, there were also updates on CMMC, federal hiring and workforce, and a spotlight on the 8(a) Program.
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