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V. David Zvenyach

The Competition Effect

A recurring theme in innovation-policy debates is whether the government should "pick winners and losers" or not. On one side of the debate, folks will argue that market forces are better at encouraging innovation. On the other side of the debate, folks will argue that the government has

The government has (size) standards

Close your eyes, imagine you're not the sort of person who reads newsletters about government contracts, and ask yourself "how big can a business be before it's no longer considered a small business?" It turns out that this is a really complicated question in

Just the cost of government business

From an industry-risk perspective, the government-contracts industry is sort of a mixed bag. On one hand, the business of government contracting is not especially volatile. Spending levels are pretty predictable, and generally resistant to market forces. For example, even though the tech industry is in the midst of a "

Apparently revolving doors can sometimes be locked?

A great parlor game to play in Beltway circles is to speculate which large government contractor a former federal official will work for when they leave public service. The "revolving door" is pretty common at all levels.[1] There are a number of legitimate and illegitimate reasons (not

The Unhappy Goldilocks Doctrine

A recurring joke in government contracting is that the government often tells people to stay tuned about something that they're interested in, publishes requests for feedback on a Friday before a three-day weekend, and then wants answers next Tuesday morning. The dark version of the recurring joke is

Bidding can be counterintuitive

You know a bid protest is going to be a fun read when the discussion section opens with: "As an initial matter, both protesters argued that BAH could not have submitted a proposal meriting a technical factor rating of outstanding given BAH’s alleged poor performance as the incumbent.

Keeping track of stuff can be hard

The US government — by virtue of being a large bureaucracy that builds and buys stuff — owns stuff. And when the US government contracts with contractors to do things, the US government sometimes gives those contractors the government's stuff so that the contractors can do things for the government.

X-ray vision is 2020

A thing I love about federal contracting is that the government buys all kinds of things in unusual situations. Like this: The United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan (embassy), provided medical support to its personnel through an in-house medical clinic. In June 2021, the embassy’s procurement office issued a

K Street needs more chill

A fun thing about large government contractors is that their overhead costs often include things like paying for lobbyists and then they get to charge the government for those overhead costs. A lot of the time these overhead costs are effectively hidden from the government, wrapped into firm-fixed prices or

I'd like it to be rare, please

Suppose you really like to eat, I dunno, ice cream. You maybe have a couple of different brands of ice cream that you choose from time to time, but chances are you really like one brand in particular. If that brand got acquired by another company, you'd probably