Small businesses play an integral role in federal procurement, and in 2022, there has been a strong push to focus on small business prioritization. One of the recent initiatives to improve the procurement process for small businesses is the PRICE Act. President Biden recently signed the Promoting Rigorous and Innovative Cost Efficiencies for Federal Procurement and Acquisitions Act (PRICE) Act, which would expand opportunities for small businesses to work with the federal government.

In your journey through the alphabet soup of federal contracting, you may have come across the terms BPA and IDIQ. These stand for Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) and Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) respectively. Both terms describe a type of contract vehicle that can be used for multiple orders, but they are not interchangeable categories. When considering contract vehicle options, what are the differences between a BPA and an IDIQ? In this blog, we’ll compare and contrast BPAs and IDIQs so you can become familiar with these two contract vehicle types, allowing you to examine future contracting opportunities with confidence. To start with, we will establish what exactly BPAs and IDIQs are.

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a Shields Up Advisory amid growing geopolitical tensions surrounding Russia and Ukraine. In addition to the recent tensions, CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have observed regular targeting of U.S. cleared defense contractors (CDCs) by Russian-state sponsored cyber actors from January 2020 to February 2022.

If you have dealt with the federal government before whether it’s for taxes, going to the DMV, or applying for a grant, you know that you have to abide by a set of rules and follow a specific procedure. The same goes for federal contracting. Contractors and government agencies follow the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) when they want to sell or buy through government contracts. The FAR is essentially the “rulebook” for federal procurement. While there are several important clauses in the FAR, we’ll highlight 4 clauses you should pay special attention to as a current or prospective GSA contractor.

As you may be aware, government agencies cannot make decisions on a whim. There are several rules, regulations, precedents, and processes that are put in place, so each decision is made carefully and methodically. This is especially true for federal procurement. Whenever a government agency has the need for a particular product or service, they often conduct market research to make sure they are surveying all the possibilities and finding the one that works the best for them. This doesn’t always mean the cheapest or the fastest, but these can be factors in determining what the best value is.

The start of 2022 marks Biden’s second year of being president and our third full year of the pandemic. How has a new presidential administration and the global pandemic impacted government procurement? Just like it’s important to follow what kinds of products your consumers are buying and how much they are spending in the commercial world, it’s important for contractors stay on top of government initiatives and follow how the federal government plans to allocate their funding in 2022. Here are 5 government contracting trends we expect to see in 2022.