The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act will require the GAO to issue a report about the number and types of contracts the Department of Defense awarded to minority-owned and women-owned businesses during fiscal years 2010 to 2015.
If the 2017 NDAA is signed into law, the GAO would be required to submit its report within one year of the statute’s enactment.
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, if signed into law, includes a few changes designed to help small business subcontractors. Among those changes, the bill, which has recently been approved by both the House and Senate, includes language designed to help ensure that large prime contractors comply with the Small Business Act’s “good faith” requirement to meet their small business subcontracting goals.
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act will increase the DoD’s micro-purchase threshold to $5,000.
Under the conference bill recently approved by both House and Senate, the DoD’s micro-purchase threshold will be $1,500 greater than the standard micro-purchase threshold applicable to civilian agencies.
Good news for small business looking to break into Department of Defense contracting: the 2017 NDAA establishes a new prototyping pilot program for small businesses and nontraditional defense contractors to develop new and innovative technologies.
The DoD is putting its money where its mouth is: the new pilot program is funded with $250 million from the rapid prototyping fund established by last year’s NDAA.
Coming as welcome news for collaborative R&D, the 2017 NDAA will extend the life of the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.
The conference version of the bill, which seems likely to be on the President’s desk in short order, contains provisions extending both programs for five years.
The 2017 NDAA is full of important changes that will affect federal contracting going forward. As Steve wrote about earlier this week, some of these changes relate to government contracting programs (like the SDVOSB program). Still others relate to how the government actually procures goods and services.
One of these important changes severely limits the use of lowest-price technically-acceptable (“LPTA”) evaluations in Department of Defense procurements. Following the change, “best value” tradeoffs will be prioritized for DoD acquisitions. This post will briefly examine when LPTA procurements will and won’t be allowed under the 2017 NDAA.
As previously foreshadowed and discussed in depth, October 1, 2016, marked the date in which unsuccessful offerors lost the ability to challenge most task order awards issued by civilian agencies.
Although the GAO remains able to hear protests relating to DoD task orders exceeding $10 million, two recent GAO decisions impose an important limitation: GAO does not have jurisdiction to consider awards issued by DoD under a multiple-award contract operated by a civilian agency.