V. David Zvenyach

A recurring theme in federal contracting policy is the important role that small businesses are expected to play. Perhaps the biggest role for small businesses is their participation in "set asides." The federal government sets annual small-business goals and, consistent with achieving those goals, agencies will limit competition

For a moment, pretend you're a member of Congress and you're thinking about federal procurement policy and economies of scale.[1] One story you might tell yourself is that the United States government is the largest purchaser in the world and, therefore, the government can wield

I suppose we could talk about the AI Executive Order, the draft AI procurement guidance, the draft FedRAMP guidance memorandum, and proposed cybersecurity FAR clauses and how the federal government appears to be experiencing a fair amount of cognitive dissonance around commercial cloud. That could be a good topic! Maybe

Based on an unscientific survey of headlines from Federal News Radio, when it comes to higher interest rates, folks in the government contracting community are primarily concerned with whether their TSPs balances have gone up. Rising interest rates have had a pretty profound on the US economy, though. Bond returns

We've talked about NAICS arbitrage before, which is fundamentally about taking advantage of differences in size standards for different industries to obtain small-business set asides. NAICS arbitrage exists because of the government's small-business policies. Without set-asides, there's no obvious market-driven reason for a company

Programming note—I will be off next week. Meanwhile, because we're in early October and the Major League postseason has arrived, consider re-reading about Smokey Bear Baseballs? And maybe tell a friend about GovContrActually? Either way, happy fiscal year 2024! What a week, huh? Last time I wrote,

As much as I love writing this newsletter every week, I am going to just put this out there: if you want to team with me to operate a snorkeling-equipment rental business at the Virgin Islands National Park, feel free to slide into my DMs. Running a business at a

Part 2 of the Federal Acquisition Regulations is where you can find the "definitions" of most things in federal procurement; it's an underappreciated part of the FAR! Some of the definitions in Part 2 are extremely specific things ("Energy-efficient standby power devices") and others

I am going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction: when NASA issues its long awaited solicitation for SEWP VI—a 10-year multiple-award contract (MAC) for value-added resellers—it will be protested. How about that for a bold prediction? Last week, NASA issued a draft of

A stated goal of the US procurement system is to encourage small businesses to sell to the government. Many efforts support that goal. For example, the federal government sponsors "APEX Accelerators" to provide technical assistance to small businesses that are trying to win government contracts.[1] Or, as