In observance of National Military Appreciation month as well as Memorial Day, Winvale is highlighting Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (VOSBs) and topics relevant to them. We will be starting with five key things that veteran small business owners Star #1 should know: The United States Code defines a veteran as someone who has served in the active military, naval or air service, and who was discharged or released under any conditions other than a dishonorable discharge. Federal Agencies spend an estimated 5% of their budget on VOSBs. With an estimated $179 Billion awarded a year, veteran owned opperations can potentially generate $8.9 billion worth of business. Here are three key requirements to becoming a VOSB: 51% of your company needs to be owned by one or more Veterans. If your business is publicly traded, the same criteria needs to be met for shareholders. Management and daily business operations are controlled by you or other veteran colleagues as well. Your VOSB needs to be categorized as “small” under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code assigned to the procurement.

GSA is making changes to become better aligned with the OPM Federal Human Capital Business Reference Model. The contracting vehicle's changes are in support of the government-wide Category Management goals to reduce contract redundancy, increase cost savings and to streamline the acquisition process. The updated 738 X Schedule complements the new, and more complex, Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS) vehicle, by offering an A-La-Carte menu of specific services. The update also has provisions for time, material, labor hour contracts and traditional Firm Fixed Price service.

Just after its 67th anniversary, GSA began Phase I rollout of its Formatted Product Tool (FPT) in an effort to facilitate the standardization of similar parts offered by different contractors and increase the efficiency in which contractor’s pricelists are updated and made available on GSAAdvantage!. FPT is a systems upgrade within the existing eOffer and eMod platforms for certain Schedules and is an enhancement for GSA Schedule contractors as it eliminates the need for the Schedule Input Program (SIP) and Contracting Officer Review System (CORS) processes. For those not familiar with SIP, this is one of the most common methods for uploading your GSA Pricelist, so that your products/services are visible on GSA eLibrary and GSAAdvantage!. This process can be quite lengthy because it is a multi-stage process requiring 1) a pricelist to be awarded through a new offer award or existing contract modification; 2) the pricelist to be uploaded by the contractor through SIP; and 3) the price ist to be approved by GSA which would result in the pricelist being posted online. Typically, contractors expect no less than 48 hours for their pricelist to be updated. The program can have glitches as well so, combined with the length of time to complete the process, it has been a source of frustration for contractors since its inception. FPT is meant to eliminate the lag between award and acceptance of their new pricelist.

Last week, our contract support experts represented the Winvale team at the GSA’s 2016 Office of Small Business Utilization (OSBU) Spring Conference: Making it Easier to do Business with the GSA. This event is extremely beneficial for small business owners looking to acquire the right tools to succeed in the federal marketplace. It served as a great opportunity to network with contracting professionals, learn new skills and even take advantage of one-on-one counseling.

After the recent release of a Special Item Number (SIN) for cloud products and services on IT Schedule 70, GSA is now looking to create two more SINs for targeted technologies. Specifically, these SINs will be related to health IT and cybersecurity. GSA also expanded their agreement with the Defense Health Agency (DHA) regarding health IT spending.

In recent years, GSA has been trying to adapt to the continuous evolution of the Health IT market. In order to reach this goal, they worked closely with vendors within the industry to help create and finalize a new Health IT SIN.