The General Services Administration (GSA) manages the federal acquisition and award processes using 10 websites. In August 2017, beta.SAM.gov went live and will eventually serve as a replacement for the 10 legacy acquisition websites that GSA maintains. Christy Hermansen, the Integrated Award Environment (IAE) Design Lead, says “We will be continually adding functionality to the site over time, making improvements based on feedback we receive from users. We are not shutting down any of our 10 legacy applications yet. These will be turned off one at a time, once all of the features have been transitioned and we’ve validated that that functionality is ready to be the authoritative system.”

On November 27th, the General Service Administration announced its intention to modernize federal acquisition and transform the Multiple Awards Schedule (MAS) program as we know it. GSA plans to consolidate the agency’s 24 Schedules into one single Schedule for both products and services and operate under a single solicitation with compressed terms and conditions.

On September 4, 2018, Congress passed a bill titled “Securing the Homeland Security Supply Chain Act of 2018 (H.R. 6430)” following a bipartisan introduction led by Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. Some have noted that the bill appears to come in response largely to a growing concern over commercially-successful companies who have been contracted by the U.S. government, particularly in the IT industry, that later demonstrated to pose significant supply chain risks that are a threat to national security. While these reports generally entail foreign-based cyber firms, the bill seeks to address risky vendors both internationally and domestically.

One of the trickiest areas of compliance for federal government contractors is following the regulations of the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act (SCA) of 1965, for services that are non-professional in nature. FAR Subpart 22.10 was recently updated to call this regulation the Service Contract Labor Standards, however, in practice you will still hear it commonly referred to as the SCA. With this update contractors saw major changes to the wage determinations.The SCA of 1965 was amended to ensure that businesses who worked in the service industry observed minimum wage standards as well as safety and health standards, when doing business with the Federal Government, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands or the Outer Continental Shelf Lands.

As we celebrate Women’s History Month we wanted to take a moment to highlight one of the biggest advantages Women-Owned Small Businesses (WOSBs) and Economically Disadvantaged Women-Owned Small Businesses (EDWOSBs) have in federal government contracting: Sole Sourcing.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 2016 – Winvale, the leading provider of strategic and technology solutions for government, was named Tech Company of the Year by the Chesapeake Regional Tech Council (CRTC) at the organization’s annual awards celebration on April 28, 2016. Winvale was honored for its achievements in strategic business planning, vision and contributions to the Washington, D.C., regional economy.