SPEAKER_00
0:02
It's
Five
Friday
on
September
18th.
I
curate
five
articles
every
Friday
for
people
interested
in
public
sector
operations
in
general
and
public
procurement
specifically.
And
from
time
to
time
I
record
an
audio
companion,
which
is
what
you're
listening
to
now.
So
first,
Mark
Coleman
examines
what
changing
small
business
rules
may
mean
for
government
contracting.
He
points
to
SBA's
proposed
changes
to
DBE
programs
and
proposed
increases
in
size
standards,
in
one
example,
going
from
34
million
to
531
million.
These
changes
are
important
and
beyond
substantive,
they
structurally
redefine
the
nature
of
these
programs,
so
get
informed.
So,
second,
NASPO
is
teaming
up
with
Innovate
US
and
Partners
for
Good
on
a
three-part
live
workshop
series
AI
for
Public
Sector
Procurement,
focused
on
practical
applications
of
generative
AI
and
procurement
from
market
research
and
document
review
to
spend
analysis
and
more.
These
sessions
will
also
tackle
ethics,
privacy,
transparency,
organizational
readiness,
and
how
procurement
can
work
with
legal,
IT,
and
finance
as
AI
adoption
expands.
The
workshops
are
September
28th,
October
5th,
and
October
19th,
all
at
2
Eastern.
Third,
NASPO's
latest
Pulse
podcast
interviews
Jennifer
Lyons
of
the
Massachusetts
Operational
Services
Division.
The
conversation
covers
where
AI
can
already
help,
from
summarizing
solicitations
and
policy
development
to
supplier
performance,
onboarding
and
contract
redlining,
while
keeping
human
judgment
at
the
center
of
questions
around
transparency,
fairness,
bias,
accuracy,
and
accountability.
Fourth,
Route
50
looks
at
what
happens
to
B
dollars
after
states
meet
their
existing
obligations.
Remaining
funds
could
become
an
important
policy
and
implementation
question,
particularly
as
states
work
through
additional
unserb
locations
and
the
next
phase
of
broadband
deployment.
The
what
happens
after
we
finish
the
original
mission
question
is
one
of
keen
interest
to
government
policymakers.
And
finally,
TechCrunch
reports
on
an
essay
from
Anthropic
and
OpenAI
describing
the
needs
for
controls
and
the
intent
to
embed
independent
third
party
evaluators
inside
frontier
AI
companies.
Their
idea
is
to
give
independent
groups
deeper
access
to
assess
models
and
report
security
concerns.
Security
and
confidence
in
these
evolving
tools
will
be
at
the
forefront
of
policy
and
contracting.
And
with
that,
have
a
happy
Friday.