At Public Spend Forum, we’re proud of the work we’ve done to connect buyers and suppliers in the public sector. We’re also struck by the irony that in few markets would this type of work really be required. When a private company decides it needs products or services, offers can be solicited...

Nancy Alvarez manages the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Dallas-Fort Wort District’s 8(a) Business Development program and offers her insights on opening doors to contracts with federal agencies nationwide. “But you have to be ready,” she says. Due to estimated budget increases, now...

A recent protest decision from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) provides several important lessons for procurement professionals who are buying cloud-enabled services as well as vendors hoping to sell them. Let’s dive in!Red River Computing Company protested the Department of Homeland...

Within private sector procurement, there are a number of advanced technologies that are beginning to reshape how we think about the role of “buying.” Perhaps the best place to start is in the world of sourcing itself. When I first started in the profession, top performing private sector...

To satisfy the market research needs of federal buyers, many IT firms in the federal sector create marketing materials and presentations that are often nothing more than introductions to the firm, the firm’s capabilities, and little else that fail to discuss the one thing that is important to...

Late last month, the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council proposed an unusual rule, one that specifically stated that agencies are encouraged to engage in “responsible and constructive exchanges with industry, so long as those exchanges are consistent with existing laws and regulations, and...

If you haven’t yet, you should check out our brand new Public Spend Forum YouTube channel, where we’re posting a lot of short videos that offer practical tips to help you in your job every day. In one of our latest, retired Air Force acquisition officer and author Dan Ward talks about a really...

This presentation on micro-credentials was delivered by Frank McNally, Public Spend Forum’s Director of Learning and Content Development, at the 2016 Acquisition Excellence conference. It surveys the learning theory that supports micro-credentials and describes the characteristics of...

Did you know you can earn continuous learning credits by publishing content like blog posts and articles to the Open Global Community? Check with your career manager and confirm your writing goals and topic of interest, then use our criteria to qualify your contributions for professional......

We are back with new episodes of the Public Impact Podcast, the only podcast telling stories of success and innovation in the public sector. These are stories that you won’t always read in the newspaper, but that need to shared and celebrated. Like our episode this week, about creating a 21st...

What if I told you that in 2010, the Department of Defense built its fastest supercomputer for 1/10th the cost of comparable machines? And what if I told you the team responsible for building it didn’t have tons of time and resources, just a bunch of old PlayStation 3s? Welcome to your new...

You hear it time and again: If it weren’t for the regulations, we’d have loads of innovation in the public sector. Nowhere in government is there a more maligned document than the FAR, the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which has been blamed for any number of hurdles and failures in federal...