DoD and DCAA tell contractors they can keep their fixed-price savings. Next year’s dinner is another story.

Every family has a Thanksgiving rule about leftovers. For example, whoever cooked the bird takes home the extra turkey. If the cook stretches one can of pumpkin across two pies, nobody at the table gets money back—those savings stay in the kitchen; the family notices, though. Next November, the same relatives will expect the same spread for less.

The Department of Defense (DoD or the Department) has now put that rule in writing. On October 27, 2026, the principal director of Defense Pricing, Contracting, and Acquisition Policy (DPCAP) and the director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) jointly signed Efficiency Assurance for Fixed-Price Contracts and Other Transactions (USA003070-26-DPCAP-DCAA). In short, a contractor that beats a fairly negotiated fixed price keeps the savings, and a large margin is not, standing alone, a sign of waste.

Continue Reading The Cook Keeps the Leftovers: DoD Fixed-Price Savings Rules

In a new Feature Comment published in The Government Contractor, McCarter & English attorneys Alex Major, Zachary Myers, and Franklin Turner examine why the Pentagon’s pause of CMMC Phase 2 offers no reprieve from existing cybersecurity obligations or False Claims Act exposure. Drawing on recent DOJ settlements, the authors explore how inaccurate cybersecurity assessments, misaligned security practices, and unsupported representations to the government can create significant legal and financial risks. Their central message to government contractors is clear: certification timelines may shift, but the obligation to substantiate cybersecurity compliance remains.

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For just over a year, the federal government has been running a strange experiment in technology procurement. Through its OneGov program, the General Services Administration (GSA) put leading enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) platforms in agencies’ hands for $1 or less. Three of those offers were set to expire on September 30, 2026.

Now we know what comes next, at least for one of them. On September 10, GSA announced the first agreement in the next phase of its OneGov AI strategy. The $1 price was replaced by a 27-month consumption-based arrangement running from October 1, 2026, through December 31, 2028. During this period, agencies pay no platform fee and make no minimum commitment, but they pay for usage at 50% off token-based pricing. Usage eligibility extends not only to all three federal branches but also to state, local, and tribal governments. GSA notes that the deal includes a one-year check-in and requires providers to report utilization and cost-savings data (feeling very transactional data reporting-esque).

So the free trial isn’t exactly over, but the flat price that never rose with use is gone. That changes the question for agencies. It’s no longer about whether to try it; it’s about what the technology costs at scale and what it would cost to exit.

Continue Reading The $1 AI Honeymoon Is Over, and GSA Has Drafted a Postnup

If you have opened a federal solicitation this year and felt like you were reading two rulebooks stapled together, you were not imagining it. Since the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) overhaul began, agencies have been buying under class deviations while the FAR Council works on making the new text official. The result is a generation of solicitations that cite the overhauled FAR in one clause and the old one in the next. Now the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has weighed in, and its answer is one part sympathy and three parts homework.

Continue Reading Not a Model of Clarity: GAO Takes Its First Hard Look at Solicitations That Mix the Old FAR with the New

The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council’s latest Revolutionary FAR Overhaul proposals include significant changes for federal contractors, including new rules affecting required-use contract vehicles, commercial contracting, source selection, contract types and technical data rights. McCarter Government Contracts & Global Trade partners Franklin C. Turner and Alexander W. Major examine the proposals, identify the changes that matter most for contractors and offer practical takeaways in their recent The Government Contractor article, “Separating the Wheat From the Chaff in the FAR Council’s Fall Harvest.”

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Here is a scenario that should keep every proposal manager up at night. You hit “send” on a corrected quote 29 minutes before the contracting officer’s deadline. The agency’s own email security software holds it for 42 minutes and drops it into her inbox 14 minutes late. You win the award anyway. Then the incumbent files a protest, having found the timestamps in the administrative record, and the US Court of Federal Claims (COFC) takes the award away. That is what happened in FYI-For Your Information, Inc. v. United States, No. 26-cv-0032 (Fed. Cl. Aug. 24, 2026), and the lesson is blunt. Late is late, even when the Government’s own server is the reason.

Continue Reading Held at the Gate: COFC Enjoins a DEA Award Because the Agency’s Own Email Filter Made the Winner’s Corrected Quote Late

Every driver knows the sound a missed exit makes. Silence, then 14 minutes of profane commentary. It is worse in October, when the ridgeline is on fire with color and the next turnaround is 11 miles out.

On September 1, 2026, the Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) Board (Board) published two final rules, 91 Fed. Reg. 56056 and 91 Fed. Reg. 56061. Both take effect October 1, 2026, and together they build contractors an off-ramp out of CAS. It is unmarked, and for existing contracts it does not open until your next full cost accounting period. Is your blinker on? Should it be?

Continue Reading Modified Behavior: The CAS Off-Ramp Almost Nobody Is Talking About

Labor Day has a way of sneaking up on the federal market. The fiscal year is closing, the fourth-quarter obligation sprint is in full swing, and most of us are also trying to squeeze one more week out of summer vacation. This year, the Small Business Administration (SBA) used the last stretch of summer to publish something that deserves your attention before the beach chairs go back in the garage. Its proposal would change who counts as small in nearly every industry that sells to the Government, and the comment window closes two weeks after Labor Day.

Continue Reading Small Is About to Get a Lot Bigger: SBA Proposes to Rewrite the Size Standards for Nearly Every Industry That Sells to the Government

The proposed rule is now history. On August 11, 2026, the Small Business Administration (SBA) published its final rule, Reforms to 13 CFR 124.103 To Remove SBA’s 8(a) Program’s Rebuttable Presumption of Social Disadvantage for Individually Owned Firms Only, 91 Fed. Reg. 51568 (Aug. 11, 2026) (the Rule). The Rule takes effect September 10, 2026, and by its own terms applies to all pending applications of individually-owned applicants as of that date. A firm with an application sitting in the queue will therefore be measured against a test that did not exist when it applied.

Continue Reading Prove the Policy, Not the Story: SBA’s Final Rule Rewrites the 8(a) Social Disadvantage Test

I’m totally aging myself (due to reruns) but The Jetsons (created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (1962-63)), promised us a future where you pushed a button and the “Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle,” a machine, made whatever you wanted. Dinner. Clothes. Maybe an off-brand Spacely sprocket or two. Additive manufacturing has gotten us remarkably close. Give a 3D printer the right digital file, the right material, and the right process parameters, and out comes the part. George Jetson would recognize the concept immediately. What George did not have was the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS).

Continue Reading Meet George Jetson’s Government Contractor: 3D Printing, CUI, and Who Owns the Recipe