Contracting intelligence for small and minority-owned businesses, from the TIKC advisory team.
The archive
Page 18 of 24 · Newest first
Non-competitive federal contract awards hit 14.8% of all awards in H1 2026, up from 12.6% in H1 2025. That is a measurable, accelerating trend that…
Army Directive 2026-17 shuts down hundreds of official Army social media accounts including its 25,000-follower LinkedIn page. For small business and nontraditional contractors who relied…
GAO sustained a bid protest finding that the Army’s $50 billion MAPS professional services contract violated the Small Business Act by prohibiting small businesses from…
Trax International is suing the Army at the Court of Federal Claims, alleging AI hallucinated weaknesses in its proposal that cost it a $450M contract…
Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg sent a memo directing up to $243.9M to Palantir without competitive bidding — naming the company first and citing…
VA’s CCN Next Gen — a decade-long, hundreds-of-billions community care overhaul — begins awarding in August. The primes are health plans; the opportunity for small…
A proposed FAR rule would standardize how all contractors handle Controlled Unclassified Information — with 72-hour incident reporting and real False Claims Act exposure.
SBA’s recertification rules now in effect can strip set-aside eligibility after a merger or acquisition. If you’re growing or selling, the timing of the deal…
On its 73rd anniversary, SBA launched a modernized SBA.gov to streamline access to capital, counseling, and contracting — with a sharpened focus on manufacturers.
GSA’s OneGov strategy is putting frontier AI in agencies’ hands for pennies. Here’s what the shift to centralized commercial buying means for small GovCon firms.
Agencies are buying AI, cyber, and modernization at scale. If your capability statement still leads with staff augmentation, it’s costing you teaming invites.
Agencies must publicly post their sole-source and fair-opportunity-exception justifications. Here’s how to turn those postings into a capture pipeline.
Weekly newsletter
The Briefing is the TIKC weekly federal contracting newsletter covering policy changes, opportunities and practical next steps for small businesses.
