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After years of anticipation, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Council has announced the arrival of its proposed rule to enhance the safeguarding of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in federal contracts (the Proposed Rule). Published in the Federal Register on January 15, 2025 (90 FR 4278), the Proposed Rule (stemming from FAR Case 2017-016) has been a long time coming and is intended to establish a government-wide standard for managing sensitive information, ensuring CUI uniformity and consistency across all agencies and federal contracts.Continue Reading They Did It. They Really Did It! The Arrival of the FAR CUI Proposed Rule

On January 8, 2025, in UNICA-BPA JV, LLC, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained a protester’s challenge to its elimination from the competition for failing to have an active System for Award Management (SAM) registration at the time of its initial proposal submission. The GAO sustained the protest because the protester’s registration was in fact active at the time it submitted its final proposal revision (FPR) even though it was inactive at the time of initial proposal submission. The facts of the case are straightforward:Continue Reading What Happens When Uncle Sam Doesn’t Understand SAM? The Case of the Lucky Protester . . .

In Percipient.ai v. United States, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit may have triggered a legal “Big Bang” moment in government procurement law. The case centered on whether the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act’s (FASA) “task order bar” could suppress claims alleging violations of 10 U.S.C. § 3453, which mandates a preference for commercial products. The Panel’s interpretation of the Tucker Act’s definition of “interested party” expanded the universe of standing, allowing prospective subcontractors to exert gravitational influence in legal challenges regardless of their role as indirect offerors. At the risk of offending real physicists, from a legal perspective, the Percipient.ai v. United States decision looks to expand a universe of legal scrutiny. Like the cosmic forces that shape galaxies, the Percipient.ai decision may shape the parameters of government contracting jurisdiction and procedural fairness in the procurement process.Continue Reading Big Bang?: The Federal Circuit, Percipient.ai, and Expanding Jurisdiction