The U.S. Court of Federal Claims (COFC), in Netcentrics Corp. v. United States, recently upheld an agency’s decision to disqualify an offeror from a procurement based on a perceived material misrepresentation in the offeror’s proposal about the availability of key personnel. In so holding, the COFC made clear that a material proposal misrepresentation may exist, even if there is no intent on the part of the offeror to deceive the agency. As this author…

The Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently issued a public report on the SBA’s All Small Mentor-Protégé Program (ASMPP), in which the SBA OIG found certain shortcomings in the SBA’s administration of the program. As discussed below, the report also provides a series of recommendations, most of which the SBA has accepted. What is the ASMPP? The SBA began accepting applications for the ASMPP in 2016 and has seen a surge…

The General Services Administration (GSA) has announced that the Federal Business Opportunities website — commonly referred to as “FedBizOpps.gov” — will be decommissioned “starting on November 8, 2019” and that the website’s “critical functionality will be transitioned into beta.SAM.gov in the first quarter of the 2020 fiscal year.” This transition will impact virtually every federal government contractor, as FedBizOpps.gov currently serves as the single government-wide point of entry for federal government opportunities over $25,000. Indeed,…

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently denied two consolidated bid protests alleging that a solicitation issued by the General Services Administration (GSA) was inconsistent with the Small Business Runway Extension Act of 2018 in that the solicitation included a three-year — rather than a five-year — lookback period for the purpose of determining an offeror’s small-business size status. As discussed below, the GAO’s decision in these two protests is a particularly noteworthy development regarding the…

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently issued an interim final rule “adjusting the monetary-based industry size standards (i.e., receipts- and assets-based) for inflation that has occurred since the last adjustment in 2014.” According to the SBA, “[a] number of businesses may have lost small business eligibility for Federal assistance under SBA’s monetary-based industry size standards simply because of inflation-led revenue growth that has occurred since the 2014 adjustment.” This interim final rule—which will take…

The Small Business Administration (SBA) recently issued a much-anticipated proposed rule “to modify its method for calculating annual average receipts used to prescribe size standards for small businesses.” Specifically, consistent with the Small Business Runway Extension Act of 2018—about which we have reported extensively in previous blog posts in January 2019 and December 2018 twice—the SBA “proposes to change its regulations on the calculation of annual average receipts for all recipients-based SBA size standards…

The Small Business Administration (SBA) began accepting applications for the All Small Mentor-Protégé Program (ASMPP) in 2016 and has seen a surge in applications in each subsequent year. Under the ASMPP, any small business – including 8(a) small businesses, Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) small businesses, veteran-owned and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses (VOSB/SDVOSBs), woman-owned and economically disadvantaged woman-owned small businesses (WOSBs/EDWOSBs) – may enter into an agreement with a large business under which the large…