Government Contract Negotiations


Book Description

In order to provide you with a competitive edge in your negotiations, the author, a former government contracting officer, provides a unique insider's look at the way government agencies handle the various negotiation procedures and what they look for in a prospective service contractor. He provides specific, practical advice on how to write effective technical proposals and how to arrive at a competitive price, including how to determine the amount to profit to include in your proposal.




Complex Contracting


Book Description

Complex Contracting draws on core social science concepts to provide wide-ranging practical advice on how best to manage complex acquisitions. Using a strong analytical framework, the authors assess contract management practices, suggesting strategies for improvement and ways to avoid the pitfalls of managing contracts for large and sophisticated projects. An in-depth analysis of the US Coast Guard's Deepwater program is included to illustrate ways to respond to real-world contracting challenges. This high-profile and controversial case consisted of a projected 25-year, $24 billion contract through which the US Coast Guard would buy a system of new boats, aircraft, communications, and control architecture to replace its aging fleet. The authors explore the reasons why this program, launched with such promise, turned out so poorly, and apply the lessons learned to similarly complex contracting scenarios. This engaging and accessible book has broad applicability and will appeal to policymakers, practitioners, scholars and students.







Mastering Ethereum


Book Description

Ethereum represents the gateway to a worldwide, decentralized computing paradigm. This platform enables you to run decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts that have no central points of failure or control, integrate with a payment network, and operate on an open blockchain. With this practical guide, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Gavin Wood provide everything you need to know about building smart contracts and DApps on Ethereum and other virtual-machine blockchains. Discover why IBM, Microsoft, NASDAQ, and hundreds of other organizations are experimenting with Ethereum. This essential guide shows you how to develop the skills necessary to be an innovator in this growing and exciting new industry. Run an Ethereum client, create and transmit basic transactions, and program smart contracts Learn the essentials of public key cryptography, hashes, and digital signatures Understand how "wallets" hold digital keys that control funds and smart contracts Interact with Ethereum clients programmatically using JavaScript libraries and Remote Procedure Call interfaces Learn security best practices, design patterns, and anti-patterns with real-world examples Create tokens that represent assets, shares, votes, or access control rights Build decentralized applications using multiple peer-to-peer (P2P) components




Mastering Government Tenders


Book Description

Discover the ultimate guide to unlocking lucrative opportunities in the public sector with "Mastering Government Tenders." This indispensable book equips you with the essential knowledge and strategies needed to navigate the intricate world of tendering with confidence and success. From understanding procurement procedures to crafting winning proposals, this comprehensive resource covers every aspect of the tendering process. Whether you're a seasoned professional or new to government contracts, this book will empower you to seize valuable opportunities and propel your business forward. Don't miss out on this essential tool for achieving success in government tendering.




Government Contract Law in the Twenty-first Century


Book Description

To view or download the 2017 supplement to this book, click here. This new book revises, and adds new foci, to the authors' predecessor casebook Government Contract Law: Cases and Materials (2d ed. 2004). It retains the core chapters for a syllabus on the basics of government contracting law. The authors update the core chapters with short, student-friendly, tightly-edited cases. Many cases date from the 2000s, with most of the rest from the 1990s. These present current understandings of issues and doctrines in this rapidly evolving field. As new foci, the authors have greatly expanded the number of specialized chapters treating increasingly important topics. New chapters cover such fast-changing specialties as commercial and IDIQ contracting, intellectual property, health care, construction, government and contractor workforce, false claims and defective pricing, and government takings. Also, the book treats new procedures including protests of task order awards and claims for government breaches of contract. Dozens of fresh notes by the authors cover recent developments such as government acquisition of property rights in software, and contracting in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Tiefer and Shook bring academic and practitioner experience and expertise to their treatment of government contract law.




Mastering Blockchain Programming with Solidity


Book Description

Discover the advanced features of Solidity that will help you write high-quality code and develop secure smart contracts with the latest ERC standards Key FeaturesDelve into Solidity and understand control structures, function calls, and variable scopesExplore tools for developing, testing, and debugging your blockchain applicationsLearn advanced design patterns and best practices for writing secure smart contractsBook Description Solidity is among the most popular and contract-oriented programming languages used for writing decentralized applications (DApps) on Ethereum blockchain. If you’re looking to perfect your skills in writing professional-grade smart contracts using Solidity, this book can help. You will get started with a detailed introduction to blockchain, smart contracts, and Ethereum, while also gaining useful insights into the Solidity programming language. A dedicated section will then take you through the different Ethereum Request for Comments (ERC) standards, including ERC-20, ERC-223, and ERC-721, and demonstrate how you can choose among these standards while writing smart contracts. As you approach later chapters, you will cover the different smart contracts available for use in libraries such as OpenZeppelin. You’ll also learn to use different open source tools to test, review and improve the quality of your code and make it production-ready. Toward the end of this book, you’ll get to grips with techniques such as adding security to smart contracts, and gain insights into various security considerations. By the end of this book, you will have the skills you need to write secure, production-ready smart contracts in Solidity from scratch for decentralized applications on Ethereum blockchain. What you will learnTest and debug smart contracts with Truffle, Ganache, Remix, and MetaMaskGain insights into maintaining code quality with different toolsGet up to speed with ERC standards such as ERC-20 and ERC-721Become adept at using design patterns while writing smart contractsUse MultiSignature (MultiSig) wallets and improve the security of contractsUse Oracle services to fetch information from outside the blockchainWho this book is for This book is for developers and data scientists who want to learn Ethereum, blockchain, and Solidity to write smart contracts and develop production-ready code. Basic knowledge of Solidity is assumed.




Mastering the Risky Business of Public-Private Partnerships in Infrastructure


Book Description

Investment in infrastructure can be a driving force of the economic recovery in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of shrinking fiscal space. Public-private partnerships (PPP) bring a promise of efficiency when carefully designed and managed, to avoid creating unnecessary fiscal risks. But fiscal illusions prevent an understanding the sources of fiscal risks, which arise in all infrastructure projects, and that in PPPs present specific characteristics that need to be addressed. PPP contracts are also affected by implicit fiscal risks when they are poorly designed, particularly when a government signs a PPP contract for a project with no financial sustainability. This paper reviews the advantages and inconveniences of PPPs, discusses the fiscal illusions affecting them, identifies a diversity of fiscal risks, and presents the essentials of PPP fiscal risk management.