Government Contracting Blog

In the near future, many GSA Schedule holders will need to add another acronym to their vocabulary of federal contracting terms, TDR. TDR, which stands for Transactional Data Reporting, started as a pilot program in 2016, and is finally rolling out to all Schedule holders. As of MAS Solicitation Refresh #28, TDR became mandatory for any Schedule holder with a TDR-eligible Special Item Number (SIN).

Earlier this year, GSA released cybersecurity requirements that mimic the Department of Defense’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). The “IT Security Procedural Guide”, or more formally known as CIO-IT Security 21-112, establishes a new framework of security requirements and privacy controls for contractors who deal with Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in nonfederal systems. Since this requirement was rolled out quickly and quietly without a formal announcement, some contractors may not be aware of the change. You may be wondering if this applies to your company or affects your contract. We’ll cover everything you need to know below.

If you’ve made the decision to pursue a GSA Schedule contract, one of the first choices you will need to make is whether to go it alone or hire a GSA consultant to help. At first, your instinct might be to save money and handle it internally because you may have a sales or marketing team that deals with your commercial sales. However, it's important to remember that the government marketplace is a whole new world. The acquisition process is not easy or straightforward, and once you get your contract awarded, you have to manage it for up 20 years.

If you were recently awarded a GSA Schedule contract, you have likely been inundated with all the tasks required to manage your awarded contract. One key compliance requirement is completing your Baseline modification in GSA’s FAS Catalog Platform (FCP). GSA only recently made the change from the legacy SIP software to FCP for catalog management, so even contractors experienced with GSA may be unfamiliar with FCP. In this blog, we’ll go over the steps to complete an FCP Baseline modification.

If you’ve submitted a Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) offer before, you know that waiting for GSA to process and review your offer can feel like the hardest part. In the last few months, GSA has made some changes to how it reviews MAS offers, with the goal of streamlining the process for contractors and Contracting Specialists alike.

A key part of winning business in any market is drafting a strong and effective proposal. They may not all look the same, or are sometimes called by different names across industries, but the goal is always to win the reader over. But how exactly do you accomplish that? Requests for Proposals (RFPs) are a key part of your government contract, and while there's an entire rulebook on how to reply to them (the Federal Acquisition Regulation), there are some unspoken rules contractors should follow.