COVID-19 Has Encouraged Procurement and Contracting Reform

Source: governmentciomedia.com

The demands of responding to COVID-19 has encouraged reforms in federal procurement. This has been especially pronounced in the government’s expansion of remote network access to accommodate a dispersed workforce.

Speaking at the 2021 AFCEA Health IT Acquisition & Public Health forum, representatives from across the federal government outlined how their agencies have helped streamline the acquisitions process and opened the competitive space to smaller and mid-sized firms in order to facilitate IT development.

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Are You a Government Contractor Seeking PPP Loan Forgiveness? Be Careful What You Wish For!

Source: lexology.com

Anyone engaged in government contracting work knows that it is very different from working in the private sector. The CARES Act passed in March of last year illustrates this point. For most private sector companies, loans received under the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) were eligible to be fully forgiven and treated—essentially—like grants. There was no obligation on private sector businesses to refund these loans to the government. The whole purpose of the PPP program was to help businesses keep their doors open and their employees working during a global pandemic. Requiring private businesses to repay those loans would have defeated that purpose.

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GSA, DHS making big push to address shortcomings in contractor assessments

Source: federalnewsnetwork.com

If the federal acquisition workforce is ever going to make contractor evaluations meaningful, it’s going to happen this year.

The General Services Administration and Department of Homeland Security are offering two different, but equally important initiatives that either will prove that the federal community cares about past performance as a key evaluation factor or has been playing lip service to the issue since 2009.

Over the past 11 years, successive memos from the Office of Federal Procurement Policy encouraging agencies to do more research and evaluation of contractor performance on contracts have had little impact.

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