Competing for government contracts is always challenging, and it is even more so for small firms. All agencies have to set aside work for small businesses, with additional considerations given for minority-, woman- and veteran-owned companies. But it is up to each company to find out about those opportunities. To help shed some light onRead… Read more »
The other day at work we visited with our police records office to learn more about their reporting software. One of the issues that came up in our discussion was inputting the “address” of incidents. The software they use relies on either point addresses or address ranges along a centerline – both common methods ofRead… Read more »
I was hired into CBP’s SBI program office in July of 2010, without any real idea of what “acquisition” meant or how it was practiced. My supervisor told me that I was the “acquisition workforce development officer,” a title that I later discovered existed only in his head. I do have to make a disclaimer:Read… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda Government Employees as Guides, not just Subjects. IBM Center author Ines Mergel argues in a blog post that ” constantly including practitioners into the research process and not only as subjects (i.e., interview partners), but as equal partners who guide the research, evaluate its feasibility and to keep the research grounded and unbiased.”Read… Read more »
Are you in your own contracting cubicle world? Feel isolated? Sad? Then you may be experiencing Customer Withdraw Syndrome (CWS). Take a weekly dose of your customer to fight it. Sit in the customer’s office for one day per week. Create the actual solicitation in the customer’s office. Don’t just go for a visit. GetRead… Read more »
FROM A PROFESSIONAL PROSPECTIVE I’ve recently began looking into ways that public procurement can purchase goods and services in a more sustainable way. By sustainable, I mean incorporating the social, economic, and environmental impacts that purchases can have. As I began to look into this the Farm-to-School program emerged as a perfect example of howRead… Read more »
Recently I launched the Open RFP Network: OpenRFP.net. My primary inspiration for this was the Peer to Patent portal. When I first read Beth’s white paper about the transformation of the patent application process I realized that ultimately this would be applied to all government processes. Why keep slow, offline and expensive by a few,Read… Read more »
Let’s start off with this — I have been blessed to work with wonderful small businesses. That being said, small business contracts can be among the toughest contracts. I think this is due to four areas. 1) New, inexperienced contract specialists are often assigned small business contracts. I hear this on both the civilian andRead… Read more »
This weekend, after living in NYC for seven years, we got an EZ Pass. As we whizzed by a toll line on the RFK bridge that was a good fifteen minutes long, my wife asked “Why didn’t we have one of these before?” I answered, “Because they haven’t built EZ Pass to make it easyRead… Read more »
Authored by Jeff White How well do you know your teaming partners? Do you know what government agencies they’ve worked with? What contracts they’ve held? What actions the government may have taken against them in the past? And are you taking their word for it? You might not recognize the risk you’re taking if you’reRead… Read more »