Defense contractors looking for a little more wall space to hang inspirational cat posters may be in luck. Today, the DoD issued a proposal to consolidate the various hotline poster requirements under DFARS 252.203-7004 (Display of Hotline Posters).
The DoD proposal certainly doesn’t fall under the category of major contracting news, but will be a welcome change for contractors feeling a little overburdened with mandatory government posters.
The SBA says that it expects to issue a final rule on its proposed “universal” mentor-protege program in June or July 2016.
Buried in an interview with Federal News Radio on the WOSB program (itself a worthy topic), John Shoraka, the SBA’s Associate Administrator of Government Contracting and Business Development stated that the SBA expects to issue a final rule this summer, and begin implementation in the fall.
Recently, many contractors have been asking me for updates on the universal mentor-protege program. Now we have one, and it’s time for contractors to start seriously thinking about taking advantage of this major new program.
The Army improperly used FAR 52.217-8 (Option to Extend Services) to extend several contracts for periods much longer than the six-month maximum allowed by the clause.
This conclusion comes from a recent GAO study, in which the GAO determined that the Army improperly applied FAR 52.217-8 in three out of five contracts studied by the GAO. And although the GAO’s report was narrowly focused on a handful of Army contracts, it leads me to wonder whether FAR 52.217-8 is being improperly used on a much broader scale.
On January 29, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced a proposed modification to its Employer Information Report (EEO-1) form that will impact employers—including federal government contractors—with 100 employees or more.
Under the proposed modification, beginning in September 2017, these employers will be required to report their employees’ pay ranges and hours worked, broken down by the gender and race/ethnicity of employees. Contractors with 50 to 99 employers, who must also complete EEO-1s, would be exempt from the new requirement.
Contractors often complaint that the background check process is slow, while contractors and their employee alike worry about information security in the wake of a sensitive OPM data breach that leaked the personal information of millions of government workers and contractors. Now, a change to the background check process is coming.
The White House announced last week that a new government agency would be taking charge of conducting background checks on all federal employees, Armed Services members, and civilian contractors. The government hopes the change will speed up background checks on contractors, many of whom have to wait months before a background check is completed, while also maintaining security over personal information. Of course, as with any government roll-out of a new initiative, it remains to be seen whether the new agency will live up to expectations.
Buy Indian Act set-asides might increase following the Department of the Interior’s recent release of a Buy Indian Act National Policy Memorandum.
In the January 2016 Memorandum, the DOI establishes a policy of maximizing the use of the Buy Indian Act and increasing the number of Buy Indian Act set-asides. The Buy Indian Act Memorandum comes in the wake of a GAO Report issued last summer, which criticized the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service for their implementation of the Buy Indian Act.
A new bill introduced in the House of Representatives would require the SBA to count contracts performed overseas when calculating the government’s achievement of its small business goals.
The bill would codify a policy that the SBA already says it is in the process of adopting–and one that will likely lead to a perceived drop in the government’s small business goaling achievement in Fiscal Year 2016.