SmallGovCon Week in Review: July 10-14, 2023

Happy Friday! Our SmallGovCon authors and attorneys were busy this week. Aside from our normal updates, Nicole Pottroff and John Holtz presented a 3-Part Series for Govology, this week, on compliant and effective teaming agreements, joint ventures and subcontracts. This is always a popular webinar and there was a lot of great information shared as well as a lot of great questions. If you were not able to attend, please check out Govology’s upcoming webinar events at Govology.com. It’s a wonderful source of helpful information for federal government contractors.

This week in federal government contracting, CIO-SP4 is going back to the drawing board and an update on Alliant 3.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: May 15-19, 2023

It’s Friday, once again, and time for another week in review. We hope you had a great week. This week in federal government contracting news there were several articles on the VA electronic health records contract, the debt talks, as well as plenty of examples of why one should never try to pull one over on the federal government without facing the consequences. Enjoy your weekend!

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8(a) Participants to Receive One-Year Extension Through COVID-19 Bill

Update: The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 was passed on December 27, 2020. The NDAA was passed on January 1, 2021.

Congress has included in the new COVID-19 relief bill a one-year extension of the term for participation in the 8(a) Program. Under the provision, any small business concern participating in the 8(a) program on or before September 9, 2020 may “elect to extend such participation by a period of 1 year”.  This is good news, especially for those concerns in their last year of viability in the 8(a) program who may have felt shortchanged from COVID’s effects on the economy.

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What Happens When a Company Takes a PPP Loan it Doesn’t Need?

As we said in this space a few days ago, the SBA has put in place a safe harbor until May 14 for companies to return Paycheck Protection Program loan money if they find they don’t need it. No harm, no foul.

So, what happens if they don’t need it, but don’t return it? Maybe Clubber Lang said it best.

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Legislative Updates: Small Business Bills in the House (& Senate)!

Just like the elves in Santa’s workshop, Congress has been busy this winter season! Among the chaos, three bills with the potential to impact small business Federal government contractors have been percolating. The first and third bill propose amendments to laws already in place covering surviving spouses of SDVOSB owners and the Department of Homeland Security’s Mentor-Protege Program, while the second bill proposes an entirely new SBA program for small businesses geared toward promoting research and development efforts.

Here’s our brief summary of each bill:

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2020 NDAA to Create New Acquisition Pathways for DOD Software Contracts

The proposed National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2020 introduces new pathways for certain Department of Defense software acquisitions. These proposed software acquisition pathways would be separate from the traditional Department of Defense acquisitions process, and contain sweeping streamlining functions, especially within their supervisory structure. 

If passed, this new pathway could have a significant effect on how defense agencies acquire software. 

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UPDATE: Bill to Change Size Measurement Term from Three to Five Years Becomes Law

You probably know this already—from what we can tell word is spreading like wildfire—but Monday (Dec. 17, 2018) the president signed the “Small Business Runway Extension Act of 2018” into law. 

This changes the period of time the U.S. Small Business Administration uses to measure a business’s size in revenue-based size standards from three years to five years. The law doesn’t say that there will be a period of implementation, so it’s reasonably safe to assume the effect is immediate. 

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