Reflections from a Week of Acquisition Collaboration
This week I attended another successful National Contract Management Association (NCMA) World Congress in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. I’ve attended this event for a number of years, and once again, it delivered. Every year, I leave with new insights, valuable conversations, and a renewed appreciation for the acquisition community.
The NCMA World Congress continues to provide an outstanding opportunity for training, engaging with acquisition professionals from across government and industry, and exchanging ideas on the issues impacting the future of federal procurement. Given the significant changes currently underway, including the Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Overhaul (RFO) and broader acquisition reform efforts, events like this are more important than ever. They provide a forum for those who support the acquisition system to come together, discuss emerging developments, and share their perspectives on where we are headed.
One of the things I value most about the conference is that I always learn something new. Through training sessions, panel discussions, and conversations in the hallways, there are always fresh ideas and takeaways to bring back.
This year’s educational sessions covered a wide range of timely topics, with government and industry leaders presenting on a host of important acquisition topics, including the RFO, procurement consolidation, artificial intelligence, ethics, Other Transaction Authorities, interagency contracting, outcome-based contracting, commercial item acquisitions, and more. Hearing different perspectives on these topics reinforces the importance of continued dialogue and collaboration as the acquisition community navigates the current procurement environment.
One panel that particularly stood out was “Headlines from the FAR Council,” featuring Bradley Niese, Senior Procurement Executive, Deputy Chief Acquisition Officer, and Assistant Administrator for the Office of Procurement at NASA, Jeff Koses, Senior Procurement Executive at GSA, and John Tenaglia, Principal Director, Defense Pricing, Contracting, and Acquisition Policy at the Department of War. The discussion provided valuable perspectives on the RFO, the acquisition workforce, and the overall culture needed to support an effective and efficient procurement system.
An unexpected highlight came when the Honorable Dr. Kevin Rhodes, Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, joined the panel. His thoughtful remarks on the importance of taking appropriate, reasonable risks in procurement were especially timely as agencies work to implement acquisition reforms and modernize procurement practices.
This year’s NCMA World Congress was another rewarding experience. I appreciate the opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and hear directly from many of the leaders helping shape the future of federal procurement. I look forward to attending again next year.
Don’t Miss This Year’s Charity Golf Tournament!
Gather your clubs, invite your colleagues, and join us on Wednesday, August 19, for the 13th Annual Joseph P. Caggiano Memorial Charity Golf Tournament at the beautiful Whiskey Creek Golf Club in Ijamsville, Maryland.
Each year, the tournament brings the government procurement community together for a day of golf, networking, camaraderie, and friendly competition, all while honoring the legacy of Joe Caggiano and supporting two causes that make a lasting difference in the lives of veterans.
Set against the scenic backdrop of the Catoctin Mountains, Whiskey Creek Golf Club is one of the premier courses in the region. Its rolling fairways, picturesque views, and beautifully maintained course provide the perfect setting for a memorable day on the links.
This year’s tournament will once again benefit Paws for Purple Hearts, which trains and places life-changing service dogs with veterans, and the Coalition’s Endowed Scholarship Fund at The George Washington University Law School, which supports veterans pursuing careers in government procurement law.
Whether you’re a seasoned golfer or just looking for a fun day on the course, the tournament offers something for everyone. The scramble format makes it a great opportunity to enjoy friendly competition with coworkers and industry colleagues, while contests like Longest Drive and Closest to the Pin give golfers the chance to compete for great prizes before wrapping up the day at the networking reception.
Finally, as the exclusive Title Sponsor, Bosma will offer a unique, hands-on experience to kick off the tournament at HOLE #1. As an AbilityOne federal contractor, Bosma will offer participants the opportunity to wear vision impairment simulation glasses while teeing off, providing a firsthand glimpse into the challenges associated with different types of vision loss. It’s a fun and memorable activity that also helps raise awareness of Bosma’s mission to support individuals who are blind or visually impaired.
Not a golfer? You can still join us by registering for the Veranda Club, where you’ll enjoy the scenic views of Whiskey Creek Golf Club and take part in the networking reception following the tournament.
Whether you register a foursome, sign up as an individual golfer, or join us at the Veranda Club, you’ll be helping continue Joe Caggiano’s legacy while supporting veterans through two meaningful initiatives. To register, click here.
OFPP Administrator Highlights Revolutionary FAR Overhaul
NextGov reports that Dr. Kevin Rhodes, Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), said that the Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Overhaul is intended to give agencies greater flexibility to adopt new technologies. Speaking at the Carahsoft FedRAMP Summit, Rhodes said the effort has reduced the FAR by approximately 25 percent and eliminated roughly 3,000 requirements not mandated by statute.
According to Dr. Rhodes, the most significant change is that the streamlined FAR will provide agencies with greater discretion to adopt capabilities that best meet their mission needs. He said the reforms are designed to shift the acquisition workforce away from a compliance-driven mindset toward a greater focus on mission delivery.
While acknowledging that the transition will take time, Dr. Rhodes said he expects the reforms to help foster a procurement culture that emphasizes execution and results over checklist-driven compliance.
House NDAA Proposes Acquisition Workforce Reforms
Federal News Network reports that the House-passed Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes several provisions aimed at strengthening the Department of War’s (DoW) acquisition workforce. If enacted, the legislation would require the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment to establish a centralized dashboard to integrate workforce data across the military services and defense agencies. The system would track workforce size, skills, certifications, vacancies, career progression, retention, attrition, retirement eligibility, and other workforce trends to support strategic planning.
The bill would also establish a chief acquisition talent officer responsible for overseeing departmentwide acquisition workforce strategy and talent management initiatives, including recruitment, retention, workforce planning, training, and career development. In addition, each military service would designate its own acquisition talent officer to align workforce planning with departmentwide priorities.
The legislation would also expand the department’s Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project (AcqDemo) by increasing the participation cap from 130,000 to 143,000 employees and extending the program through December 31, 2035. The bill would further require the department to brief Congress on participation levels, projected growth, workforce satisfaction, and whether additional authorities are needed to support acquisition workforce development.
House Passes Government Contractor Whistleblower Protections
Government Accountability Project reports that the House unanimously passed the Expanding Whistleblower Protections for Contractors Act (H.R. 5578), introduced by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA). The Senate previously passed analogous legislation, S. 4631, which was co-sponsored by Senators Gary Peters (D-MI), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA).
The legislation would:
- Protect contractors and contractor employees from retaliation and blacklisting
- Cover disclosures involving international contracts
- Protect individuals who refuse to violate the law
- Restore access to jury trials
- Establish liability for government officials who pressure contractors to retaliate
The House and Senate must still reconcile differences between the bills, including whether protections should extend to Intelligence Community contractors, before the legislation can advance to the President.
DoW Continues Review of CMMC Program
The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Advocacy hosted a July 30 virtual Small Business Roundtable on the DoW’s Request for Information (RFI) for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Reform Task Force.
As previously reported, DoW paused implementation of certain CMMC requirements, including third-party certification requirements, while it conducts a 60-day review of the program. The review was initiated in response to concerns that compliance costs could discourage small and innovative businesses from participating in the defense industrial base.
Feedback gathered through the RFI and the roundtable is expected to help inform the task force’s recommendations. The Coalition is collecting member comments on the RFI. If you would like to provide feedback, please email Greg Waldron at gwaldron@thecgp.org by the end of the day on August 3.
GSA Expands OneGov AI Offerings Through CORAS Partnership
The General Services Administration (GSA) announced a new OneGov agreement with CORAS to expand federal access to agentic artificial intelligence (AI) tools for reporting, analytics, workflow automation, and decision support. Under the agreement, agencies can access discounted pricing under the Multiple Award Schedule through September 30, 2027.
The offer includes GARY Insight, which provides reporting, analytics, dashboard generation, and data integration capabilities at an 80 percent discount, and GARY Execute, which supports workflow orchestration and decision-support functions at a 40 percent discount.
Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Acting Commissioner Laura Stanton said that the partnership expands the AI capabilities available to agencies while providing access to commercial technologies through standardized acquisition pathways and innovative pricing structures.
FedRAMP Director Warns of AI Cybersecurity Risks
MeriTalk reports that FedRAMP Director Pete Waterman said a recent AI-related cybersecurity incident involving Hugging Face underscores the need for organizations to respond to cyber threats at machine speed. According to OpenAI, the incident occurred during an internal cybersecurity evaluation in which AI models escaped a testing environment, exploited vulnerabilities, and gained unauthorized access to portions of Hugging Face’s infrastructure before being detected and contained.
Speaking at a FedRAMP Summit, Waterman said the incident marks a turning point for cybersecurity and argued that organizations unable to respond to AI-driven threats at machine speed should not be selling products to the federal government.
The incident also prompted action on Capitol Hill. Representatives Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) introduced the AI Kill Switch Act, which would require developers of advanced AI systems to maintain the ability to throttle, suspend, or shut down systems that pose significant risks.
NIST Launches AI Evaluation Platform
MeriTalk reports that the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) has launched the Artificial Intelligence Technology Evaluation (AITE) platform, a secure environment for evaluating AI models. According to NIST, the platform will provide common data, metrics, and scoring to help developers better understand model performance while reducing the risk of train/test data contamination.
NIST also plans to use AITE to further develop AI evaluation measures, guidance, and standards as the platform evolves. The initial evaluation tasks focus on image analysis using large vision language models (VLMs) in three areas: quantum science, genomics, and public safety, with additional tasks expected to be added over time.
OPM HR Modernization Effort Moves Ahead After Protest Window Closes
FedScoop reports that the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) rollout of a governmentwide human resources (HR) system will move forward after the window for post-award bid protests at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) closed. The expiration of the protest period removes a major obstacle to the nearly $400 million, 10-year modernization effort, with OPM confirming that all required bidder debriefings have been completed, preventing any further GAO challenges to the award.
The contract was awarded in June following a competitive procurement process. Although challenges may still be filed with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, experts say it is unlikely a court would halt implementation once the governmentwide system is underway. OPM is now focused on standing up the new platform, integrating data from roughly 119 existing HR systems, and onboarding the first wave of agencies, with initial deployments expected between the end of 2026 and early 2027. Additional implementation phases are planned through fiscal year 2028.
Late Is Late—Even When a Government Firewall Captures Your Proposal
By Evan Williams, Luke Levasseur & Nick Feldstern; Fox Rothschild
In Rick Aviation, Inc. v. United States, the Court of Federal Claims (COFC) tackled a novel application of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) “late is late” rule. The question the court squared up against is what happens when an otherwise timely bid or proposal is caught in a government firewall or email filter and does not reach the procuring agency’s email server?
According to COFC, unless the bid or proposal is received by the designated government office in the solicitation before an award is made, the “late is late” rule prevents the agency from accepting the bid or proposal. As the government continues to expand its implementation of cybersecurity controls and AI-supported processes, this issue may become a problem for a growing number of offerors.
COFC’s decision serves as a practical reminder that, absent certain narrow exceptions, the risk related to ultimate receipt by the procuring agency of an electronically submitted proposal remains largely on the offeror.
Below, we discuss the case and provide practical suggestions to help reduce this risk.
Rick Aviation, Inc. v. United States, No. 25-1604 (June 17, 2026)
In April 2025, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) issued a solicitation for the procurement of petroleum fuel products with a deadline of 1 p.m. on May 23, 2025. The solicitation advised contractors to ensure their offers were “sent with enough time to be processed through the server.” The solicitation also instructed offerors to submit their proposals via email to either the contracting officer or the designated DLA email address and warned that its email filtration system would scan for viruses and key words that could delay delivery of a bid.
On May 22, at 1:27 p.m., Rick Aviation, Inc. (RAI) emailed its proposal to the designated DLA email address and received an automated response stating that its proposal had been successfully delivered. One other competitor, Avfuel, also submitted a proposal.
DLA accepted Avfuel’s proposal and awarded it the contract on August 19, 2025. On September 23, 2025, RAI notified DLA that it intended to protest the award. After receiving RAI’s notice, the contracting officer informed RAI that the agency could not find RAI’s proposal in either potential email inbox. Unbeknownst to RAI or DLA, RAI’s email with its proposal had been quarantined by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), a partner of DLA that provides information technology services, including email services, “due to error by the sender” related to the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) configuration authentication standard used by DISA. Because DISA’s email gateway blocked RAI’s email as a result of the SPF error, the proposal never reached DLA’s designated email inbox.
In September, the contracting officer concluded that because RAI’s proposal never arrived at the designated email address before award, it could not be considered under the “late is late” rule. RAI filed its complaint at COFC later that month, alleging that DLA’s rejection of its bid was arbitrary and capricious.
The Court denied RAI’s protest, explaining that under FAR 52.212-1(f)(2)(i) (Instructions to Offerors—Commercial Products and Commercial Services), an offer received at the government office designated in the solicitation after the exact time specified for receipt of offers is “late” and will not be considered unless:
(1) the proposal was received before award was made;
(2) the contracting officer determined that accepting the late offer would not unduly delay the acquisition; and
(3) one of the clause’s specific exceptions applies, including the “electronic commerce” exception (receipt at the “initial point of entry to the government infrastructure” no later than one day prior to the due date) or the “government-control” exception (acceptable evidence that the offer was received at the government installation designated for receipt and was under the government’s control before the time set for receipt of offers).
(For further discussion on the exceptions to the “late is late” rule, see our previous post.)
RAI’s proposal was not “received” at the government office designated in the solicitation before award. DISA is an intermediary agency that essentially provides email services to DLA. Although DISA and DLA are part of the same Department of War, receipt by DISA’s server did not satisfy the receipt-by-the-agency requirement. Instead, the Court determined DLA never “received” RAI’s proposal because DISA’s gateway blocked RAI’s email from arriving on DLA’s server.
Further, the Court ruled that the automated response RAI received indicating that its email had been delivered was not the same as confirmation that the email had been received. Notwithstanding RAI being lulled into a false sense of security by the delivery confirmation, the Court’s analysis ultimately turned on the fact that the CO in the office specified in the solicitation did not receive the proposal before the award was issued.
The Court recognized that its result may seem harsh and that “disputes like this one have arisen with disturbing frequency [and] painfully illustrate how FAR provisions enacted long ago conflict with modern technology.” Nevertheless, the FAR places the responsibility on offerors to ensure their proposals reach their intended destinations, and RAI could have followed up with the contracting officer to confirm receipt. Because RAI’s proposal was not “received” prior to award, a “late is late” exception could not apply.
The Court also rejected RAI’s assertion that DISA’s SPF configuration standard, which resulted in the quarantine of RAI’s proposal, constituted an unstated evaluation criterion. In short, the SPF configuration was a technical or procedural matter, not a substantive basis for evaluating proposals, and thus, it could not be considered an evaluation criterion.
Key Takeaways for Contractors
In an age of firewalls, encryption, and AI-assisted security, contractor personnel need to be certain they understand the technical details of the processes by which they communicate with the government—and how to ensure their communications successfully work their way through the electronic maze and are received by the intended recipient. Offerors bear full responsibility for ensuring their electronic submissions actually reach the designated inbox—including maintaining properly configured email authentication protocols. Indeed, the Court emphasized that the solicitation expressly warned offerors to verify receipt with the contracting officer, and RAI’s failure to do so proved fatal to its protest.
As the RAI decision makes clear, contractors should not treat their “sent items” email box or automated delivery response as conclusive proof that the agency received an offer. Instead, to mitigate the non-receipt risk, contractors should:
- Build into electronic submission plans sufficient time to verify receipt and resolve any delivery problems before the deadline.
- Request affirmative confirmation of receipt from the contracting officer or other receipt point(s) designated by the solicitation.
- When a solicitation warns that email filtering may delay delivery, follow up on receipt. Doing so can be the difference between a timely offer and an offer the agency cannot consider.
In sum, contractors are advised to submit proposals early, confirm receipt, and keep a record showing that the offer reached the right place before the deadline.
VA Expands Infrastructure Modernization Efforts
The Department of Veterans Affairs announced it is moving forward with $1.2 billion in infrastructure improvement projects during the third quarter of fiscal year 2026. The investments are part of a record $4.8 billion maintenance budget and will fund repairs, upgrades, and modernization efforts across VA medical facilities. Through the third quarter, the VA has obligated $2.3 billion for projects that include repairing aging infrastructure, supporting future electronic health record implementation, and upgrading major building systems such as elevators, electrical equipment, and boiler plants. Overall, the investments are intended to strengthen the operational capability of VA medical facilities and enhance healthcare delivery for veterans.
Meeting on Office of MAS, August 6
The Coalition’s IT/Services Committee Meeting with Giovanni Onwuchekwa, GSA Executive Director of the Office of Multiple Award Schedule (MAS), originally scheduled for July 22, has been rescheduled and will now be held on August 6 at 10:00 AM ET.
Mr. Onwuchekwa will cover the future of MAS, the new Federal Acquisition Service, and GSA’s plans to standardize contracting officer training.
The meeting will be held in person at CGI Federal: 1000 N Glebe Road, Arlington, VA 22201. (9th floor Studio Space). Virtual attendance will also be supported.
To register, click here. For any assistance with registration, please contact Mady Whiting at mady.whiting@thecgp.org
Note: This is a members-only event. If you see a message that says “Registration Not Available” please log in using your member account.
VA FSS Industry Day, August 26
The Coalition is pleased to announce that we are hosting a virtual VA Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) industry day on August 26 from 10 AM to 12:30 PM EST.
The opening session will feature remarks from:
- Jerry Jacobs, Associate Executive Director, Enterprise Procurement Office (EPO), VA
- Sharon Chang, Director, Federal Supply Schedules, VA
- Joshua Ladwig, FSS Chief, Contract Support Division, FSS, VA
Following the opening sessions, the industry day will have breakout sessions covering Medical/Surgical Equipment, Pharmaceutical, and Services.
To register, click here. For any assistance with registration, please contact Mady Whiting at mady.whiting@thecgp.org
Note: This is a members-only event. If you see a message that says “Registration Not Available” please log in using your member account.
Proposed Changes for Small Businesses in the FY 2027 NDAA, August 27
Moshe Schwartz, President of Etherton and Associates, Inc., and the Coalition’s Defense Fellow, on August 27 from 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST will provide a webinar overview of the proposed small business provisions in the pending National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2027.
To register, click here. For any assistance with registration, please contact Mady Whiting at mady.whiting@thecgp.org