Folks just like you visited The Contracting Education Academy’s web site over 70,000 times in 2019!
Visitors took advantage of our daily news feed, learned about Georgia Tech’s support of government projects, checked-out our upcoming acquisition course offerings, and researched numerous acquisition topics.
So, what news developments interested our visitors the most?
Below is a list of the Top 10 news developments of 2019, based on our 45,500 visitors’ interests. Each one is hyperlinked to the original news story so you can read it again — or perhaps read it for the first time!
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Hill AFB’s FARSite to go away on Oct. 1st – Despite the fact that the hugely popular FAR search engine operated by Hill Air Force Base was used 2.3 billion times since its launch in mid-1996, it was decommissioned in 2019 and replaced by Acquisition.gov.
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There’s hope that FARSite’s useful features will be incorporated into Acquisition.gov – An uproar from loyal FARSite users — concerned that useful search features and functions would no longer be available — caused Acquisition.gov’s operator, GSA, to reassure users that “… the new site [will provide] the existing capabilities as the current FARSite.”
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State Dept. contracting officer indicted for bribery and procurement fraud – According to a Justice Dept. indictment, a State Dept. contracting official and a Turkish construction firm engaged in a bribery and procurement fraud scheme in which the official received cash from the Turkish owner while supervising multi-million dollar construction contracts awarded to the Turkish owner’s business partners. The contracting official allegedly made over a half million dollars in cash deposits into his personal bank accounts.
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What’s your acquisition approach — FAR or non-FAR? – During 2019, contracting officials increasingly decided to not use a traditional Federal Acquisition Regulation-based acquisition model, opting instead to use Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs).
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Section 809 Panel issues summary report of 98 recommendations – A Congressionally-mandated study was released in February calling for reforms in four areas of government acquisition: taking greater advantage of marketplace dynamics; allocating resources more effectively; empowering the acquisition workforce; and simplifying acquisition.
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What you don’t know about the Pentagon’s DEOS contract – In March, while the Pentagon’s high-profile Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) procurement was first stalled by legal action, contracting officials were preparing to take bids on its other multibillion cloud procurement, the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) contract.
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FedBizOpps to merge with SAM.gov before year’s end – In August, GSA announced that FedBizOpps.gov will migrate to a new SAM.gov site as early as the first quarter of FY20. The merger took place on Nov. 12 with noticeable delays in the new site’s responsiveness.
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Why contracting challenges put VA on the ‘High-Risk’ list – In March, the GAO announced it found that the Department of Veterans Affairs had not updated key purchasing regulations since 2008.
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DISA, DSS award second OTA to build governmentwide security clearance system – In July, DoD officials announced they awarded a $75 million ‘other transaction agreement’ (OTA) to build major components of the IT system that will eventually handle all background investigations and security clearance adjudications for federal employees and contractors.
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Transition to new FAC-C acquisition workforce training requirements begins Oct. 1, 2019 – New training requirements for the civilian portion of the federal acquisition workforce — aligning the requirements with those developed to support the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) contracting certification program — are explained in our article.
Why not make a New Year’s Resolution to visit our website every weekday in 2020? You’ll benefit by learning about the very latest developments in government acquisition!
This action is in accordance with the governor’s Sunday 
