Government Contracting Blog

Entering the federal marketplace can be daunting. Especially if you are a small business with little to no resources on how to cut through the bureaucratic red tape and successfully secure a spot on a contract vehicle. What many businesses don’t know is you can approach your path to market in different ways. The Department of Defense (DoD) has a few innovation programs that are designed to help companies with innovative solutions gain access to critical funding and become visible to government buyers. These programs allow for technology development acceleration, innovative research and development, and give small businesses the opportunity to share their cutting-edge solutions with less barriers to market.

As GSA prepares to take on more Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs) and other large-scale vehicles, you may have noticed changes in timelines for obtaining a GSA Schedule contract, as well as receiving GSA Schedule modification awards. Unfortunately, these changes in timelines may not be in your favor, as you may have experienced prolonged delays in approvals for your submissions.

The mission continues to modernize and streamline the federal procurement process—GSA announced this week they are launching their OneGov Strategy, a new initiative helping agencies gain access to IT tools. This announcement follows several Executive Orders (EO) shifting how the federal government acquires goods and services, including Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 2.0 and the EO expanding GSA’s role in procurement. Let’s review what we know about the OneGov Strategy and what it’ll look like for contractors and buyers.

Siri, Alexa, Monica, Claude—we love naming Artificial Intelligence (AI) bots with human names. The General Services Administration (GSA) joined the trend with their new tool, CODY. CODY, which is based on the Irish term for “helpful one,” is a new procurement automation tool built to streamline procurement processes at GSA. GSA announced recently that CODY is available for use across the federal government. With the recent Executive Order (EO) calling for the massive expansion of procurement under GSA, they’re going to need all the help they can get.

Take a moment to think about all the sensitive information the United States federal government has access to: tax returns, Social Security numbers, medical information. Handling this trove of data makes cybersecurity perhaps more important for the federal government than any other entity. Recognizing this, the federal government has created programs like CMMC and FedRAMP.

A lot of GSA Schedule contractors think they can only sell their products and services to the federal government, but did you know you can sell to state, local, educational, and tribal entities too? Under certain state and local programs, you can offer the same products and services you sell to these entities, greatly expanding the marketplace for your company. One of the most widely used programs is Cooperative Purchasing, which applies to IT and Security and Protections contractors.