Winning on a Promise You Cannot Keep: Fraud in the Inducement
Overstate your staff, your experience, or your capabilities to win the award, and you can poison the entire contract. Fraud in the inducement means the…
4 min read
Government Contracting News & Insights
Contracting intelligence for small and minority-owned businesses, from the TIKC advisory team.
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Page 7 of 24 · Newest first
The Coffee That Costs You the Contract: Gifts, Meals, and Gratuities
Buying lunch for a contracting officer feels like ordinary relationship building. Under the government gift rules, it can be a prohibited gratuity that embarrasses the…
5 min read
The Loyalty You Owe: Honest Services Fraud and the Hidden Conflict
You can commit a federal crime without stealing a dollar. Honest services fraud punishes the person who secretly sells out the loyalty they owe, through…
4 min read
$377 Million for the Costs It Should Not Have Billed. A Mischarging Lesson.
A major contractor agreed to pay $377 million, one of the largest procurement fraud settlements ever, over how it billed indirect costs to the government…
4 min read
The Chip That Was Not Real: Counterfeit Electronic Parts and Your Duty to Catch Them
A single counterfeit microchip in a defense system can cost lives and end a company. For many contractors, the law does not just punish knowingly…
4 min read
Signing for Your Code: The Secure Software Development Self-Attestation
If you sell software to the government, a senior executive now has to personally attest that it was built following secure development practices. That signature…
4 min read
The NDA Clause That Can Void Your Contract: The Anti-Gag Rule
That confidentiality agreement your employees sign may quietly break federal law. The anti-gag rule bars contractors from using NDAs that stop employees from reporting fraud…
4 min read
The Promises in Your Subcontracting Plan: Good-Faith Effort and the Reports That Prove It
Win a large contract and you often must promise to subcontract a share to small businesses, then report your results. Treat the plan as a…
4 min read
Who Really Controls You: Foreign Ownership, Control, and Influence Explained
Take foreign investment, hire a foreign parent, or lean on an overseas lender, and you can trigger FOCI, the rule that governs foreign ownership, control…
4 min read
The Checkboxes That Can Sink You: SAM Representations and Certifications
Every year you click through dozens of representations and certifications in SAM, often without reading them. Each one is a statement the government relies on…
4 min read
The Gear You Are Banned From Buying: Section 889 and Your Supply Chain
Section 889 bars the government from doing business with contractors that use certain Chinese telecom and surveillance equipment, even deep in your own operations. A…
4 min read
Courting a Government Insider. A $10.5 Million Conflict-of-Interest Lesson.
A major contractor paid $10.5 million after allegedly inflating prices and negotiating a job for a sitting federal official while chasing his agency’s work. The…
5 min read
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The Briefing
The Briefing is the TIKC weekly federal contracting newsletter covering policy changes, opportunities and practical next steps for small businesses.
- Policy changes worth knowing about
- Opportunities for small and minority-owned firms
- Practical next steps you can act on
