Latest / The FAR is Lava / EP 2: RFO Goes to Court, FAR Part 16, 8(a) Changes & the Ms. X Protest

Transcript

EP 2: RFO Goes to Court, FAR Part 16, 8(a) Changes & the Ms. X Protest · The FAR is Lava

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to The Far Is Lava, your shortcut to the federal procurement news that we've read so you don't have to.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: In today's episode, the RFO stands before the judge.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: NASA Soup just got chunkier.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: SBA is asking, are you A?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Then prove it.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the judge just told Trump to swipe right on Enthropic.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Stop sitting on the sideline and join us in The Far Is Lava.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Ben.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is Will.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get started.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Will, welcome to episode two.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to be here.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Number two.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: They said it could not be done.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: We said it might not get done.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: But here we are.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's done twice already.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's two episodes.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't posted it yet, but I guarantee it's going to go live at some point.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be up on YouTube.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for being here, everyone.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to the first episode.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: If you did.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Just a reminder, we will put all the episodes here on YouTube where you're watching it currently.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: And in a few weeks, we will start putting these on anywhere you listen to your podcasts.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Apple, Spotify, et cetera.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: The episodes will all go on there, but let's get four or five in the hopper first, and we'll go live on your typical Apple places.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, listeners, welcome to Florida.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're in Pontavader Beach, Florida, where we record.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Will nice and balmy.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's beautiful weather here.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully it'll cool down for us, but hopefully everyone else is having good weather.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what they're here for is listen to a couple guys in Florida talk about the weather.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: The rundown here, what you can expect every week is we'll go over we'll go over the news, we'll talk about some contract history, uh, and it will all be through the lens of the RFO.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So stay tuned for some RFO training and tips and tricks.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but news through the lens of the RFO, and then we will end with a protest and some user questions.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I remind everyone if you have a question for us that you'd like us to answer live on air, then just put a comment in the comments below, or a question in the comments below on this video or really any of our videos, we'll scan through and find the great questions from our amazing listeners.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And definitely stick around for the protests if you can.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Those are fun.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're brand new.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: We usually try to get fresh ones.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Fresh pro fresh protests.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Fresh protests.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's what people come to us for.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, can you guys can you guys talk about this?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Can you stop talking about them?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go into first this day in contract history.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh General Services Administration, the GSA, and Commercial Solutions Opening Pilot.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if it's September 17th, on this day, September 17th, two years ago.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a pretty recent one, 2024.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh maybe consider this CSO Day, Commercial Solutions Opening Pilot Day.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: On this day, the GSA released its Commercial Solutions Opening Guide, establishing procedures for the pilot program designed to provide streamlined acquisition pathways.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So Commercial Solutions Opening is something GSA has been using for a little while.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: We used them uh in the Department of Defense when they used Fed when that with their FedSIM uh component of GSA.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: But they came out with this new guide two years ago.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And even today, CSOs aren't used as much as they could be.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe honor uh today or September 17th by learning more about CSO.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Reach out and use a CSO.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's still a pilot, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It says it's gonna be sunset in 2027 unless extended.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't realize that.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know we're still in a CSO pilot.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I that may just be for GSA.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: The CSO is in the D FARS now for DOD.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the CSO authority, it it varies depending on what agency you're in.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's your day in contract history.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get right into the news.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And this news comes from now, the the protest is out there, the story's out there, but I came across this through a GovCon intelligence podcast hosted by Sam Lee, great podcast.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: He had a guest speaker, Marcos Gonzalez, the founder of GovSpring Legal.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about Don acquisition, challenging the FAR overhaul process.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: The very existence of how the FAR uh RFO was built is come under fire by the Don Don Acquisition.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's taking on the RFO single-handedly.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can I say something about this?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Please.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don acquisition owner is Don Mansfield.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a fan of Don Mansfield.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's been around in the community for a while.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: He he was on WIFCON forums, and if I don't know if we can show a picture of this, his icon is this guy with a big beard.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I always thought that's what he looked like, but that's not Don Mansfield.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he's also um corrected us on our videos before on one of our uh performance work statement videos.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: We had we distinguished between a work statement, a statement of work, performance work statement, and a sue, statement of objectives.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he just wrote a comment saying PWS is a statement of work, read the far.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he's not wrong.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we we wrote it back and said, that's true, but the community distinguishes them.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so Don, the friend of the show.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Friend of the show, he he knows the details.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And what better person than to maybe push back against the RFO a little bit and the actual creation of it?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he specifically was coming or pushing back on the use of the model deviation process in instead of the typical notice in comment rulemaking.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is hard-hitting stuff.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's but it's confusing for everyone for everyone, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Careful of the Jurassic Park cop.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Don't scoot it around.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's so loud.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's can it's a confusing subject for everyone.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: People say that uh we're between two FARs right now.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: We have the new RFO that's currently in the rulemaking process, which requires notice and comment.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: We have the old FAR, which technically is in play, but not really, because we have something called deviations.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And what Don's point is, is you know, your deviations on the FAR are really only supposed to be used uh, you know, to deviate maybe from pieces of the FAR, or but you're not supposed to use it to bypass the entire rule.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So what the administration decided to do was hey, let's do a deviation.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the subject, the entire FAR.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's simple certainly deviated from the FAR.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the RFO right now is just one big deviation.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and you can check your um on sam.gov, not I'm not sam.gov, acquisition.gov and the RFO site.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can for each part of the FAR, your agency uh should have posted their own deviation.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're and those are supposed to be in effect.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just saw one recently, the DOD's deviation for part 16.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: It says effective March 2026.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, so technically you should be using these deviations.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Don's point is though, by having this huge scoping deviation of the entire FAR, you're bypassing the whole rulemaking process of notice, comment, the way rules are supposed to be done.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and you can we could celebrate the FAR council with their 180-day rough timeline of actually creating this.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it came out very fast.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so instead of years and years of paperwork, which has happened before in government work, 180 days-ish, you know, give or take.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: This thing is out there.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: But the negative side of that is, you know, agencies have to catch up and be like, oh, how do we leverage this?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: How do you use it?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then contractors, to his point, okay, I'm a contractor, I have business practices in place to help me put in bids for these opportunities.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And now I can't necessarily keep up with the changes.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the specific concrete example they gave is the use or requirement of the transactional data report, the TDR.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, everyone's favorite report, the transactional data report um is now uh required.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Look, I don't have the resources to track this for GSA every single month.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: So now I I can't I can't put in a bid because I can't honor this requirement.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so he says, and that leaves me out, that that's causing me damage, costing my business money.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So in order to have in order to bring this whole claim against the RFO, you have to have a case.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to have some kind of injury uh that in which you can bring this argument.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Don Acquisition's argument was they were booted out of a part eight competition, a federal supply schedule.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So either multiple award schedules, and he was booted out of that competition because, or you know, he was restricted from competing because of this requirement, which was always there, but I think now it's mandatory to do this uh transactional, what is it, transactional uh data?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Data reporting.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Data reporting CDR will.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Doing these companies now need to report on a monthly basis, these line item uh uh by the line item data on their orders and contracting.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh for the GSA, it can make sense because you know, these multiple award schedules are these huge, huge vehicles that are supposed to give really consistent pricing info so that you can um streamline your competition.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: That that pricing is already done.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It gives great market research info for people using.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's supposed to streamline the process.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Don Acquisition's argument uh is it actually um makes it uh what is commercially unfeasible for a lot of companies because they're just gonna have to keep up with this.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of small, like training companies like Don Acquisition, they don't have the resources to keep up with this new requirement now.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: The whole reason that requirement's there, he argues, is because it's a new RFO um regulation, uh new RFO regulation, which didn't go through the formal notice process.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And again, to the RFO's defense, they did go through a comment portion.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: 1,600 different submissions came back with comments and they released their you said we did process.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so it wasn't, you know, it's not like, hey, they're just throwing everything away and they're gonna start all over and they're not gonna get notice or comment from everyone.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't necessarily follow the exact uh what do you call it, uh comment notice period, exactly the way uh is used in other ways, but they did give enough time, they did wait for submissions, they did make changes based on those submissions.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I mean Don has a point.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, things have to change.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think things are changing the for the better for contractors overall.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think there is more competition, they're focusing on mission and making sure the right people are getting to the right products, the agencies can get into the touch with the right people quicker.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I think overall, I think there's a lot of benefits to a contractor, not just this one particular negative.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And once people once the contractors catch up to some of the new new regulations, I think overall it's gonna be good.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my my hot take on this, maybe it's not a hot take, but it's it's gonna be a challenging um fight to win, I think.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the deviations are in place.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't necessarily um say in the original FAR regulation that you only can deviate so much.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit of a sneaky move, you can say.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: But as as you may we I mean, we know the RFO uh team, um uh a lot of members there really well.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the challenge that they were up against, as up against, as you mentioned, getting this 180 days.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think the reason why it may be hard, though, is is they are they were they're moving very quickly into the uh rulemaking process while the interim process is happening.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so utilizing a legal method like the deviation process, while you're moving quickly into the rulemaking, they are considering comments.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if if you if you talk to the RFO team, they're very open to this situation.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to answer the the needs of the administration, but also do it in a fair way.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: That may be a hard argument for Don acquisition.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and sweeping change this large.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they I'm sure they expected some kind of pushback from somewhere, whether it's Don or someone else.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure they expected pushback.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and good on Don for uh doing that.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's challenging it, reasonable challenge, and we'll see where it goes.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: We'll update you here on The Far is Lava on that.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot to mention that all of our news is brought to you by the Daily Dose.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: That is our newsletter daily, Monday through Friday newsletter on all things procurement news.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you click the link in the description, you'll see our daily dose there.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: You can subscribe, and then Monday to Friday, all this news will be sent to your inbox, and you can pick the stories that are most interesting to you, or just wait and listen to us talk about it, and we'll tell you which stories there should be most interesting to you or the ones I want to talk about.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right, next news story.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: NASA Soup 6 has just been awarded.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's a giant increase from uh originally.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think they had a couple hundred companies now.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's 2,000 and 115 companies have been awarded in three different categories of IT solutions, IT services, mission level services.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so, you know, we're going from I think it was 147 contractors originally for 80 billion.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's way higher than that.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, soup stands for solution for enterprise wide procurement.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: A good old GWAC.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: With the ducks.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: With the ducks.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you see a duck logo, that's NASA, that's soup.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I always wondered why, if it was soup, they didn't use soup, but the duck, I think, is in a bowl of soup, isn't it?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: The duck is in the steaming bowl of water or something.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't think about why.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a perfect connection.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Zuck soup.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Nailed it.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm a huge fan of soup.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I love I've been using, I was using soup back in 2011 when there were certainly were not 2,000 companies, but it was a very streamlined, very easy way for me to not only acquire IT services, but also um set aside uh quickly to a uh any sort of small business category, which now the new RFO part 16, you don't have to set aside.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: You still can, though.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Soup, I'm sure the new Soup 6 allows that same kind of filtering and set aside capabilities.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a$60 billion ceiling, so way larger.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it does have services component, where before it might have been just IT, uh now it has services and customized IT, so it's a lot larger.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it is 2,000.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of makes you makes you wonder if you're a company awarded into a soup, you know, into soup six, you know, you make soup five, but here you are in soup six, you're excited, and then you realize, oh, there's two thousand other companies.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so is there major advantages of being in soup then if you have to you're gonna compete the same way you competed outside of soup, yeah.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: In theory, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's gonna throw their name into the hat, all the IT companies.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's it's funny when when companies get awarded any multiple award contract.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So a contract for a multiple award contract, and the ceiling for that contract may be like, you know, three billion or something.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of companies will maybe not understand what that means entirely, but they'll do a press release.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, we just got awarded a$3 billion contract.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then what they don't realize is, well, no, you just got uh accepted into the pool, the pond where people can fish from.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: But you want to be to answer your question.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta be in the pond.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be in that pond.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um you want to be in as many ponds as you can, to be honest, especially with the RFO and their emphasis on uh for contracting officers to consider these government-wide vehicles first.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're not in the pond and you're just in the open market, uh chances are a lot of requirements you're not even gonna see because the COs are gonna be fishing in those ponds first, and if you're gonna miss out.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when you were acquiring IT, uh when you were with uh the DOD, would you start looking at companies that you were interested in and then find out, oh, they are in soup, great.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's a way that I can get them on, I can award them, or would you go to Soup first and say, okay, which IT service or IT companies here are in soup and then start narrowing it down from there.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, after going through my mandatory sources, part eight, um, I would look at either GSA or uh an existing part eight or an existing uh contract usually.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I a lot of what I use soup for were uh IT buys, simple IT buys, computers, so even IT products, but also services, things that it really didn't make much sense for me to go into the open market uh necessarily.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I would go.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: As part of my market research, I would go and look and I mean you can send RFIs out on Soup and say, hey, who can do this?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And just get a quick response, and then that'll let you know you have enough competition in this vehicle.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And usually these vehicles are supposed to be very streamlined in their task order process.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole reason why you'd want to use them is because you can order more quickly than even doing a part 12 uh procurement.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, I used them quite a bit for that reason.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um But yeah, if you're one of the 2000, you you may be in the pool, but just understand, you know, you you still have to fight, you still have to fight for that.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of part 16 competitions, they call that fair opportunity, they look like full-blown, sometimes depending on the dollar value, full blown part 15 requirements.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's a trade-off analysis.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna feel like even though you're in this pool, you're you're doing the same thing, but you're doing it with a lot less competitors, so it's still a good thing.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, congrats to NASA.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a huge improvement from five to six.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I do want to shout out longtime soup leader Joanne Wojtek.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she's retiring after leading the program since 1999.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Don't know her personally, but that's a long time.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: She's in the soup.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: You've been in the soup a long time.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Been in the soup, been stewing in there for a stewing in there for a long time.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people she wasn't actually gonna retire earlier, but said, I want to see soup six through.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And she stuck through it.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And congratulations.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there you go.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: What's her name?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Joanne.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Joanne.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's good because there was there's always this uh conversation after the RFO and some of these executive orders about GSA, everything consolidating to GSA, that soup was gonna go to GSA.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like this is gonna stay.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, with NASA, we talk a lot about Neil Armstrong and landing on the moon and Artemis.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: What did we talk about?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: They did soup too.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's just as good.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's just as good as landing on the moon.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's stick with some G Wax, multiple ward vehicles, and talk talk a little bit about part 16.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make sure we're getting enough RFO material in here.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And our RFO segments, you never know when they're gonna come, but it's coming right now, is always brought to you by ASI Education Pro.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is our online subscription-based learning platform where you can watch our YouTube videos and additional content, but get credits for it.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: CLPs for watching entertaining training videos.
• 17:31
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• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Click the link in the description.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: ASI Education Pro, the Netflix of training platforms for government procurement employees.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Government contracting the non-boring way.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And is part 16 our part of the week?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Part of the week.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right, good.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um which you know it's good, it's a good lead-in from the soup story here, another um multiple ward vehicle like soup.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and a number of things have changed, right?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: There have been a few things that have changed from the Yeah, part part 16 is a beast.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing a we're doing a series on our Pro Channel where we're doing a five-minute version of each part of the FAR, just a five-minute video talking about each part.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And 16 was hard because half of 16 is on fixed price versus cost, which has its own discussion now with new executive orders.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: The other half is on uh ordering from these task order delivery order vehicles, setting them up, uh, like requirements contracts, boas, uh, and IDIQs, but also ordering from them.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the new ordering procedures are 16.507 different from 16.505.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Huge change.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And seven is like the perfect number.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's the number huge deviation.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so 16.507, which does have that does have some changes in the new RFO.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you're allowed to have blanket purchase agreements inside multiple ward I DIQ contracts.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: For the first time ever.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's pretty big.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think people are still um talking about whether this is really a big deal or not.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say from my experience, it is a it is a big deal.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it used to be so a a base a uh blanket purchase agreement is its own ordering vehicle.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you're basically able to create an ordering vehicle within an ordering vehicle.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you could always do that with federal supply schedules in part eight.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So federal federal supply schedules, huge, massive schedules that GSA does.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: You could create an ordering vehicle uh in there, but I could never, as a CEO, create an ordering vehicle on Soup, uh, or Oasis is another one, or even create an ordering vehicle off of my own ordering.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Agencies can create IDI keys too.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: But can you do a BPA now inside of Soup?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is that Yeah.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Soup actually they they narrow the field of 2000 down to your own special, yeah, special brand.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the big GWAC, GWAC is government-wide acquisition contract.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's for IT services especially, or Max, multiple award contracts.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Most of these government-wide vehicles from part 16 have now added language in their ordering procedures to allow uh for these BPAs.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if I had like, if I was um wanting to do an ordering vehicle uh and I wanted to compete it among the 2,000 folks in soup, that BPA would be a streamlined task order process.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So me creating that base would not be this whole thing of like setting up an IDIQ or or like even a BPA in part 12.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: I could use the task order process, which is very streamlined, to set up my own ordering vehicle process.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think you do have to consider fair opportunity.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if you do BPAs off of Soup, for example, you want to get as many as possible to do fair opportunity, but you can also just do single award and uh just award to one company and say, you know what, we're gonna do a BPA for this and we'll just order as needed.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the there's the addition of on-ramps and off-ramps.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have a contractor that would like to be in Soup or any other uh multi-award uh contract, they have to have a way to bring people on and off, especially when these things go for years and years.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I look at it like you hire a new employee, you gotta have they have to be allowed to get in and out of the insurance, right?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Have light, big life events happening.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Anything interesting there?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just looks pretty reasonable that if it's gonna be a long uh multi-award contract, that at some point you need to offload bad contractors and bring on people that didn't exist before.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is the reason why with AI I didn't I didn't choose to go a lot of times with GSA or existing multiple award contracts, because I was looking for new market entrants.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um and a lot of these uh multiple award contracts had the same old faces.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um so to use another analogy with the pool, you're just making sure you're bringing new fish in and then the and then scooping the dead fish out, you know, the dead fish that are floating at the top and smelling, creating a stench.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: You get those things out.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then the on ramping and off ramping, making that easy for new entrants to come in just makes your pool fresh.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of these multiple award contracts, they're preferred, but they can also grow stale.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the way they grow stale is It's just you're not representing the current marketplace.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's continue back into the news.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: That was your ARFO segment, uh, segment 16.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions about part 16, drop a comment or question down below and we'll answer it.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And read uh read 16.507 uh recommendation in its entirety.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's a it's a part you'll want to know about.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Moving on, uh the next news story is about the SBA releasing new guidance on the 8-8 social disadvantages here.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's new uh guidance for individually owned businesses and having the basically having to prove their social disadvantage uh to enter the 8-8 program.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you're already there, you don't have to fall into this just yet.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're trying to enter, there are some new regulations.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um historically, it was if you were part of a racial or ethnic group then and that was disadvantaged, then you, you're kind of grandfathered in, then you're a disadvantaged.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's changed.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: 2023, they you know found out the courts said, look, that's unconstitutional.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: We can't keep doing that.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: The language kind of remained in there, and there was not a lot of process around it.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Just had to kind of give a personal narrative of why you were disadvantaged.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now there is some guidance.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so in 2026, the language is removed, guidance is going to be added in there.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um so anyone that is an individually owned A-day applicant, now you have to uh show that you are part of an identifiable group that is discriminated.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you have to um first you know, first show the group.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is the group.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: I need to be part of that group, so show that you're part of the group, and then kind of show the material harm uh because of being in that group.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: So those three things have to happen, and you have to prove it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Which that sounds tricky.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know exactly what that looks like, uh, but you got to find some way to prove it.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so you can look at whether there's government programs that uh or affirmative action, DAIs, there's a couple things that are referenced here, or some kind of set-asides or hiring targets potentially that harmed you.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so now you didn't get some kind of contract that you should have, should have, okay, great.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there's ways you can they say you can show this, uh, but it's a brand new process, and it's gonna be curious to see what that looks like in uh reality.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the the A-day drama continues in this day and age.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I mean, just one general comment about what's going on right now, and I know if you you've seen this, if you're you're watching this, um is really just this kind of it, it's uh it's two conflicting uh policies.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: So the RFO is moving toward this uh this emphasis on the mission.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's the very first guiding principle.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is uh it the first and foremost, you need to satisfy the mission, you need to focus on merit, uh, you need to focus on the contractor who performs the best, not any sort of status or you know, but you know, statutes still exist.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a bunch of secondary missions that that just still exist in contracting.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if you um uh oh well ex one example is we interviewed a Navajo owned company in Arizona, uh really good defense company.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: So technically speaking, they were, I think they they would be able to carry their own in a full competition without any sort of preference that they statutorily have.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: But they also satisfy a mission, like a percentage of those dollars that you give to that Navajo company go toward a reservation.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: They explain that reservation is the size of Rhode Island and it has one bank.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: So so there's a piece of this where it's like, well, yes, we need to satisfy the the the military mission, that's first and foremost.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: But can we satisfy this mission and also satisfy the secondary mission of having this the money that we spend go back to the Navajo Nation?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing with Ability One.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: So Ability One, if you were to just say mission first, merit first, just pure merit first, Ability One would then need to compete with everybody else.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't be a mandatory source because w why would they?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a we're in a pure capitalist, you know, it's it's the the most highly qualified company.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't do that, right?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: We we we have a secondary purpose of making sure we have this program to give jobs to Americans that are disabled uh or blind.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so even with the push the RFO has toward making sure we uh award towards merit, towards um you know, superior performance, you still have these secondary missions.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is when you just focus on checking boxes on eight A just to get a quick contract in, and the mission suffers.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're just trying to satisfy the secondary mission and you're losing the whole point of what you're spending dollars on.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why they have these eight A rules where they're you know they're like, hey, don't you can't go directly to an A anymore.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: You at least need to compete the eight A.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we assure that there's some kind of merit-based selection involved.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you can it's a lot easier to not um to leave an eight-day company.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because again, it's saying, well, if the mission's suffering, you shouldn't have to necessarily stay with this eight-day company.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it's trying to balance those two.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not perfect right now.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it's still you know, it's not in the RFO, it's not purely meeting the mission in the federal government.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: It never is.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have all these other statutes where we're trying to benefit uh tribal organizations and blind Americans and and uh groups like that.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: As we should.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, there's a no longer a presumed disadvantage.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: You have to kind of prove it.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: But again, this as the administrations change, I'm sure we'll be talking about this again here at some point and going the other direction.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the reality is we we really weren't as a as a workforce looking at the mission enough.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like are we really getting what we pay for?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a good push that we're focusing on that too.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: So back to focusing on the mission, uh a federal judge strikes down Pentagon's anthropic uh blacklisting.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the story is um Anthropic told the government, told Trump, and Heggs said we are not going to give you mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: That made them mad.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh they said, well, you're a supply chain risk.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And supply chain risk was typically given to you know foreign entities that there's an actual supply chain risk of bringing in products or services.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not companies based in California.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so they kind of gave this designation that's never really been used uh domestically before.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, What's give what gifts?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, come on.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but they it appeared they did it to as kind of retaliation because Anthropic said, no, you can't use our wild AI products in those pretty wild ways, and they didn't like it and said, well, then fine, we're not playing anymore.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: You can keep your ball, we're going over here.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the judge agreed with Anthropic and said, look, that designation is an improper retaliation.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the judge did rule in favor of Anthropic and said, no, that's not okay.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Take that away.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are still some more.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's one additional um court case in the U.S.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Court of Appeals for DC because there are just so many products that are still kind of using uh Anthropic's products, and they don't really know, okay, that designation went away, but can we can we or can't we use it?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there's still some gray area, but it was a big win for anthropic, which you know, looking out for the little guys.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was worried.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was worried, but it it is good.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you gotta, you know, this is a story about you have to be able to compete and give everyone an opportunity, and just because you don't like someone personally or a company personally, you can't just use any rule, any regulation to kind of you know shut that competition down and move on from them.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And even uh at the highest level.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my I mean that's my take on this, is so much of this could just be resolved in the contracting process.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think where where the Pentagon could get in trouble is when they do a categoric band or they move above the contracting process.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, I you know, this I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but it's from a from my DOD experience, there's there's a lot of uh Silicon Valley companies, or there's some who are just not informed about, you know, and I'll say uh this is just my opinion, just not very uh speaking with um intelligence on the subject when it comes to our real secure national security matters, and that's just that just comes with it.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: You see a lot of probably not smart decisions made by the technical ideas like fail fast, which it has a lot of merit when you're building technology.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little riskier when fail fast means okay, now China or other companies have full access to data.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and over uh inflating uh the Skynet era of military abusing so that reminds me of a story, I can't remember what product it wasn't Roomba, so I'm not gonna call out Roomba, but it was another large uh vacuum, AI vacuum robot company.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a glitch in the system where a user was able to access not just his camera, but all cameras of every vacuum anywhere in the world.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And could control it.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: So he could control the vacuum with the camera on as well, you know, to zoom around people's houses.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he did it a couple of times and finally went to that company and said, Hey, this is probably an issue.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: So things like that.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just seems, you know, it's like, oh, it's a vacuum.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just, come on, let's just get this out there, this product out there.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: It does have potential major risks.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's reasons for concern, but there's also exaggerations, I think, from the tech companies that just show that maybe they're not read into some of the real security risks.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing I mean, with with what the Pentagon can do is um they can still have a fair competition with Anthropic.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: If Anthropic's gonna say, well, you can't use my technology for this purpose, then the Pentagon can say, fine.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then just not award, not award them the contract.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the easiest way to do this for the the Pentagon is to just not award and it's just and and Anthropic is giving the Department of War reasons to not be an awardable contractor.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they're gonna miss out because they're protesting they're gonna they want those DoD dollars, and yet they're saying that they're not gonna play necessarily.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: So all all the DoD has to do is say, well, listen, if you're gonna get this contract, you need to agree to this, this, this.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: If they say no, say, okay, well, thanks for playing, you don't get the contract.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the Pentagon could have made that a requirement, right?
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Full open use of your data.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: This could all be resolved through the contracting process.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, once again, the contract office is the hero of most situations.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: The CEO should have been involved.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Should have been involved.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, finally.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um our last news story uh GSA begins charging agencies for USAI.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: USAI, the p that platform was free.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a way to get just test the need, the usage, how offices are gonna leverage AI, and that was free.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Basically get you hooked on the drug.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they're gonna pull that out.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now you have to pay for it.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I still kind of wonder if all the employees are just pulling out their computer and using ChatGPT anyway.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's gone.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's gonna be a fixed flat platform fee plus usage costs, et cetera.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be interesting to see.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you dealt with AI and in the Jake joint AI Center?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Center.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say C okay.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, formally we were called the Jacob.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: The Jacob?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm just okay.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: The Jake.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: And do you think it what do you what are your thoughts on having one giant platform that all government can tap into versus agencies kind of working and creating their own AI products instead?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's what's gonna happen now.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now people are like, well, this isn't free.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Should we we tested it out?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Here's some limitations.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Should we do things over here on our on our own?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious to see what's gonna happen if people are gonna make their own or they're all just gonna pitch in and pay for US AI, which is a great name.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And my in in just my uh experience, anything that starts with enterprise-wide usually equals failure.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's trying to boil the ocean on something where we still want to experiment with.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I always like the idea of agencies um running their own safe uh GPTs.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is the uh another problem with the government on the other side of it is that we are really fragmented.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: We do things a lot differently.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's not enough unification and standardization.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: But yes, I think we're far enough, I think, with generative AI where there could be a platform.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'd just be curious to see what what that platform is.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then how much I think this is another way to um maybe uh uh to word this article is GAs realizing how expensive AI is now.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is infrastructure and tokens and all that that and uh GSA's like, all right, well, you guys are gonna have to help pay for this too if we're gonna have this.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I like the idea of a of a platform that the whole government can use.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're far enough now in the maturity of the technology where enterprise-wide makes sense, but then the question is with the government always is is this gonna be a piece of junk that everyone has to use now?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where, like you said, where CEOs are secretly using GPT because the commercial product's better than the the government, or is it really something that's useful that the government uses?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a instances of that.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: So and I'll give ASI Education Pro another shout-out because if you are procuring AI this year, we have a 12, 13 part series, uh uh training series on buying AI called Buy AI.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Buy AI.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I'll tutor on a horn, but it's a great training curriculum.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you're interested, if you are buying AI and there's a lot that goes into it, and you will have to buy AI now because it's no longer free, so stop being too cheap.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Just pay for it.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: But before you pay for it, take a little training on how and why and what's unique about per procuring AI.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: All right, that's our news.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Any more news stories, Will, that we need to cover?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we're good.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's there's so much more.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a ton out there.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: If there's stuff that you want us to cover, just send us a link, whether it's on LinkedIn or a comment below.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about the different stories out there.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um we usually do these the week prior.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: We release them, so we're a little behind on the news stories, uh, but we'll get to them.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: So make sure you send us what you want us to talk about and we'll do that.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh every week we want to talk about a protest because I think a protest is a great way to look at uh who's doing things well, where there's some errors, and so we can learn from mistakes from the contractor or from uh the agency side.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And this protest comes to us brought to brought to us by Vidarity, Vidarity Inc.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: This one's a fun one.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: It says a great one.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the agency failed to properly investigate evaluators' conflict.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a conflict of interest on the evaluator side that Viderity called out.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that brings us to the protest.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, really quick, shout out to DOI, Department of Interior.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now they were doing this contract for HHS.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I know we're gonna go into some mistakes here with DOI, but we use DOI and Department of Defense.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're expensive, they're assisted acquisition fee, but they were awesome.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: At least the office we worked with uh over there, I think it's in Arlington or something.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think they did not a lot here they did really, they did wrong.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's you we can there's a clear direction we can point a finger in.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: They relied on some false information that maybe they should have looked into more.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: But they're they're a great office.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I do we actually know what they were buying?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: What was I always like knowing what they're buying because every time I read a protest, I'm thinking some somewhere some customer is saying, Where's my service?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Where's my services?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: We can look it up.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: We'll look it up.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'll put it below while you're while we're looking.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I'll I'll read some information.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: You want to, is it up on your screen?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they I don't think they said it.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let me let me look and see that.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so DOI awarded Bixel an order for communication infrastructure support.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's not that's still pretty vague.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: Very generic.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Communication infrastructure.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: That could be uh rotary phones for all we know.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um by Dardy protested and alleged that one of the agency's evaluators identified by GAO as Miss X.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Ms.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: X.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this is we talked about Etta last week who writes all of these reports.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um she's uh a lawyer for GA uh GAO that does all this, and I love that.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Called her Mrs.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: X.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's her decision or not, but so now Miss X potentially had a conflict of interest involving Bixel.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, specifically specifically Vidarity alleged that Miss X had previously consulted for Bixel and advised the company concerning this requirement and its potential recompete, which does sound like uh conflict of interest.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: But Miss X said she had never been employed by Bixel or served as a consultant for Bixel.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: That in fact was a lie.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: So Miss X was she part of the source election?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think she was part of she was part of the source election on selecting who this contractor was.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they chose Bixel, and she previously was a consultant for Bixel.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Huge conflict of interest, organizational conflict of interest, unfair competitive advantage, and and uh what is it?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: What's the uh Vidarity?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Viderity blew the whistle.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing DOI could have done.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: So they DOI asked, hey, had had you, Miss X, have you worked for them before?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: She said no.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the blame falls squarely on her.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Miss X is the villain.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was it's she sounds like a clue character.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was Miss X with the with the consulting contract in the source lecture.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: In the cafeteria.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then when they asked Bixel, they said, Oh yeah, we had an agreement with her.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so Bixel confirmed it.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't hide it.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: Good on good on Bixel.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna hide this.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, Bixel voluntarily brought it up, right?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: When they found out, after the the the contracting officer said, we don't see anything, we asked Ms.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: X, she said no.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's no OCI.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it was Bixel that actually said, oh, hold on a second.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and they're the ones who stand to lose the contract.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: So good on them for you know, otherwise, you know, the the contract goes in, there's money being spent, then you know, then all of a sudden it's much more difficult to uh unravel all this.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's good for them to do that uh ahead of time or early before everything happens.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um it it should be noted that DOI hasn't necessarily found any actual um problems with the evaluation.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: That you know, the issue was now that they didn't bring this forward, now there's some costs.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Vidarity has some costs associated with trying to bring this out.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so they said, yes, we need to compensate Viderity for these costs of going through this filing and pursuing this conflict of interest.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but they're not necessarily saying yes, there is a clear conflict of interest.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little premature for that.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um just because someone had a working relationship with another company doesn't automatically rule that company out from working with DOI and HHS.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: They might be the best company.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're still they could still certainly be the best company, and they probably were.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: They won the contract.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there is a little bit of a um uh you think you get a little bit of a head start, especially if they're saying that this person actually helped them and consulted them on how to win the award.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so lesson for COs out there.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: So so what this what this shows is one, uh if you're a CEO watching this, you've probably gotten an OCI issue before.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: OCIs are huge, they're a big problem.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're a source of many protests or a reason, a basis for many protests.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you get that, uh DOI's challenge was uh what the court said is they didn't investigate enough.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but also, like you, like you mentioned, this wasn't a sustained protest.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: They actually took corrective action.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this is another lesson for COs out there.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Even when you take corrective action, if if the claim that you took corrective action on was meritorious, right?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: If there's some wording there, then you may actually have to pay that protester, even though they didn't get a protest that was sustained because it never went there and you did a corrective action, they still may be entitled to reimbursement for all that effort in getting you to take that corrective action if it was, what's the terminology?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh potentially meritorious or had potential to have merit in an actual protest.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that was what the whole protest was about is yeah, you're still paying for this because even though you took corrective action, this wasn't technically a sustained protest.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the company that pro that protested went through a lot of resources to get you to do that, and they were right.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: Does Bixel have a uh responsibility here to disclose this earlier in the process?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think they did it during the protest.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: But let's say, you know, they they're meeting Miss X and they're just talking about and she's saying, Hey, look, there's this competition coming up soon.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: You guys would be great for it.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, you know, now that we're working together, I can tell you some things about this.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is that, you know, does is that just uh you know benefit to Bixel and they could say, Great, we're gonna use this information, we're not breaking any laws, we don't have to disclose this, but we'll use the information we have, and it's up to the you know, the office then to decide what to do about it, or does Bixel is there are there details in somewhere in the FAR or in the competition that would have said, like if there's any, you know, if you have inside information on this, it's up to the contractor as well as the office to deal with it.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so subpart 9.5 is OCIs, organizational conflicts of interest.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: In their contractor has the uh obligation to immediately disclose.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: But this is where I mean it it's good that the CO is the reason why the CO is investigating this more, because you'd like to think that Miss X, even though she lied, uh but Miss X did not have the intention to sway the comp uh the competition at all, you'd like to think that Bixel had no idea that Miss X was in the source election, that it was just like or the situation could be Bixel knew exactly that Miss that Miss X was in that room and they knew they were going to get the contract because she was there and Miss Bixel was sway.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: So but you until some more research is done, which is what the CEO is doing apparently right now, you just don't know yet.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this this is a good one.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: A good learning for everybody.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Miss X, if you're out there, we get it.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: We all make mistakes.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: So move on, do some great work.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Don't lie.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Don't lie anymore.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Don't lie anymore.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and Edda, thank you for you're gonna do work for GAO on.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Ed is edited again.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Ed is edited again.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: She rocks.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing gets by Edda.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: And these are long.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about that when you mentioned that last week.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: These are long reports.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: We have to read, we read these things for you guys.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a while just to read them.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: And she wrote it.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone knows in the comments why Edda's writing all these.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like it it, you know, she she's a she's a work horse.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: She's a power horse.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's a lot of content to write.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of content just to read, but she's writing all of it.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now the GAO, there is a panel, I think.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just Edda deliberating.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: She's writing the she's writing the opinion on this.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: All right, that's our protest of the week.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that gets us to our final segment of uh questions from our listeners.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: And again, we're going back to any of our videos to get questions.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so questions, questions, questions.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you have them, please put them in the comments below.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Give them to us.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, we'll we'll read them here on live on the air.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this one, first question is from Jen L2W.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: Jen at L Jen L2W.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a five-minute video on how clauses are created?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: The clauses.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: The clauses.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think we have a video on clauses specifically.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're working on a far RFO in five minutes for part 52, which is the clauses and provisions.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: Provisions are uh for newbies out there.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: Provisions you stick in solicitation.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're like clauses for solicitations that will be clauses once they're contracts.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there is language, I think it's in um in part fifty two on how a clause.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is created.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: We could do a video.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: I never thought of doing a video on the actual creation of clauses.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know why this question may be asked.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big issue right now with the RFO.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and so new clauses are being created, and because of the deviations, there's clauses like which clause are we using?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of clauses that used to work in the old FAR are now being replaced by new clauses.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Clause dates are important.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: So every clause will have a date showing when that clause was in effect.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because you you also have clauses in contracts, but then and those clauses are supposed to stay during the life of that contract, but you can add clauses.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a concern that we're gonna have as just all these clauses come roaring back and we're gonna fill up all the space that the RFO delete it from the original FAR?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean just the clause gonna have to kind of I don't think part fifty-two will change much.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think they are they are adding some clauses and removing some.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: But far part fifty two will always be the longest part of the FAR.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's all the all the clauses.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the part we always say is the most important part to read because that's the uh uh uh unlike the rest of the FAR, part fifty two is the actual language that goes in contract.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're reading actual contract language.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh next question.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Bobba Joe Bob.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: At Boba Joe Bob.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: I just looked for 1.102-5e in the RFO to see what you were talking about, or see that you were talking about is 1.402-1B.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of kind of that same vibe?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: Random curiosity.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: So nerdy as I know exactly what he's talking about.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know for what video that was.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was, but we were we're referring to a part in the old FAR in part one.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is that 1.105 E?
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 1.105, 1.1025E.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: 1.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh where it says if it's not in the FAR and it's not in regulation, if it's like a process or a policy, you can do it.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, if if if it doesn't say you can't, you can.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that part has been changed.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the what did the person refer to as the new the new one?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: 1.4021B.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of that same vibe question mark?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is the same vibe, but it's not the replacement language.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that what he's referring to, that that's talking about the the contracting officer.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: 1.4.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is 1.4, is that right?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: 1.402 1b.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: 1.402 is talking about contracting officer responsibilities.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there's one little sentence um that the RFO added, which is that site he gave, which is basically the contracting officer has broad discretion.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: It says something else.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: But that's basically the vibe.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the actual language though that I mentioned earlier, where it's if it doesn't say you can't, it's allowed, that's still in uh the RFO, but it's in um, oh man, I'm gonna see if I'm right on this.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's in 1.102 B, I think.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: So 1.102 A is the guiding principles of the new RFO.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: You go to B, and paragraph B is important too.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: It talks about the acquisition team.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a little paragraph in there and during the uh uh in this section of the acquisition team that basically says if the acquisition team can uh can I'm gonna paraphrasing uh far as lava style, uh, you can basically do stuff if it's not prohibited.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: But is the word stuff anywhere in the far?
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I hope.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Control fine.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: I hope it's in the Buy America Act.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like we list all those items and list of other stuff.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's the language is there.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just got moved to 1.102 uh B5, I believe.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can fact check me in the comments.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we will.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, please do.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's the fun part.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was a great question.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the kind of questions we want.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Really get into the meat.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Will.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Anything else before we close out here?
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Remember to honor um Commercial Solutions opening on September 17th.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: Have yourself a little commercial, maybe go buy stuff in the commercial marketplace.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: Go buy some.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Take your loved one to the mall.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us on The Far Is Lava, where we dissect the headlines so you don't have to.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, leave a comment or question below, and share the episode with a friend.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: The Far Is Lava is sponsored by ASI Government, editorial work by Anne Laurent, produced in collaboration with Studio Podcast Tweets.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be back next week with another round of stories through the lens of the RFO.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, everyone.