Solely for “business planning purposes only,” the General Services Administration released a Request for Information (RFI) for Entity Validation Services, services currently fulfilled with the use of the Data Universal Number System (DUNS). While in an early stage, this could indicate the Federal government’s interest in moving away from the proprietary Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) identification system. The RFI specifically mentions the necessity for open access to the data by the public and the Federal government, which illustrates a key...

With a rule first proposed in 2016 by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and more DOD contracting regulations in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2018, contractors filing bid protests may soon have to pay processing fees to the agencies. While the GAO fees will apply as an administrative necessity to every protest, the proposed DOD protest fees will have a number of limiting factors that may have less of an impact on small businesses. EZGovOpps describes...

With Fiscal Year 2017 closed out, EZGovOpps decided to put together a small report which could illustrate the spending push that many Federal agencies enact in the fourth quarter, particularly in the final month of September. Using the EZGovOpps Awards software module, available in all EZGovOpps subscription plans, our analysts compared the number of contracts awarded during an early part of the fiscal year, in this case April, with the final contracts awarded in September for years 2015 through 2017. This...

UPDATE 3/16/2018: A DIUx-sponsored contract for cloud services took a major hit this week, with DOD shrinking the value from almost-$1 billion to only $65 million. Get the full scoop here.  After our primer on contract action types, EZGovOpps will provide a look at the “Other Transaction Authority” (OTA) that DOD holds. This authority allows for DOD to enter into transactions other than contracts, grants or cooperative agreements. Growing in use, these types of OTA transactions can reach up to...

After major acquisitions that have consolidated certain portions of the Federal market-share, including the Leidos acquisition of the Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions (IS&GS) subsidiary last year, and the announcement this year of UTC’s purchase of Rockwell Collins for $30 billion, creators of Federal procurement tools utilized by both agencies and contractors alike are now undergoing a similar phase of consolidation. On the market intelligence side, Onvia announced on October 5th that it agreed to be purchased by Project Diamond...