Category / Professional

by dietrichknauth

Gov’t, Private Space Industries Becoming More Intertwined

By Dietrich Knauth

Law360, New York (August 7, 2014, 9:40 PM EDT) — U.S. funding and support for commercial space companies, often with the goal of graduating those companies into more typical government contracts, have increasingly blurred divisions between commercial and public projects in the space industry, a panel of attorneys at the American Bar Association’s annual public meeting said Thursday.

The panel in Boston noted that the mixing of Space Act agreements with more typical contracts governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation has created more opportunities for the growing space industry, while also creating new regulatory challenges for the agencies involved in regulating space launches.

“What you’re seeing here, with FAR contracts and Space Act agreements more broadly, is a new blurring of the lines between government and commercial programs,” Chuck Dickey, general counsel for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co.

A recent example of that blurring is NASA’s Orion program, which aims to build a next-generation space shuttle that can take astronauts to Mars and beyond, according to Dickey. Test launches for the program began with indemnity provisions governed by the FAR contract and the company’s NASA contract, but later launches have involved the Federal Aviation Administration’s requirements for indemnifications and waivers of liability, which are more often used in commercial space launches, Dickey said.

Space Act Agreements are not subject to the competition or pricing rules in FAR and allow NASA to pursue a wider variety of partnerships in its quest to support America’s nascent commercial space industry.

Agreements under the act are generally classified as funded agreements, in which NASA pays contractors who are working in support of a NASA mission; non-reimburseable agreements, in which NASA and its partners bear their own costs for joint projects; and reimburseable agreements, in which contractors pay NASA to borrow NASA facilities or expertise to support a commercial project.

Julie Jiru, a contracts officer with Space Exploration Technologies Inc., said that NASA support in Space Act projects like the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and Commercial Crew Development program have helped SpaceX win contracts for a NASA commercial launch market that didn’t exist until recently. The law allows companies to turn the tables on the normal government contracting by hiring out NASA expertise to support commercial goals that line up with NASA’s mission.

“When we talk about government contracts in general, it’s usually thinking of what does the government want from you — what do you do for the government, what are the requirements, etc.,” Jiru said. “The reimbursable space act agreement is fantastic, because it’s finally about us and what we want. We get to choose the technology and expertise we want from the government in order to advance and improve our own space technology.”

The agreements share one thing with typical government contracts though, Jiru said. They allow the government to leverage its weight to get favorable terms; namely insisting on upfront payment for its services.

“It wouldn’t be government contracting if it wasn’t a little contradictory,” Jiru said. “By ‘reimbursable’ Space Act agreement, what the government means is ‘prepaid’ Space Act agreement.”

The increasing mixture of NASA contracts and NASA-supported commercial launches makes it more difficult for the FAA to handle cross-waivers, which essentially prevent any of the parties involved in a space launch from suing each other for damage or liability during a launch or reentry, according to FAA attorney Sabrina Jawed.

It is not uncommon for NASA to contract with a company like SpaceX or Orbital Sciences Corp. to send “a black box of stuff” into space, but NASA’s secrecy about some of its payloads makes it difficult for the contractors to obtain necessary waivers, Jawed said.

“This causes a big issue because we at the FAA have a regulatory requirement that SpaceX or Orbital Sciences gets the signature of every customer on the cross waiver, and they have to do this prior to launch,” Jawed said. “They’re required to do this by law, but how are they going to do this if have no idea what’s in the black box?”

Thus far, the FAA has been issuing waivers to the regulatory requirement since NASA has a similar cross-waiver and can typically assure FAA that it has appropriate waivers in place with the party that is unknown to the launch contractor, Jawed said.

The FAA and NASA must also coordinate with the Air Force, since commercial launches can use Air Force facilities, or the Air Force could put payload on a commercial launch vehicle or possibly share a payload with a commercial launch company. For those launches, the FAA coordinates with the Air Force to ensure that safety is being upheld through a formal Memorandum of Understanding between the agencies.

“Our rules trump, but we defer to the Air Force” as long as any deviations from shared procedures can be looked at and approved by the FAA, Jawed said.

Both NASA and the Air Force use contracts to push companies into the space launch market. NASA has used the COTS program to help develop vehicles that it now hires to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, and the Air Force uses its Orbital/Suborbital Program-3 (OSP-3) to fund less challenging launches while testing companies for riskier work under its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program.

“There’s a real statutory framework and policy framework for supporting the commercial space industry,” said Patricia Ewing, senior counsel for Orbital, which has transitioned to ISS supply contracts along with SpaceX. “Both NASA and DOD have certain contract vehicles that they use that are structured in a way to help support the commercial space industry. The prime example of that is the space station resupply contracts.”

Both Orbital and SpaceX spent a lot of money in getting their space vehicles off the ground, but NASA’s support made the current commercialization possible, Jiru said.

“It’s great to see how the reimbursable Space Act agreements basically work in concert with the government FAR contracts in order to make out industrial base stronger, and that in turn makes the U.S. as a whole stronger in space,” Jiru said. “There was no marketplace or business case for going into ISS resupply, so in order to demonstrate and get that capability, funding from the government was needed in order to help companies start that because that ‘s a very, very expensive endeavor, especially if you didn’t have a client for it.”

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by dietrichknauth

Senators Debate Adding Funds To Accelerate Space Programs

By Dietrich Knauth

Law360, New York (July 16, 2014, 5:33 PM EDT) — Senate Armed Services and Commerce committee members expressed frustration about the U.S.’s continued reliance on Russian rockets for NASA and Air Force space launches Wednesday and debated adding more funds to expedite efforts to build a new generation of American-made launch vehicles.

The Commerce space subcommittee’s chairman, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., noted that the day’s hearing took place on the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch that sent the first astronauts to the moon, and emphasized space exploration’s importance to research, commerce and national security. Senators questioned witnesses from the Air Force and NASA, and other government and private sector experts, about challenges raised by reliance on Russian rockets and the slow pace of U.S. entrants into the market for Air Force launch contracts.

Gen. William L. Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, said that the recent reliance on the Atlas V rocket, which uses Russia’s RD-180 engine as a key component, made sense in the near term, saying that the rocket is “probably the most advanced rocket engine in the world” and has proven both cost-effective and reliable.

“If you look at the Atlas V performance, there’s nothing to complain about,” Shelton said. “But in my opinion it’s time to move on from reliance on that foreign engine.”

Russia’s role in American space programs has become a topic of debate thanks to rising tensions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the U.S. sanctions that followed. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who heads Russia’s defense industry, has floated the possibility of restricting U.S. access to its engines, and reportedly suggested that the U.S. “use a trampoline” to send astronauts to the International Space Station.

Those remarks have played into the debate over both NASA’s civilian spaceflight programs and the Air Force’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program, which sends military satellites into space. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, which is jockeying for the chance to compete with the Air Force’s EELV contractor, United Launch Alliance, has positioned its U.S.-made Falcon rockets as an alternative to the Russian rockets used by ULA.

If tensions worsen and Russia carries out the threat to cut off RD-180 rocket sales, the move would significantly disrupt the Air Force’s national security launches, Shelton said. But both he and RAND Corp. senior engineer Yool Kim said that that is unlikely, because the Russian space industry relies on money from U.S. space launches. And even if Russia stops selling the rockets, the U.S. could use its stockpile of 15 Atlas V rockets to continue with the most significant space launches for at least two years, although it would have to give up some lower-priority launches to make that work, Kim said.

When asked about the ability of SpaceX to pick up the slack, Shelton pointed out that the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, used to deliver NASA cargo to the ISS, cannot handle heavier and more sensitive launches, and its Falcon Heavy rocket, which is in the same class as the Atlas V, is not as close to certification for space launches. Under current plans, the Falcon 9 rocket will be certified for Air Force launches by December, Shelton said.

Many senators seemed eager to speed the development and certification of U.S. rockets and space vehicles, asking whether additional funding could accelerate that process. But witnesses said that federal procurements and development of new technology can’t always and shouldn’t always be rushed.

“Part of the issue we’re dealing with is we’re in the middle of a procurement, so we have a procurement right now that we’ll make a selection on later this year,” NASA Associate Administrator Robert M. Lightfoot said. “Having not seen the proposals, I can’t tell you what the acceleration options are, but we’re in 2014 already. When you order a rocket, you typically order them three years in advance, so that’s where we are.”

SpaceX, which has sued the Air Force for entering into a five-year deal with ULA while it was gearing up for launch certification, was a frequent topic of senators’ questions. Senators questioned the Air Force’s claimed $4.4 billion in cost savings for its recent five-year contract, as well as an earlier comment from Shelton that seemed to criticize SpaceX for taking the Air Force to court. Other asked why SpaceX’s rockets were good enough to deliver cargo to the ISS for NASA but not good enough to take military satellites into space.

Lightfoot said that the cargo deliveries were relatively low-priority and low-risk, so NASA accepted some additional risk in starting those deliveries and speeding SpaceX’s certification for future delivery of more sensitive cargo, including high-tech research equipment and, eventually, NASA astronauts. In the process, NASA took SpaceX through very rigorous testing of its ability to navigate in space and safely dock with the ISS, which are less applicable to the Air Force’s launch needs.

Senators also criticized the Air Force for sharply reducing the number of near-future EELV launches that it planned to open up for competition, from 14 to seven in the Air Force’s 2015 budget proposal. Shelton replied that the Air Force, trying to save money, cut five launches of GPS satellites, which are available to competition because they don’t require a rocket as heavy as the Atlas V, because it realized that its GPS networks didn’t require as much maintenance as it had thought. The heavier launches, reserved to ULA, were generally preserved, but one was canceled, which required the Air Force to give them one of the lighter launches from the formerly competitive pool to keep the terms of the five-year contract, Shelton said.

“We didn’t need to procure the GPS launches on the schedule that we thought we needed, so we stretched those launches out. That resulted in the loss of five of the seven launches that we had set aside for competition,” Shelton said. “It really wasn’t an anti-competitive thing.”

While lawmakers were frustrated by the pace of getting new rockets into production, the deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition, Alan Estevez, said that developing new technology isn’t always as easy as “throwing money at the problem.”

“Without sounding glib, it is rocket science,” Estevez said.

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by dietrichknauth

NASA Commercial Space Program Needs Clarity: Report

By Dietrich Knauth

Law360, New York (July 1, 2011, 5:07 PM EDT) — In its efforts to promote commercial space flight, NASA must develop clear safety and performance requirements while taking care to avoid potential conflicts of interest, according to a Thursday report by the agency’s inspector general.
NASA Inspector General Paul K. Martin said that the agency has made significant progress in working with commercial partners, awarding more than $300 million in contracts through its commercial crew development program, but still needed to finalize regulations, develop a procurement strategy and coordinate safety standards with the Federal Aviation Administration.

In the wake of the space shuttle program, which will be retired after the July 8 launch of the shuttle Atlantis, NASA is simultaneously working on building a next-generation government spacecraft and kick-starting a commercial space industry.

NASA has never launched a manned mission on a commercially-developed vehicle and the transition will be challenging, the report said. Getting it right will be critical because the U.S. will rely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to access low Earth orbit and the International Space Station until it develops an alternative.

“NASA faces an imperative to nurture development of a U.S. commercial transportation service to re-establish the nation’s ability to access low Earth orbit and the space station as soon as possible,” the report said.

NASA’s shuttle successor was scheduled for completion by 2016, but NASA recently indicated that the target may be overly optimistic, the report said, making commercial partnerships even more pressing.

In its commercial crew development program, NASA is focusing on promoting innovation and development, and is not dictating specific system concepts or mandating compliance with NASA requirements, according to the report, leading to a risk that companies will develop space vehicles that are ultimately unsuitable for NASA missions.

To mitigate that risk, NASA is considering an approach that would proactively identify significant design differences that could prevent a partner from obtaining NASA certification in future acquisitions. However, that strategy carries a risk of its own because companies without commercial crew development program contracts could complain that the advice represents an unfair competitive advantage, the report said.

Failure to mitigate the apparent conflicts of interest could lead to bid protests, which would delay and jeopardize NASA’s commercial crew program, according to the report.

In its commercial space transport acquisition strategy, which will be submitted to Congress later this summer, NASA will likely announce its reliance on competitive procurements or fixed-price contracts to keep costs down.

But fixed-price contracts could be risky, too, as they would require NASA to commit large sums of money while relevant regulations may be subject to change, according to the report.

“Some of NASA’s potential commercial crew partners are building spacecraft for the first time and design and development are under way without fully defined and finalized requirements,” the IG said. “In this type of environment, there is a risk that during the period of contract performance NASA’s requirements may change so significantly that contractors can successfully argue that the agency is changing the contract’s scope, in which case NASA could be required to pay the contractor to make necessary modifications.”

In 2010, the year after the start of the commercial crew development initiative, NASA awarded $50 million to companies working on space transport projects. The agency announced in April that it was ramping up the program, awarding $269.3 million to accelerate the availability commercial space capabilities.

Because of uncertain progress in developing both commercial and U.S. spacecraft, the report recommended that NASA consider extending its purchase of seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as a contingency plan.

Although NASA has arranged with Russia to continue missions via the Soyuz until 2016, the length of time needed to procure additional seats means that NASA will have to make a decision in 2013, about three years before commercial systems are expected to be ready, the report said.

Published by Law360

by dietrichknauth

Defense Cos. Face Hazards In New Push For Foreign Sales

By Dietrich Knauth

Law360, New York (April 21, 2014, 7:03 PM EDT) — While many U.S. defense companies are hoping that foreign military sales can help them weather a prolonged slump in military sales at home, cross-border sales hold several risks for the unwary, including heavy fines and criminal penalties for violating export controls and anti-bribery laws.

The U.S. government has encouraged its defense industry to expand weapons sales to allies, both through its Foreign Military Sales program, in which U.S. contractors fulfill weapons sales brokered and controlled by the U.S. government, and the Foreign Military Financing program, in which foreign countries subsidized by U.S. funding buy directly from American contractors. Both offer opportunities for defense companies feeling the squeeze of budget reductions at home, but both carry risks, experts said.

“This is truly one of the hot issues in federal procurement nowadays,” said Andrew Irwin of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, speaking at the American Bar Association’s annual Federal Procurement Institute. “With declining federal spending, I think every large and small contractor is thinking to themselves, ‘How do I maintain or replenish my revenue in markets outside of the United States, and how do I do it in a manner that’s smart, that doesn’t get me in trouble and really grows my business?’”

With all the contracting regulations U.S. companies must manage, doing work for the U.S. government is tough enough, but expanding defense work adds a whole overlay of new responsibilities, Irwin said.

“When a company gets involved in this sort of business, it’s not simply about understanding procurement anymore. It’s not, ‘How do we perform a U.S. government contract?'” Irwin said. “It’s, ‘What are all the things that can go wrong or that we need to be mindful of when we work abroad?'”

But the opportunities are there as well — in 2012, FMS were $70 billion, a sharp increase in just a few years. Before 2006, FMS was only about $10 billion a year, Irwin said. Most of that funding goes to traditional export markets like the Gulf Arab states, Southeast Asia, India and Israel.

“The amount of money that’s being pumped into global, primarily arms, markets is really staggering,” Irwin said.

Direct commercial sales under the Foreign Military Financing program offer some advantages over the Foreign Military Sales program but carry different risks, according to Marques Peterson of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. FMF provides grants for the acquisition of U.S. defense equipment, services and training, and nations participating in the program include major export markets like Israel, Egypt, Greece and Turkey.

“The reason that direct commercial sales is something that’s a hot item and something that’s going to continue to expand in the next couple years is that there’s a perceived notion that you have greater flexibility,” Peterson said. “You don’t have the U.S. government playing catcher in the middle between the foreign government purchaser and the U.S. contractor, so you can negotiate directly.”

But FMF-funded sales come with unique restrictions, notably the requirement that the funds be used only for U.S.-made products. Since U.S. companies can’t use FMF funds for foreign subcontractors, brokers, procurement agents or foreign-made supplies, contractors really need to know their supply chain and ensure that all costs are allowable before selling under the FMF program, Peterson said.

Other legal challenges faced by defense exporters include the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, International Trafficking in Arms Regulations, U.S. economic sanctions and anti-boycott regulations.

Export laws are undergoing a massive shift, in which many items are being transferred from the State Department’s restrictive Munitions List to the Commerce Department Commerce Control List. The switchover, while generally welcomed by U.S. exporters, will require manufacturers and suppliers to carefully determine how their products fit into the new regulatory regime and will require many to familiarize themselves with the Commerce Department’s licensing policies, attorneys said.

U.S. anti-boycott regulations are another part of export law that exporters must remain aware of, Irwin said. The Arab League’s boycott of Israel — supported by Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — means that defense companies must be on the lookout for boilerplate contract language about complying with “all local laws” or risk running afoul of U.S. anti-boycott rules, Irwin said.

Bribery remains a risk in many defense export markets, and contractors must be wary of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act’s expansive definitions of “foreign officials” and the types of gifts and payments that can be seen as corrupt.

Companies should also be careful to ensure that their recordkeeping is up to snuff, according to Jessica Tillipman, assistant dean of government contracts law at George Washington University Law School. While the FCPA penalizes outright bribery, it also has “books and records” requirements that are far more likely to trip up an exporter, she said.

“Companies really need to be wary of the books and records provision, because that’s where the government often sees companies slip up,” Tillipman said.

Because the FCPA penalizes bribes even when they are not directly authorized, rigorous due diligence is essential when dealing with foreign officials and third-party agents in a foreign country, she said.

“When you’re going into a new country and establishing yourself or even trying to broaden your business base, every single time there is a government interaction, no matter how minimal, there is a potential for FCPA liability or even liability under some of the similar statutes in other countries,” Tillipman said. “The reasons why a particular third-party agent may be so attractive to a company — their government connections, their familiarity with an area, their expertise in an area, their connections otherwise — are the same reasons why they’re the biggest risks.”

A common way for companies to get into trouble with FCPA enforcers is to hire a local agent and tell them to do “whatever you need to get it done” — a directive that can be read to including bribery if a company doesn’t explicitly disallow it, Tillipman said.

Companies should also be wary of the sometimes-expansive definition of “government official” under the FCPA, Irwin said.

“In the aerospace and defense world, or engineering and construction world, public sector officials are usually fairly obvious,” Irwin said. “But imagine if you’re a health care company and you’re selling to China and everyone who you want to demonstrate a product to is a doctor in a state-run hospital, then they may actually be foreign officials for the purposes of the FCPA.”

Fortunately, the DOJ is fairly clear about what it expects from companies and has published a guidebook on anti-bribery enforcement, Tillipman said.

Bribery offenses will not only trigger the FCPA, but other nations’ anti-corruption laws as well, which are increasingly used for extraterritorial enforcement. Brazil, which is seen as one potentially growing market for U.S. exporters, recently enacted its own anti-bribery law, which exporters should be wary of, according to Ricardo P. Levy of Pinheiro Neto Advogados.

Enforcement of that law could be very hectic, since any local government can bring enforcement action, unlike in the United States where the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Department of Justice take the lead, Levy said.

“Each one of them will have jurisdiction to prosecute cases,” Levy said. “On the one hand, this makes it easier to enforce; on the other hand, it can be a nightmare, in terms of lack of harmonization.”

The Brazilian law also allows municipalities to keep money they recover, which could encourage a sort of localized blackmail, Levy said. Defense contracts and other federal procurements tend to be more professional and transparent, but contractors should be especially wary of contracting locally, he said.

“This money goes to the same procuring entity, the same authority which is handling the case and condemning the company, so there is a clear conflict of interest there,” Levy said.

Published by Law360

by dietrichknauth

BP Contracting Ban Reinforces Debarment Misconceptions

Dietrich Knauth, Law360 – March 31, 2014

The unusual timing of BP PLC’s recently resolved suspension from federal contracting has left many experts scratching their heads, with some concerned that the government’s handling of the contracting ban could reinforce misconceptions that suspension and debarment should be used to punish companies rather than, first and foremost, to protect the government.

BP was suspended from competing for contracts or oil drilling leases 16 months ago, when the oil giant pled guilty to felony misconduct in a $4.5 billion settlement related to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, which killed 11 people and released an estimated 4.2 million barrels into the water four years ago. The company sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the suspension in August, arguing that the EPA’s action ignored “the overwhelming evidence and record of BP’s present responsibility as a government contractor” and that the timing of the suspension was both arbitrary and punitive.

Suspension is intended to protect the government from unscrupulous or risky contractors, not to punish companies for previous wrongs — so the suspension of BP two years after the spill seemed strange to some, even within the government’s suspension and debarment community.

That BP was suspended when it was convicted, rather than when it was indicted or when the EPA had enough evidence to make a reasonable business decision, could reinforce the perception among some members of Congress and public interest groups that suspension is a punitive measure, according to Jessica Tillipman, assistant dean of government contracts law at George Washington University law school. It could also validate contractors’ fears about political debarment, she said.

“If you Google BP and its suspension, the word ‘punishment’ is all over the Internet,” Tillipman said. “BP just seems to be a lightning rod for strong feelings in the industry and for a parade of the ill-informed.”

If BP had been suspended earlier, which would have been more consistent with the normal practice of suspension and debarment, both the contracting industry and BP’s most vocal critics would likely have been happier, Tillipman said. Public Citizen slammed the EPA’s decision to lift the suspension after 16 months as premature, saying it “lets a corporate felon and repeat offender off the hook for its crimes against people and the environment.”

“It made it seem like they went to jail for a day,” Tillipman said. “[Suspension and debarment are] a fundamentally misunderstood regime by the media, by many members of Congress and a lot of public interest groups, who see it as punishment.”

On the other hand, the BP suspension is a reminder that even large, important contractors can’t avoid suspension for egregious conduct, according to Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore law professor. Before the suspension, BP was the largest supplier of fuel to the U.S. Department of Defense, with about $2 billion in annual contracts, and the DOD, through the Defense Logistics Agency, not only cut off the opportunity for new contracts as required during the suspension, but it also canceled existing contracts for regular fuel purchases, Tiefer said.

“Looking at the suspension as a whole, it has been an impressive success in government agency coordinated effort,” Tiefer said. “The Defense Department, which here principally means the Defense Logistics Agency, deferred to EPA about the seriousness of BP’s problems, and BP was never able to manipulate its ‘customer’ in the Defense Department to free it from EPA’s tough but legitimate scrutiny.”

Tiefer said the suspension would have started earlier in an ideal world but said he didn’t think it lasted too long or was needlessly punitive. Not only was the government wary of compromising its ongoing criminal case against BP with potential litigation over a suspension, but the late date and length of the suspension also gave government regulators more time to ensure that BP’s reforms in the wake of the spill were more than just symbolic gestures, he said.

“I couldn’t disagree more with those who wanted BP to get away early from the suspension,” Tiefer said. “First of all, the harm in the Gulf from BP’s spill was on a scale that just had never been seen before from a government contractor. The government legitimately took time not just to create some mechanisms on paper for ethics monitoring but to see BP go beyond a willingness to talk the talk and actually demonstrate it would walk the walk.”

Jay Devecchio, a partner at Jenner & Block LLP, said that he couldn’t fault the EPA for taking the time to sort through the facts and reach the right decision.

“I would have been more concerned it the EPA had suspended BP immediately after the spill,” DeVecchio said. “That would have suggested more of a punitive or PR reaction rather than a measured consideration of the facts. One certainly wouldn’t want SDOs to suspend contractors — particularly large, multifaceted companies — based upon isolated mistakes, accidents or localized errors in judgment. If that were the standard, no one would be in government business.”

The timing of the EPA’s decision to lift the suspension also raised questions, since the administrative agreement that ended the suspension didn’t contain any particularly tough or unusual provisions and essentially mirrored the additional monitoring and auditing agreements that BP had included in its guilty plea.

With the new provisions in place, BP will be able to seek new leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The EPA has called the Deepwater Horizon incident the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP’s active litigation against its suspension may have influenced the timing — courts have shown themselves willing to closely examine suspension and debarment decisions as in a recent case involving Inchcape Shipping, which, like BP, involved “stale facts” by the time the suspension was eventually carried out by the Navy, Tillipman said.

While some in the legal community had hoped that the EPA lawsuit could set clearer guidelines for agencies’ ability to suspend companies long after the facts underpinning the suspension are laid out, the administrative agreement takes that possibility off the table and leaves some uncertainty about how much precedential weight the BP suspension will carry.

“I have a hard time understanding why a suspension was issued here given the timing (as opposed to a proposed debarment), but I don’t think there is broader meaning of this action beyond EPA,” said David Robbins, a former Air Force debarment attorney who now heads the government contracts group at Shulman Rogers Gandal Pordy & Ecker PA.

While Tiefer said that the length of the suspension sent a message that the EPA would not let companies get away with extreme environmental violations, Robbins cautioned that suspensions should follow the rules and not be used politically.

“I’m sorry to say I don’t agree that suspensions are tools to show tough enforcement,” Robbins said.

Because of the unusual nature of the case, it may be hard for contractors to draw many lessons from the lengthy and late suspension, unless the EPA is handling their case, according to Robbins.

“Contractors should be vigilant, especially when the EPA is their debarring agency, and do all they can to mitigate risk of debarments, from enhanced ethics and compliance programs to early and voluntary reporting and engagement with the government,” Robbins said. “Early disclosure and cooperation, in many cases, goes a long way.”

Published by Law360

by dietrichknauth

5 Tips For Federal Contractors Facing New Hiring Rules

By Dietrich Knauth

Law360, New York (March 24, 2014, 9:13 PM EDT) — With new rules for contractors’ affirmative action responsibilities taking effect Monday, companies have a lot of work to do to ensure they meet the U.S. Department of Labor’s goals for hiring veterans and people with disabilities, and attorneys are preparing to get their clients in shape for DOL audits.

The DOL’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which audits the nondiscrimination and affirmative action responsibilities of federal contractors, finalized two rules in August that aim to revamp the enforcement of affirmative action goals for veterans and people with disabilities. The game-changing rules require contractors to set hiring goals for veterans and disabled employees, invite job applicants to self-identify as veterans or disabled, compile additional data on hiring decisions, periodically survey their employees for disability status, and keep relevant records for three years.

Keeping up with the regulations, which took effect 180 days after their formal publication in the Federal Register, will likely require significant investments in human resources departments, such as hiring additional staff to conduct outreach efforts and updating online job applications and information technology systems to help capture the newly required hiring data, experts say.

“This is the first time that affirmative action programs for veterans and persons with disabilities have any statistical component,” said Valerie Hoffman, head of the affirmative action and OFCCP compliance practice at Seyfarth Shaw LLP. “This effort to collect data is a major undertaking because of the need to modify applicant tracking systems and human resources information systems. Systems changes don’t happen overnight, and most companies’ IT budgets are already strained — this is a significant undertaking by every contractor.”

Now that the rules are in effect, here are five tips to help employers manage their new responsibilities.

Update your subcontracts and equal employment materials immediately.

Some of the rules’ requirements won’t actually hit home until contractors update their annual affirmative action programs, which could start as late as Jan. 1, 2015, for the many companies that update their plans at the start of a calendar year. But while some companies will have additional time to revamp their hiring, outreach and applicant tracking systems, all contractors must immediately update language used in subcontracts and equal employment opportunity materials.

The rules require contractors to “flow down” the new affirmative action responsibilities to their subcontractors and suppliers who meet certain thresholds of business — $10,000 for the disability rule and $100,000 for the veterans rule. To comply with the rules, all new subcontracts and purchase orders must include a specific paragraph highlighting the veteran and disability hiring responsibilities in bold text.

“If you haven’t yet, inventory all of your internal and external communications that make reference to EEO and make sue that they’re compliant with these new regulations,” said Mickey Silberman, head of the affirmative action compliance and OFCCP practice at Jackson Lewis LLP. “Everywhere that an employer makes references to EEO or affirmative action compliance in internal or external communications, that needs to be reviewed, and in all likelihood, needs to be changed as of this March deadline.”

External communications and subcontracts are particularly important because they leave a paper trail that could get a company into trouble during future OFCCP audits if they don’t include the new references to hiring veterans and people with disabilities, Silberman said.

Companies’ equal opportunity tag lines will also need to be updated immediately. It’s no longer enough to merely state “this company is an equal opportunity employer” — the new rules require specific references to veterans and people with with disabilities, a change that will likely lead to more comprehensive listings in order to ward off misconceptions that only veterans and people with disabilities are protected.

“Now that you’re required to make specific references to veterans and the disabled, do you have to make references to other protected classes?” Silberman said. “Might that indicate, incorrectly, that you’re only extending those protections or that consideration to veterans and the disabled?”

Educate managers and employees about the new rules.

The rules require employers to ask applicants and employees to self-identify as veterans or disabled, and the disability question in particular could cause consternation for employees. The disability regulation requires companies to ask for disability status before a job offer, after a job offer, as well as a survey of employees within a year of the regulation’s start date and an additional employee survey every five years.

“It’s very important for employers to think about how these changed requirements might be perceived or misperceived by applicants and employees,” Silberman said. “Reasonably enough, an applicant or employee can perceive this as an employer being obsessed with their disability, asking them for the same information over and over again.”

Setting the right tone with employees is an important step towards ensuring employee participation in the self-surveys. Since the OFCCP will count the number of employees who self-identify as disabled against the entire company, rather than the portion who participated in surveys, low participation could make a company seem like it has a smaller percentage of employees with disability than it truly does.

“One of the most challenging aspects is for companies to administer this all-employee survey and the communications that are likely to preceed that,” said Alissa Horvitz, a shareholder with Littler Mendelsson. “If a company doesn’t spend a little bit of time explaining why this survey is being taken and why it is required, it’s not going to get a very high response rate.”

Companies should also train their managers to look out for ways to classify employees as disabled even if they don’t self-identify, such as listing employees who seek leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act for chronic conditions or employees who seek accommodation for a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to Connie Bertram, a partner in Proskauer’s employment group. Those kinds of decisions will be sensitive, and managers should be sure not to create the impression that they are discriminating against such employees, she said.

With the increased focus on employees with disabilities, managers should also be prepared for an uptick in employee requests for a reasonable accommodation of their disabilities, Hoffman said.

“Contractors should do some significant training, especially regarding ensuring that their managers know how to handle the interactive process for people who request a reasonable accommodation,” Hoffman said. “It’s essential that contractors be ready for that and ensure that managers can follow the law.”

Budget time and money for an HR overhaul.

For companies with annual affirmative action plans that won’t be updated for months, it is important to invest the time and money needed to get human resources information systems into shape.

“Some of the biggest that we’re seeing from our clients right now is the obligation to solicit and collect veterans and disability status from applicants and from current employees,” Springer said. “It is a big change to your applicant tracking system and your HRIS system to collect that information and put the necessary controls in place to ensure that that information remains confidential.”

Many contractors use third-party vendors and suppliers for their HR information systems, and those companies are already preparing solutions that will help contractors meet the OFCCP’s data requirements, Bertram said.

“That might ease the burden on some of the contractors,” Bertram said. “You can find some fairly efficient and cost effective vendors to handle applicant tracking, even if you’re a small contractor with limited resources.”

The specifics of the rule have created some kinks that are more expensive to iron out than initially predicted, Springer said. For example, the OFCCP requires a very specific form for employees to self-identify as disabled and requires that any electronic survey of employees use a form that looks exactly like the one provided by OFCCP and requires that employees check the boxed for disabled, not disabled, or no answer on the same place in the electronic form as it would be on a printed form — a requirement that isn’t quite so easy to drop into existing electronic systems, she said.

“It’s very difficult to recreate that form exactly and have that technology so that an applicant that can check the box that’s in that form,” Springer said.  “In some ways, that’s a win of form over substance, unfortunately.”

Still, for all the concerns about the burden of the rules, companies with good lawyers should be able to navigate the new regulations without too much difficulty, Bertram said.

“I think there’s been a lot of unnecessary hysteria by some of the outside counsel and outside sources,” Bertram said. “I think for a company that’s already in compliance with existing requirements, this is not a Herculean task. It’s [achievable] as long as you take it step by step and work with experienced outside counsel.”

Get a head start on evaluating your recruitment sources.

While companies won’t be audited under the new rules until they revamp their annual affirmative action programs, they should start laying the groundwork for audits that focus more and more on the effectiveness of their outreach efforts. Based on OFCCP scrutiny and a simple desire to ensure that they aren’t throwing good money away, companies should examine their outreach and advertising efforts to see which ones actually net qualified job applicants.

“In the past employers typically considered success to be the ‘push out’ element of outreach, simply getting your jobs out there,” Silberman said. “What most employers have not thought of traditionally, and what OFCCP is compelling them to think about differently, is the ‘pull in’ aspect of outreach. You might have 20 recruitment sources, but if 10 of them don’t send you any applicants, those are not effective recruitment sources.”

The OFCCP focus on effectiveness could carry some short-term research and assessment costs but should help companies improve their affirmative action hiring in the long run, Silberman said.

“The silver lining that can come out of this requirement is that employers will have a better handle than ever before on their return on investment regarding their outreach and recruiting efforts,” Silberman said.

Keep in touch with OFCCP.

OFCCP, recognizing the game-changing nature of the new rules, has offered contractors help in complying with the regulations. It has posted a series of Frequently Asked Questions on its website to address common concerns about the rules and created a new directory of government and nonprofit groups that can serve as possible sources of referrals for veterans and disabled job applicants.

The OFCCP recently told contractors in an FAQ that their subcontracts and purchase orders can combine the new required text for the veteran and disability rules, reducing the chance that companies would waste time and paper printing separate clauses that contain duplicative language, for example.

“There’s quite a bit of vagueness in the regulations and how they’re being interpreted, so the OFCCP is using FAQs to address some of the questions that contractors have,” said Rebecca Springer, a counsel in Crowell & Moring LLP’s labor and employment group. “The downside is that it’s just an FAQ. It’s not written into the regulation, and the OFCCP could change those FAQs at any time.”

The OFCCP’s directory of possible recruitment sources, while helpful, should not be seen as the final word, Springer said. The information collected by OFCCP may be out of date or incomplete, and the agency will likely want to see more proactive efforts by contractors, she said.

Published by Law360

by dietrichknauth

Cybersecurity Framework Previews Contracting Changes

By Dietrich Knauth

Law360, New York (February 18, 2014, 3:09 PM EST) — As contractors prepare for increasing cybersecurity responsibilities, the Obama administration’s new voluntary guidelines offer companies some insight into the kinds of practices that the government will prioritize in purchasing decisions and more binding regulations.

The 41-page “Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity,” developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, lays out best practices and assessment tools aimed at helping banks, utilities and other critical infrastructure operators protect their systems against cyberattacks. The framework is part of an executive order issued by President Barack Obama in February 2013, and while the other parts of that executive order deal more directly with federal contractors, contractors are sure to pay close attention to the voluntary guidelines, which are set to shape debate over future cybersecurity regulations.

“In the face of the government’s present inability or unwillingness to directly regulate critical infrastructure and beyond, I would think that anyone in the contracting space should be paying attention to the framework and seeing how they stack up to its expectations,” said Megan Brown, a partner at Wiley Rein LLP. “The contracting community has often been at the forefront of new government efforts, because it is easier to tack on additional responsibilities to contracts than to regulate private industry directly.”

Contractors have been subject to a host of cybersecurity regulations in recent months, many stemming from the same executive order that created the new voluntary cybersecurity framework. Late in 2013, the U.S. Department of Defense published a rule requiring its contractors to safeguard unclassified technical data and report breaches that affected that data, as well as a rule allowing the DOD to disqualify contractors for sensitive information technology procurements because of perceived cybersecurity risks in those companies’ supply chains.

The General Services Administration and DOD also recently published a report on reforms that could improve cybersecurity in federal acquisitions, and the DOD has run a voluntary threat sharing program with members of its defense industrial base. The government is also expected to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation in 2014 with a rule requiring all contractors to implement basic information safeguarding policies.

Because of those and other regulations, and the fact that the stakes are so high for contractors handling sensitive DOD information, most defense contractors will be ahead of the curve if they want to adopt the voluntary approach laid out in the framework, according to Charles Blanchard, a partner at Arnold & Porter LLP who previously served as general counsel for both the Air Force and the Army.

But because the framework could provide the basis for legislation that includes cybersecurity incentives prized by the private sector — including grants, subsidized cybersecurity insurance and protection from liability for compliant companies — defense companies will be watching the framework’s evolution closely, he said. And nondefense contractors could look to the framework to see the kinds of best practices they can use to prepare for the upcoming FAR rule.

“For defense contractors that have government technical information that they need to safeguard, the DOD regulation is probably a more important document. This framework, if the incentives come in, could be an extra benefit. It could reward them for complying with the DOD regulations,” Blanchard said. “Most contractors, however are not DOD contractors. For those contractors, this framework could be a hint as to what they can expect when the FAR rule comes out.”

While the framework has been generally well-received by industry stakeholders, some were disappointed by its silence on the issue of incentives, like a safe harbor for companies who follow the NIST guidelines and best practices but still find themselves the victim of a data breach. That kind of safe harbor would have to come through federal legislation, because different states have pursued their own approaches to data breach reporting and liability, and a federal statute is needed to replace that patchwork of state laws, Blanchard said.

Contractors and other companies at risk for cyberattacks can still use their compliance with the NIST guidelines when defending themselves against litigation related to a data breach, although it’s no sure bet, according to Elizabeth Ferrell of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP.

“I think it would be much more comforting for companies with critical infrastructure, contractors and other companies implementing cybersecurity recommendations if they were able to get some kind of liability limitation in return,” Ferrell said. “They want to make it official instead of rolling the dice on whether a judge or jury would accept these steps as the standard of care and say, ‘You’ve done all you needed to do.'”

While states have created a patchwork of liability laws, federal agencies have also been forced to go it alone, each attempting to manage cyberrisks through their contracts or regulatory power, Ferrell said.

“Agencies are free to tailor their own contract clauses and they are doing so,” Ferrell said. “We are now engaged in a patchwork of cybersecurity initiatives because every part of the federal government recognizes that it is critical to protect our cyberresources, and that the next big attack against the United States could be in the cyberworld.”

The NIST framework, along with its more detailed guidelines on specific issues like password security and physical access controls, could help standardize that patchwork if agencies or Congress use them as a starting point in new regulations and legislation, Ferrell said.

“Even though this framework is only for critical infrastructure, and it is voluntary, there is the sense that this will become the first building block in future regulations,” Ferrell said. “There’s a notion that this framework may be made mandatory for critical infrastructure and other regulated companies, like contractors.”

Replacing the current patchwork of cybersecurity standards with a more centralized guidance could make it easier for contractors to track their responsibilities, leading to lower compliance costs and improved security for agencies and contractors, according to Evan Wolff, a partner at Crowell & Moring LLP.

The stakes are high for contractors that are asked to revamp their cybersecurity practices, especially if the government demands a certification that the contractors comply with security standards in the framework or in other regulations. If there’s a breach or attack, and the contractor is found to have overstated its security, that could lead to risks ranging from contract penalties and poor performance reviews to debarment or False Claims Act liability.

“You could start to see the government expecting more assurances from its contracting partners, and if your abilities are not up to their expectations, you could be at a disadvantage in contracting,” Brown said.

Contractors will also face more government scrutiny than most industries, because the government can use its contracting authority to affect a broader section of the overall economy by forcing contractors to police their supply chain for risks and flow down cybersecurity responsibilities to their subcontractors. The government has already taken that approach in other areas, including in recent rules requiring contractors to police their supply chains for signs of human trafficking or counterfeit electronic parts.

“The government could really attempt to expand its reach if it tries to grab the contracting community and reach one or two circles beyond the prime contractors,” Brown said.

Published on Law360
by dietrichknauth

Obama Uses Contracting Changes To Flex Policy Muscle

By Dietrich Knauth

Law360, New York (January 29, 2014, 9:59 PM EST) — Whether supporting green energy or fighting human trafficking, President Barack Obama has leveraged his authority over federal contracting to push policy goals without the support of Congress, and his newly proposed minimum wage for contractor employees signals a continued willingness to use contracting to push through incremental policy victories.

A key piece of Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday centered on his plans to require contractors to pay a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour to employees, part of an overall push for a nationwide minimum wage. While that proposal matched the speech’s theme of promoting executive action when Congress fails to act, it also highlighted the administration’s frequent use of contracting to pursue its policy goals.

“Using executive orders is not new, and contractor employment practices have been an active area for executive branch regulation since the 1960s,” said Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and a former member of the congressional Commission on Wartime Contracting. “President Obama, though, is using his power over contracting in a greater variety of ways than did his predecessors. This signals mounting frustration on many, many fronts with congressional inaction.”

Contractors’ employment practices, in particular, have been a sort of proxy war for disagreements between the White House and Republicans in Congress about issues like income inequality, and the minimum wage plan comes just weeks after the president signed a piece of legislation that reined in the amount the government will pay toward the salaries of contractor executives.

Obama has used executive power to change a number of contractor employment practices, requiring them to make more of an effort to retain workers when a federal service contract changes hands, requiring companies to police their suppliers for signs of human trafficking, and introducing new affirmative action rules that require contractors to hire more veterans and people with disabilities — regulations that have drawn protests from many in the contractor community.

Although executive orders cannot match the impact of comprehensive legislation, presidents have often used such orders to build on Congress’ work or prod it to action, Tiefer said.

“Congress can go much further by legislation than the president can by executive fiat, but often it breaks the ice for presidents to go first,” Tiefer said. “The equal employment opportunity program, by executive order, laid the groundwork for later legislation that strengthened the key anti-discrimination statutes.”

Obama’s executive order on human trafficking, for example, was quickly bolstered by legislation that was passed as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said he hopes something similar happens with the minimum wage, asking his colleagues to follow the president’s example and pass his proposal to raise the nationwide minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

“As I’m sure the president would agree, this is only a first step,” Harkin said in a statement after the speech. “Low-wage workers perform some of the most difficult and important jobs in our society. They should not have to live in poverty, regardless of whether they are employed by a federal contractor or elsewhere in the private sector.”

From a policy perspective, the minimum wage is a curious place to go after contractors, according to Kara Sacilotto, a partner at Wiley Rein LLP. Contractors are already subject to minimum wages set by the U.S. Department of Labor through the Service Contracts Act and the Davis-Bacon Act, among other laws, she said.

“It’s not necessarily fair to single out federal contractors,” Sacilotto said. “They’ve already got some protections. To me this is perhaps a way of moving the needle on the minimum wage. One could argue that it puts a spotlight on an issue and provides greater attention.”

The president’s order will protect some workers not covered by existing laws, although it is unclear how many, according to Jonathan Entin, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

“How much of an impact President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 per hour will have could depend on how many minimum-wage workers are employed by federal contractors,” Entin said. “I don’t know the answer to that. But presumably the number is not zero, so the order could make some difference directly and might also exert some pressure on state governments to raise their minimum wages.”

Tiefer estimated that existing minimum wage programs like Davis-Bacon cover less than 50 percent of the contracting workforce, and the practical impact of the executive order will depend in large part on how far it extends into “gray areas” like commercial item procurement and federal subcontracts.

But according to Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, the Service Contracts Act generally requires higher wages than the proposed $10.10 an hour, and the executive order could create unnecessary ill will toward contractors.

“We are deeply concerned with any implication that federal contractors are paying substandard wages,” he said. “The requirements of the federal prevailing wage laws and the government’s central role in determining the definition of a fair and reasonable wage are clear and long-standing. Moreover, there is natural concern that, amid a national debate over the minimum wage, government contractors are being uniquely singled out.”

Although Obama has been quick to target contractor employment practices in executive orders, he’s sometimes deferred to lawmakers. In 2012, he declined to issue an executive order that would prevent a contractor from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation because he said it would distract from more comprehensive legislation in Congress.

The president has also used executive orders to change contracting policies in fields far from employment, acting to fill legislation gaps by boosting contractors’ cybersecurity responsibilities, or pursuing an agenda opposed by congressional Republicans by supporting green energy policies through Defense and Energy department contracts.

The military’s green energy initiatives have been a particular point of contention among many Republican lawmakers, who say that the military cannot afford expensive investments in new energy while it cuts costs and downsizes after two wars.

According to Sacilotto, the president’s focus on contracting is part of the higher public profile that contract spending has taken on after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which helped make government contracts into front-page news and a more obvious political battleground.

“Ten years ago, it would have to be a big-time scandal to be in the news, but now you read about government contracts all the time,” Sacilotto said. “If there’s one area where Congress and the president seem to be able to legislate, it’s in regulating government contracts.”

Published by Law360

by dietrichknauth

Government Contracts Regulation And Legislation To Watch in 2014

By Dietrich Knauth

Law360, New York (January 1, 2014, 10:08 AM EST) — The two-year budget deal signed at the end of 2013 offers at least a pause in the budgetary brinksmanship that led to the haphazard budget cuts of sequestration and a 16-day government shutdown, but Congress will  force contractors in 2014 to think on their feet as lawmakers seek to address embarrassing procurement missteps, such as the early failures of HealthCare.gov, and leverage the power of the purse to pursue social and political goals.

Here are the areas to watch for additional legislation and regulation in 2014:

Information technology procurement reform

The botched rollout of HealthCare.gov ramped up scrutiny of the federal information technology acquisition process, prompting calls for change in 2014 amid a growing consensus that the way the government buys technology is too slow, too burdened by inefficiencies and too prone to high-profile failures.

The legislation with the most momentum behind it, Darrell Issa’s, R-Calif., Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, suffered a setback when it was removed from the National Defense Authorization Act, the must-pass legislation that authorizes defense spending, in December. FITARA was included in the version of the NDAA that passed the House in June, and offered as an amendment to the Senate NDAA, but it was removed in a last-minute rewrite of the law aimed at quickly passing the bill after the Senate ran short on time for amendments and debate.

Still, FITARA, or legislation like it, remains on Congress’s agenda in 2014, and it could mitigate some of the persistent problems with IT purchases by giving more budget authority and responsibility to agency chief information officers, creating a streamlined approval process for new information technology contracts, and redirecting money from existing contract management funds to fund IT training for the government’s acquisition personnel.

Contractors generally see empowering CIOs as a good step toward fixing some of the dysfunction that plagues IT procurement, according to Alan Pemberton, co-chair of the government contracts group at Covington & Burling LLP. Contractors would rather directly “talk to the people who actually know the technical aspects of the system and can make sure that the right types of systems are being bought,” rather than have the CIO sidelined by budget and acquisition people who are less familiar with the technology requirements in a procurement

Though FITARA’s reforms would help, anyone who suggests that they’d solve the problems behind the troubled rollout of online health insurance exchanges is kidding themselves, according to Alan Chvotkin, general counsel for the Professional Services Council.

“It’s not a perfect bill. It has elements that are helpful, such as clarifying the role of CIOs, that are long overdue, and if the Congress passes it, it will contribute to some of the issues,” Chvotkin said. “It is not a solution for HealthCare.gov, and if it’s being talked about as ensuring that another HealthCare.gov will never happen, I think that oversells what FITARA is capable of doing.”

Suspension and debarment

Suspension and debarment is an increasingly popular topic in Congress, and that won’t change in 2014, as lawmakers seek to prevent taxpayer dollars from flowing to companies with questionable ethics or track records.

Congress has proposed a more comprehensive overhaul of the government’s approach to suspension and debarment through the Stop Unworthy Spending Act, or SUSPEND Act. That bill would create a new governmentwide suspension and debarment board, and allow some civilian agencies and the U.S. Department of Defense to opt out of the planned consolidation if they can demonstrate that they already have strong suspension and debarment offices.

The waiver option could help civilian agencies with relatively sophisticated suspension and debarment programs, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, maintain control of their programs, and would treat the DOD and military services just like any other executive branch agency. That change has alleviated some criticism of the bill and turned some early skeptics into cautious supporters.

Congress has ramped up its scrutiny of contractor suspension and debarment in recent years, after reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Commission on Wartime Contracting highlighted weaknesses in the suspension and debarment offices of civilian agencies. The SUSPEND Act was proposed after oversight hearings embarrassed some agencies that rarely suspended or debarred any contractors.

Beyond the obvious impact of  taking suspension and debarment authority away from some agencies, passing the SUSPEND Act would likely lead to more of a litigation-style approach to suspension and debarment, according to Frederic Levy of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP.

“The rules for responsibility will stay the same,” Levy said. “The process by which it is determined is going to be much more formal, much more rigorous, and with public decisions you’re going to see more and more of a litigation bar arising around suspension and debarment.”

Though the SUSPEND Act is the most dramatic change that’s on the table, it is likely that Congress will also pursue piecemeal additions to the range of offenses that result in automatic debarment, according to David Robbins, a former Air Force debarring attorney who now heads the government contracts practice at Shulman Rogers Gandal Pordy & Ecker PA.

The rise in automatic debarments puts government agencies and their contractors in a tight spot, Robbins said, because the automatic exclusions are a slippery slope, and lingering debarments with no agency discretion would “absolutely ruin everyone’s ability to get anything done.

“The solution to every problem cannot be to eliminate companies from competition,” Robbins said. “There has to be something short of the ‘death penalty’ of suspension and debarment.”

Supply chain management

Rules proposed in 2013 have required contractors to make significantly greater efforts to police their supply chain and their subcontractors for counterfeit electronic parts and evidence of human trafficking. Those rules could be finalized in 2014, and attorneys expect the focus on supply chain scrutiny will spread to other areas, opening up new risks and potential liabilities.

“I think there’s going to be much more focus on sources and how prime contractors supervise and monitor subcontractors in their supply chain,” said Peter Eyre, an attorney with Crowell & Moring LLP. “This is an area that is changing quite rapidly.”

Visibility into a company’s supply chain will cost money, requiring negotiations with subcontractors, pushback and new agreements.

“There’s also a question of who’s going to bear those costs,” Eyre said. “There are dollars associated with closer scrutiny of the supply chain.”

The government advanced significant rules on counterfeit electronic parts and human trafficking in 2013, taking the same approach to pursue very different goals. In the counterfeit parts rule, the DOD will evaluate contractors’ efforts to scour its supply lines for counterfeit electronics — which pose greater risk of failure and sabotage — as part of its review of contractor purchasing systems. In the human trafficking rule, proposed in September, the government will require contractors to police subcontractors and recruiters for telltale signs of worker exploitation, such as confiscating passports and charging recruitment fees.

An interim rule issued on Nov. 18 expands the same kind of oversight responsibilities to information technology components sold for use in national security systems. That rule is especially noteworthy for contractors, because it gives the DOD the ability to exclude IT contractors from a contract competition if the DOD determines that a contractor or subcontractor presents a supply chain risk, without requiring a full explanation, according to Susan Cassidy of Covington & Burling LLP.

“You can be excluded from a procurement, and there’s a provision that DOD can limit disclosure of why, so you may not even know why,” Cassidy said. “Just from a practical standpoint, this could put contractors in a terrific bind.

Cybersecurity

Protecting the government’s data will remain a focus for federal agencies and their contractors in 2014, and experts expect more regulation in support of that goal.

“The government is broadening the definition of protected data,” Eyre said. “It’s no longer just classified information, it’s not just technical data under ITAR, it’s more generally protecting contractor networks that contain government data.”

Late in 2013, the government finalized a rule requiring contractors to take additional steps to safeguard unclassified technical data, paring down a cybersecurity rule that was criticized as being too broad when proposed in 2011. Though the 2011 proposed rule would have required enhanced cybersecurity for a broader range of unclassified information provided by or developed for the DOD, the final rule is limited to unclassified technical documents related to DOD-funded research and development — including computer software and documents such as engineering drawings, technical manuals, blueprints, data sets, studies and analyses — and to other technical information that could be used to produce, repair or modify any military or space equipment.

The new rule requires contractors to take enhanced cybersecurity measures to protect DOD technical data. The cybersecurity measures are drawn from commonly used practices codified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, including access control, awareness and training, contingency planning and maintenance.

Some concerns remain for contractors, including the lack of a safe harbor for contractors who report breaches despite complying with the NIST standards, and some ambiguity in the definition of a cyberevent that must be reported, according to Elizabeth Ferrell of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP.

“Even though they’ve really narrowed this down, there are certain things that are still troubling from a contractor’s perspective,” Ferrell said.

The DOD said in the final rule that reported cyberincidents will not, by themselves, be considered evidence that a contractor had inadequate security, but flatly denied any safe harbor requests in the comments to the proposed rule, saying “the government does not intend to provide any safe harbor statements.”

Though the DOD has said that the cyberincident reports will not be disclosed as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests, contractors are wary about ways the reports could be used against them, such as impacting their performance reviews or disqualifying them from contract competitions under the supply chain rule, Cassidy said.

“There’s a requirement to report, but it’s unclear what DOD’s going to do with that information,” Cassidy said.

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