Center for Government Contracting News

Each month, the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting highlights federal acquisition policy signals GovCon practitioners should not miss. This is a practical readout on how policy movement may affect the way agencies buy, how contractors compete, and where acquisition judgment matters.

The U.S. Small Business Administration has proposed new small business size standards for 338 industry groups and industries. SBA describes the proposal published in the Federal Register on August 20, 2026, as a simplification of small business size standards to address the overall competitiveness with specific industry group subsectors. SBA estimates the proposed rule would result in a net increase of about 114,541 businesses classified as small. Additionally, this rule change will consolidate the number of size standards across industry group subsectors.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with the Senior Vice President for Contracts and Pricing at a major government contracting firm and her team about commercial buying. The conversation reinforced a point that is easy to miss in policy discussions: commercial solutions require commercial behavior. That means government must be willing to engage the market differently, and industry must be willing to explain, candidly and constructively, what commercial buying entails. Without that mutual adjustment, commercial acquisitions risk remaining a policy imperative rather than becoming a practical success for both sides.

Video recordings of the three-part virtual discussion on Resellers and Value-Added Resellers (VARS) in federal IT acquisition. Traditionally, these intermediaries have provided more than hardware and software distribution, adding integration, configuration, compliance, and lifecycle support. Yet policymakers continue to question whether reseller markups reflect genuine value or simply increase costs through pass-through pricing. The discussion focuses on the question: What does “value added” mean when government buys capability instead of products?

This session focuses on how the RFO will affect industry as they grapple with changing terminology, regulation vs. guidance, and how they should be thinking differently about market signals coming from the new policy

At the beginning of 2026, Mike Derrios, MBA ’06, returned home to the Costello College of Business at George Mason University as the executive director of the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting.

Each month, the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting highlights federal acquisition policy signals GovCon practitioners should not miss. This is a practical readout on how policy movement may affect the way agencies buy, how contractors compete, and where acquisition judgment matters. This brief covers July 2026.

The suspension of CMMC Phase 2 should not be reduced to a win for industry or a setback for cybersecurity. It is a stress test for whether DoD can build a cyber assurance model that works in practice, not just in policy.

Federal procurement policy should therefore focus less on eliminating intermediaries and more on catalyzing added value from Resellers and ensuring that intermediary compensation reflects demonstrable value creation.

Richard A. Beutel, senior fellow of the center, examines the growing shift from traditional hardware procurement and perpetual software licensing toward cloud computing, subscription-based services, DevSecOps delivery models, and integrated digital capabilities. As federal agencies increasingly acquire technology as an ongoing service rather than as stand-alone products, the study asks a fundamental question: What constitutes “value added” in today’s federal technology marketplace?