AI remains a critical focus of both the federal government and industry, with multiple efforts in recent weeks to address governance of the development and use of AI in the United States. On February 26, 2024, a U.S. Department of State-commissioned report, titled “Defense in Depth: An Action Plan to Increase the Safety and Security of Advanced AI” (Action Plan), proposed multiple U.S. Government and partner nation lines of effort to address growing national security risks posed by rapidly expa
On March 28, 2024, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released Memorandum M-24-10, Advancing Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management for Agency Use of Artificial Intelligence (Memo), updating and implementing OMB’s November 2023 proposed memorandum of the same name. The Memo directs agencies “to advance AI governance and innovation while managing risks from the use of AI in the Federal Government.” In the Memo, OMB focuses on three major areas – strengthening AI governance, advancin
What’s the Point?
To set the groundwork for future episodes, Nicole Owren-Wiest and Erin Rankin talk fundamentals: What is the purpose behind the often counter-intuitive and complex government contracts cost and pricing rules? What are the various price analysis techniques available to the world’s largest buyer of goods and services? “It All Adds Up” is Crowell & Moring’s podcast covering the latest government contract accounting, cost, and pricing developments.
Listen: Crowell.com |
End User License Agreements, Whistleblower Incentives, GHG Disclosures
This week’s episode covers a Federal Circuit decision holding that an end user license agreement incorporated into another contractor’s agreement was sufficient to establish jurisdiction under the Contract Disputes Act, a new DOJ pilot program to incentivize whistleblowers to report corporate misconduct by offering monetary rewards, and a DOD Class Deviation prohibiting DoD from requiring certain defense contractors to di
On March 11, 2024, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published an updated Secure Software Development Attestation Form, meaning that producers of software and providers of products containing software used by the federal government may be required to submit their attestations in the very near future. The Attestation Form, first published in April 2023, is a key cog in CISA’s implementation of software supply chain security r
On March 5, 2024, a federal judge in Texas struck down a federally-sponsored racial preference extended to minority groups seeking to access capital and government contracts. Nuziard v. Minority Business Development Agency (“Nuziard”). Plaintiffs, who are non-minority business owners, challenged a preference provided by the Minority Business Development Agency (“MBDA”), a bureau of the Department of Commerce, to “socially or economically disadvantaged individual[s],” defined to include African A
Government Contracts and International Trade partner Addie Cliffe and Government Contracts counsel Liam O’Reilly discuss the Inflation Reduction Act’s Domestic Content Bonus Credits.Click to read more | Watch now on our YouTube channel
The post Crowell Talks Tax: The Inflation Reduction Act’s Domestic Content Bonus Credits (VIDEO) appeared first on Government Contracts Legal Forum.
View the full article
2023 brought many important False Claims Act developments for companies with business involving government funds. While overall recoveries remained down compared to pre-2022 levels, the total number of settlements and judgments exceeded any prior year. Those settlements and judgments also highlight areas of particular focus for the Government, including cybersecurity compliance, pandemic fraud, and small business fraud, among others. Of particular note, 2023 saw the U.S. Supreme Court issue d
In February 2024, GAO continued its streak of taking a hard look at procurements conducted under Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) subpart 8.4. Subpart 8.4 allows the government to use “simplified” ordering procedures to obtain commercial supplies and services. However, some agencies have apparently adopted the position that “anything goes” in these simplified procurements. Not so! Over the past year, GAO has issued a series of decisions emphasizing that, although this process is supposed
On March 7, 2024, Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Lisa Monaco delivered remarks at the American Bar Association’s 39th National Institute on White Collar Crime announcing a new Department of Justice (DOJ) pilot program that incentivizes whistleblowers to report corporate misconduct by offering monetary rewards. Likening the program to “the days of ‘Wanted’ posters across the Old West,” DAG Monaco explained that individuals who help DOJ discover otherwise unknown, “significant” corporate or financ
A wave of recent changes in federal and state law pertaining to PFAS chemicals is likely to present both immediate and long-term challenges to the government contracting community. At the federal level, contractors that import products, parts, packaging, equipment or other articles with components that contain PFAS must confront new and extensive regulatory reporting requirements relating to such imports going back to 2011, and they must do so by May 2025. At the state level, a growing list of s
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in Avue Technologies Corp. v. Department of Health and Human Services that an appellant’s non-frivolous allegation of a contract with the government via an end-user license agreement (EULA) incorporated into another contractor’s Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) agreement was sufficient to establish jurisdiction under the Contract Disputes Act (CDA).
The Federal Circuit addressed a situation in which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA
Our Two Cents
In this second inaugural episode of It All Adds Up, Nicole Owren-Wiest and Erin Rankin riff on why they care so much about government contracts cost and pricing – and why you should, too. “It All Adds Up” is Crowell & Moring’s podcast covering the latest government contract accounting, cost, and pricing developments.
Listen: Crowell.com | PodBean | SoundCloud | Apple Podcasts
The post It All Adds Up appeared first on Government Contracts Legal Forum.
View the full ar
Defense Innovation Unit, AI, Proposal Timeliness
This week’s episode covers DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit report about actions to maintain U.S. technological superiority, DOJ’s plans to address the dangers posed by AI technology by seeking sentencing enhancements for crimes committed using AI technology, and a GAO decision involving a situation in which an offeror’s proposal was blocked by the agency’s cybersecurity system, and is hosted by Peter Eyre and Yuan Zhou. Crowell & Moring’s “F
A recent decision in a non-intervened qui tam suit in the Northern District of Georgia provides an example of a defendant threading the needle to avoid dismissal of its counterclaims despite those counterclaims arguably implicating the conduct that the relator alleged violated the False Claims Act (FCA). It also stands as a rare instance where a company’s counterclaims against an FCA relator have survived early court scrutiny and, as such, provides FCA defendants with a potential strategy to com
Generally, a GAO protest challenging the terms of a solicitation is timely if filed within 10 days after the denial of an agency-level protest, “even if filed after bid opening or the closing time for receipt of proposals.” 4 C.F.R. § 21.2(a)(3). Accordingly, the salient consideration for determining when that 10-day clock begins to run is when the agency denies the agency-level protest. But in Marathon Medical Corp., B-422168.2, February 14, 2024, GAO held that if an agency has not ruled on
“Now or later?” As individuals, we are constantly asked to prioritize our time, identifying the tasks that need to be done NOW versus those that can be put off until later. In the bid protest context, the question arises as well when agencies seek to “fill in the gaps” in the administrative record with additional detail, a practice GAO has permitted so long as those details are consistent with the contemporaneous record. But, as highlighted by two recent GAO sustain decisions, when agencies a
In Strategic Technology Institute, Inc. v. Sec’y of Def., 91 F.4th 1140 (Fed. Cir. 2024), the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision by the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals (ASBCA), which held that the government’s 2018 claim was not time-barred by the Contract Dispute Act’s (CDA) six-year statute of limitations. The ASBCA found that the government’s claim did not begin to accrue until 2014, the date the government received the contractor’s indirect cost rate proposals for fiscal year (FY)
Criminal Investigations and the False Claims Act
In this episode, Steve Byers, Jason Crawford, and Agustin Orozco discuss the intersection between False Claims Act investigations and parallel criminal proceedings. “Let’s Talk FCA” is Crowell & Moring’s podcast covering the latest developments with the False Claims Act.
Listen: Crowell.com | PodBean | SoundCloud | Apple Podcasts
The post Let’s Talk FCA appeared first on Government Contracts Legal Forum.
View the full article
Offerors understand that missing a submission deadline can sink even the best proposal because “late is late.” But what happens when an offeror timely emails its proposal only to have an agency server reject it without any notification to the offeror? GAO’s recent decision in Guidehouse, Inc., B-422115.2, Jan. 19, 2024, says that the proposal is still late and emphasizes the potentially draconian impact of the “late is late” rule.
In Guidehouse, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Age
Salary-History Bans and Pay Transparency, Section 3610 of the CARES Act
This week’s episode covers a proposed rule on salary-history bans and pay transparency for job applicants and employees of federal contractors and subcontractors, a claim relating to Section 3610 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, new requirements for U.S.-based Infrastructure as a Service providers, and recent updates to the 1260H List, and is hosted by Peter Eyre and Yuan Zhou. Crowell &
In Vanda Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. United States, No. 23-629C (Fed. Cl. 2024), 2024 WL 201890, the Court of Federal Claims (COFC) addressed whether government disclosure of a company’s trade secrets and commercial information could create a viable claim for a taking under the Fifth Amendment or for breach of an implied-in-fact contract. The company, Vanda Pharmaceuticals (Vanda), claimed that the government’s disclosure of its confidential trade secrets—including its trademarked drugs’ dissoluti
Following a January 29, 2024 White House announcement and Fact Sheet, on January 30, 2024, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Council issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Proposed Rule) on salary-history bans and pay transparency for applicants and employees of federal contractors and subcontractors. On the same day, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) issued some FAQs on the compensation history issue. These actions by the federal government to ban prior salary i
On January 29, 2024, the Department of Commerce released a proposed rule: Taking Additional Steps To Address the National Emergency With Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities, which solicits comments regarding a proposed new set of regulations that would introduce significant new requirements for U.S.-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers. The proposed rule implements requirements from the January 2021 Executive Order Taking Additional Steps To Address the Nat
On January 31, 2024, the Department of Defense (DoD) updated the 1260H List of entities identified as “Chinese military companies” operating in the United States, as it is required to do at least annually by Section 1260H of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. Section 1260H defines a “Chinese military company” as an entity that is:
directly or indirectly owned, controlled, or beneficially owned by, or in an official or unofficial capacity acting as
.gif)
