At long last, the Department of Defense (“DoD”) has provided its interim rule, published in the Federal Register on September 29, 2020, amending the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (“DFARS”) to set forth requirements for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (“CMMC”) program, as well as new requirements for a “NIST SP 800-171 DoD Assessment Methodology.”  The interim rule is effective November 30, 2020, and comments to the interim rule should be submitted by November 30 as well.  Continue reading for our breakdown of key provisions.…

On September 14, 2020, the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council published the long anticipated proposed rule amending the Federal Acquisition Regulation (“FAR”) in accordance with President Trump’s Executive Order 13881, “Maximizing Use of American-Made Goods, Products, and Materials.” As previously discussed here, the Executive Order, signed on July 15, 2019, required significant changes to the implementing regulations of the Buy American Act, 41 U.S.C. §§ 8301-8305, changing policies dating back nearly 70 years. Accordingly, the proposed rule seeks to increase both the domestic content requirements and the evaluation preferences provided by the FAR for domestically manufactured goods, particularly with…

On September 10, 2020, the General Services Administration (“GSA”) hosted a webinar related to its implementation of Section 889 of the 2019 NDAA – the ban relating to certain Chinese telecom companies – and associated updated FAR clauses.  (We previously have written about Section 889 here, here, here, and here).  Below we provide highlights from the meeting.  Slides presented at the meeting also are available here.…

Beginning October 15, 2020, the U.S. Small Business Administration (“SBA”), implementing the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”), will begin requiring women-owned small businesses (“WOSBs”) and economically disadvantaged WOSBs (“EDWOSBs”) to undergo a formal certification process to be eligible under the Procurement Program for Women-Owned Small Business Concerns (the “Program”). Thus, WOSBs and EDWOSBs no longer will be allowed to self-certify that they meet the Program requirements to compete for set-aside or sole source contracts, as has been the case for the last few decades. Instead, WOSBs and EDWOSBs now must apply for a formal government-issued certification at https://beta.certify.sba.gov/,…

In our previous blog article, we discussed the Federal Circuit’s decision in Inserso Corp. v. United States, 961 F.3d 1343 (Fed. Cir. 2020), in which a split panel held a protest cannot be brought in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (“COFC”) if, before the time of proposal submission, “the law and facts” made it reasonably known to the contractor that a procurement error was likely to occur under the terms of the solicitation.  We analogized the Inserso decision’s application of this waiver rule – known in government contracts law parlance as the Blue & Gold rule –…

The U.S. Small Business Administration (“SBA”) recently announced that the federal government exceeded its small business contracting goal by awarding $132.9 billion dollars in federal contracts – 26.5% of the government’s total procurement spending – to small businesses last fiscal year, with at least an additional $90.7 billion in subcontracts.  The SBA recently released statistics in its FY 2019 Small Business Procurement Scorecard, available here and here.  Also notable in these reports: (a) for only the second time ever the government met the 5% woman-owned small business goal; (b) the government met the service-disabled veteran-owned small business goal (3%,…

On August 6, 2020, President Trump signed the “Executive Order on Ensuring Essential Medicines, Medical Countermeasures, and Critical Inputs Are Made in the United States,” requiring, among other things, the U.S. government to purchase “essential” medicines and medical supplies produced domestically, rather than abroad. Citing a need to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers, the Order sets forth several new requirements aimed at establishing reliable, long-term domestic production of essential drugs and devices, including their component parts. To be clear, this is a tall order: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will need to assemble a list of…

A recent enforcement action offers a glimpse of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (“FINRA”) expectations for firms conducting anti-money laundering (“AML”) due diligence and transaction monitoring.  On July 27, 2020, FINRA settled with broker-dealer JKR & Company (“JKR”) over allegations that the firm failed to detect, investigate, and report suspicious activity in four customer accounts in violation of FINRA Rules 3310(a) and 2010.  JKR agreed to a $50,000 fine and a censure to resolve the matter.  The settlement is notable in that FINRA applied transaction monitoring and due diligence expectations common in the banking industry to a broker-dealer.  It also…

NIST’s news draft guidance, Special Publication 800-53B, Control Baselines for Information Systems and Organizations, provides important information on selecting both security and privacy control baselines for the Federal Government. These control baselines are from NIST Special Publication 800-53 and have been moved to this separate publication “so the SP 800-53 [can] serve as a consolidated catalog of security and privacy controls regardless of how those controls [are] used by different communities of interest.”   The new guidance addresses federal information systems and is applicable to information systems used or operated by an agency, a contractor on behalf of an agency,…

You got to know when to hold ‘em, Know when to fold ‘em, Know when to walk way, And know when to run. Such is the advice of the unnamed gambler from the late Kenny Rogers’ 1978 hit single, “The Gambler.”  While the eponymous hero of that song may have believed his advice to be sound, there remains the undeniable fact that regardless of whatever skill you may have “out of readin’ people’s faces,” there always will be an element of chance to whether you will win at the table.  You can never know when to hold ‘em or when…

On July 15, 2020, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) charged Andrew Marnell with bank fraud in connection with $8.5 million worth of Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) loans he obtained for fake business expenses, that were then spent on gambling and stock market bets, incurring millions of dollars in losses.  See United States v. Marnell, No. 2:20-mj-03313-DUTY (C.D. Cal. Jul. 15, 2020).…

On July 14, 2020 the Department of Defense (“DoD”), General Services Administration (“GSA”), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (“NASA”) published an Interim Rule amending the Federal Acquisition Regulation (“FAR”) in order to implement Section 889(a)(1)(B) of the FY 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”).[1] The Interim Rule is effective August 13, 2020, and applies to all solicitations issued after (or resulting in contracts that will be awarded after) the effective date. Interested parties have until September 14, 2020 to submit written comments for consideration in the formation of the Final Rule.…