Law to Create One Stop Shop for Small Businesses Questions

In late 2022, Congress passed and the President signed a law that aims to make it easier for Small Business Contractors to track down small business compliance information for the wide range of agencies involved in government contracting, that are currently housed somewhere within each specific agency’s website. In this post, SmallGovCon reviews this law, and through it, can examine with our readers where you can currently find the many resources available for small business issues at federal agencies. While these small business offices may not be able to solve all your problems as a federal contractor, a free resource is always good to have.

Editor’s Note: the website is up and running here.

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Year in Review: Top SmallGovCon Posts of 2022

Happy New Year, Readers! Hope everyone is off to a great start in 2023. As we have done in the past, we want to take a step back and revisit those blog posts from 2022 that were the most popular. Below, we summarize the blogs written in 2022 that were the most popular as well as the perennial favorites from years past that were the most popular in 2022. It’s a good chance to look back on the important articles from 2022, and those topics of continuing interest to federal contractors.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: January 9-13, 2023

Happy Friday, Readers! Now that the holidays are over, we are really enjoying the NFL Playoffs and rooting for our Kansas City Chiefs. There’s never a dull moment when Patrick Mahomes is on the field! Our fingers are crossed that the team can get to another Super Bowl.

There was a lot of activity in federal government contracting this week and it seems that contract opportunities are really increasing. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) began accepting applications through the Veteran Small Business Certification (VetCert) program to expanding access to resources for Veterans and other underserved populations. You can read the full press release in the article below as well as other noteworthy news articles that we have included. Enjoy the weekend!

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Webinar Event: Buy American Act & Trade Agreements, January 19, 2023, 1-2:00 PM CST

The Texas South-West Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network is hosting this upcoming, informative webinar on the Buy American Act, presented by me and John Holtz. The Buy American Act permits agencies to buy foreign end products only under certain exceptions, such as when domestic items are not available at a reasonable cost. Further, U.S. trade agreements waive the Buy American restrictions for certain products.

Please join us to learn more about these rules to include the recent updates. You can register here.

GAO: Misrepresentation on Key Person Availability Sinks Proposal

Agencies rely on the representations made by offerors in their proposals to determine how capable each offeror is. In many cases, key personnel are so vital to an offeror’s chance of success that any change to the key personnel must be approved by the agency prior to such a change taking place. Logic follows that the risk of losing a possible award outweighs any benefit that may be reaped from stretching the truth. Nonetheless, from time to time an offeror will decide to give it a try, hoping that any inaccuracies will be overlooked, or will simply unintentionally misrepresent a detail. But, as one offeror learned, the possibility of such inaccuracies being discovered is high, and the end result is far from ideal.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: January 2-6, 2023

Happy New Year! We hope you were able to enjoy the holidays with friends and family and are now ready to jump into 2023. A recent cold front has moved out of our area, and I think I speak for everyone here when I say we are grateful to get back to our normal temperatures.

There was a lot of activity in the federal government contracting arena this week. Below are some articles that we think are noteworthy. Enjoy your weekend.

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SBA: NAICS Code Must Match the Work Sought, not the Offeror’s Work

We here at SmallGovCon like to spend our free time pondering the intricacies around how and why certain NAICS codes are assigned to the myriad of contracting opportunities posted every day. But we realize others may not have the same appetite for the intricacies of Federal Contracting as us. Luckily, the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) recently issued a great roadmap for understanding NAICS code assignments in a NAICS code appeal decision, which serves as a great refresher for how NAICS codes are applied to a procurement.

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