The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are actively monitoring federal contractors, especially defense contractors, for merger and acquisition activity in order to ensure that the defense industrial base remains diverse and competition remains high.  According to Federal News Radio the two agencies released a joint statement April 12th “reaffirming the importance of preserving competition in the defense industry.”  “In light of Read more

Think your company image is above reproach?  Think again.  As the US Presidential race has shown, it’s open season on big business from at least some quarters. How your firm is perceived can change rapidly and have little to do with your actual performance.  This is especially true for government contractors who work in a politically charged business Read more

Companies with less than two years of business experience may now have an easier time obtaining a GSA IT 70 Schedule.  Other firms may more clearly understand the process and the time it will take them to get a 70 contract.  This is all due to GSA’s new “plain language” initiative designed to make it easier to obtain or modify IT 70 Schedule agreements.  The initiative breaks down the Schedule process into three categories:  “Get Ready,” Assemble Your Offer”, and “Finalize Your Offer”.  Each category has specific steps to take that are accompanied by icons describing how much time each should take, the amount of paperwork involved, and other information.  If Read more

Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Anne Rung clearly supports further contract consolidation as part of her agency’s Category Management (CM) program.  Such actions would be consistent with recent OMB directives on buying laptops, desktops, software and, most recently, mobile phones. When asked during a Bloomberg Government webinar last week whether any formal move was planned to substantially cull the number of existing contracts, Rung said only that there was no drive to require all federal IT buyers to use Read more

New reader F. Valli writes, “We just found out our subcontractor has been supporting our contract with beauty school dropouts, not college graduates, as required.  Our SVP doesn’t want to talk about it, the client doesn’t know about it, and we’ve been told not discuss it.  Are we at risk?”  The classic “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” approach is certainly tempting, F., but yes, your company is at risk.  You know that your subcontractor is in violation of its contract with you and that, in turn, you’re in violation of your contract with the government. Read more