This year has been marked by a number of important changes and updated contracting procedures aimed at improving the U.S. Federal Government’s cybersecurity systems. Against the backdrop of President Obama’s Cybersecurity National Action Program, launched earlier this year, a new Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) rule has recently arrived which addresses basic safeguarding of contractor information systems. This may seem innocuous at first, but the change should not be taken for granted by the contractor community.

Faced with allegations of “failed compliance,” GSA is taking steps to ensure that all products on Schedule are certified products of the United States or other Trade Agreement Act (TAA) compliant countries. GSA alerted contract holders in a letter sent on May 5, 2016, that they had until May 12, 2016, (one week) to provide their compliance with the TAA.

Congress announced its intention to ramp up efforts to enforce the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Small Business Subcontracting Program. These potential changes are extremely important for a few reasons: according to the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), if the bill is passed, contractors that are found to be non-compliant with their small business subcontracting plans could be charged with breach of contract by the federal customers. Such charges can bring with them severe corrective action or fines.

The General Service Administration (GSA) has recently sought to improve the acquisition efficiency of their IT Schedule 70 by implementing new substitutive standards. IT Schedule 70 remains GSA’s most prolific procurement channel with billions of dollars in revenue transactions and thousands of satisfied industry partners.

Last year was a big year for GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Professional Services Contractors. GSA merged all 8 of their professional services contracts into one consolidated contract in order to centralize control, reduce contract redundancies, ease the contract acquisition process and help government shape better deals.

This post is the fourth installment of Winvale’s ten-part Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) series. We’ll be sharing everything you need to know about GWACs, upcoming announcements and answering common questions posed by federal contractors. This week we will discuss CIO SP3 SB. The Chief Information Officer Solutions and Partners 3 Small Business (CIO-SP3 SB) contract will be holding an onboarding round this Spring. Contractors looking to acquire the CIO-SP3 SB should look out for an RFP release very soon.