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Jcordeiro

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  1. We have a Multiple Award Task Order contract that allows for FFP, T&M and Cost Plus type contracts. In a recent CPFF task order response request, the Government published that "The offeror may not exceed the labor rates specified in its respective contract’s T&M Price Matrix. However, the offeror is permitted to propose CPFF labor rates that are lower than those established in the Labor Rate Table. If we have lower direct costs the Government receives the benefit of CPFF and if we have higher direct costs we have to take the loss? Is this allowed?
  2. To reduce capital equipment costs and as a result in the decline in the availability of capital equipment funds, we have had a number of customers approach us to deliver systems under Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) models. The customer(s) believe that they can use operations and maintenance funding to purchase solutions for a specific period of time without ever owning the capital equipment. While true cloud service offerings offer savings through the sharing of hardware and software across many users, it isn’t clear how this applies when the Government is the sole user of the system. Our research indicates that this would fall under an “Operating Lease” as defined by the FAR since the use of Operations and Maintenance funds requires the agreement to be an operating lease with the following conditions to avoid a "color of money" violation: The lease cannot transfer ownership of the property to the lessee by, or at, the end of the lease term. The lease cannot contain an option to purchase the leased property at a bargain price (significantly less than fair market value). The lease term is less than 75 percent of the estimated economic life of the leased equipment. The present value of rental and other minimum lease payments, excluding that portion representing executory costs to be paid by the leasing organization, is less than 90 percent of the fair value of the leased property. My question is: Can the Government obtain IT system hardware and software “as a service” when they are the sole user of the system? Would this violate the color of money or operational lease regulations since they are effectively to sole user of the system and are calling is “as a service” to side step color of money regulations? I would like to know if anyone has any other insight as it appears that a number of companies are offering this as an option.
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