Today, we are anxiously waiting for the next step in the cycle which is apportionment. By the end of January, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is expected to have completed appointing the funds appropriated. As a result of the apportionment process, each agency will soon know how much funds it has to spend – by month – during the 9-month February-through-September period left in the fiscal year. Thus they can complete the detailed budgeting and planning needed to determine which programs they will release in the late January to early February period.

Having 9 months to do the procurements rather than the 5 months available last year should make a significant difference in the volume of solicitations released in Fiscal Year (FY) 2012. We can expect the end result will be a year with business volume approaching that of the bumper year 2010.