It’s been a whirlwind of a week here in Kansas. I was fortunate enough to speak yesterday at the 16th Annual DOE Small Business Forum & Expo just up the road in Kansas City. My presentation focused on recent legal updates in federal contracting. It was a wonderful event put on by the Department of Energy and I was glad to be a part of it.

Before we sail off into the weekend, it’s time for the SmallGovCon Week In Review. This edition looks at a plan to make the Transactional Data Reporting rule voluntary, it appears LPTA is still as hated as ever, the federal government notched its 4th consecutive year of hitting the 23% small business contracting goal, and much more.

• Plans to make the mandatory Transnational Data Reporting rule into a voluntary requirement should be in place by summer. [ExecutiveGov]
• An interagency working group is about to turn the government’s concept of cloud computing on its head. [Federal News Radio]
• It turns out that lowest price technically acceptable is still a hated and despised way to run a procurement. [Washington Technology]
• A former defense contractor from Gig Harbor was sentenced to prison for tax fraud and ordered to pay over $40k in restitution. [Sky Valley Chronicle]
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is proposing to amend and update portions of its VA Acquisition Regulation. [Federal Register]
• Nextgov takes a look at how much agencies are actually spending on new contracts. [Nextgov]
• The SBA announced that the federal government reached its small business federal contracting goal for the fourth consecutive year. That’s great news–but not all is rosy, because the government missed the mark on its HUBZone and WOSB goals. [PR Newswire]
• A reform bill aimed at DoD’s ability to buy commercial products, contract audits and services acquisition will eventually be folded into the 2018 defense authorization bill. [Federal News Radio]