Acquisition officials representing both the military and civilian branches of government released the much-anticipated proposed regulations April 26. Among the main changes from the status quo in them is the addition of acceptance to the three current methods of addressing conflict of interest, which are avoidance, neutralization and mitigation.
Contracting officers could propose acceptance only when the potential danger is to government business interests as opposed to the integrity of the acquisition process. An example of the latter would be risk of a contractor obtaining an unfair advantage in competing for a future government contract, whereas an example of the former would be risk of a contractor offering up advice to the government "in a way that degrades the value" of the advice.
Acceptance would "generally" have to combined with other methods, particularly mitigation, but a contracting officer could accept the mitigation plan even if it does not remove all the risk of a conflict, the proposed regulations say.
Read more: Proposed OCI regs would allow government to tolerate conflict of interest - FierceGovernmentIT http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/proposed-oci-regs-would-allow-government-tolerate-conflict-interest/2011-04-26#ixzz1KlzVJhc2
Subscribe: http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/signup?sourceform=Viral-Tynt-FierceGovernmentIT-FierceGovernmentIT
Obama offers different vision of conflicts of interest
The Obama administration and the Defense Department apparently view organizational conflicts of interest from different perspectives. The administration has put out a potential rule on OCIs that differs from the DOD's 2010 draft. It allows the government to accept more risk and raises questions about conflicts among business affiliates.
The White House kept the general framework of the DOD’s proposed OCI rule with its preference for mitigation, but gives contacting officers more flexibility when faced with potential harm to the government and other vendors, according to the new proposal published April 26.
The Civilian Agency Acquisition Council and the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council, along with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, propose two types of harm that arise from OCIs. One type hurts the integrity of the competitive acquisition system. The other affects the government and its business interests alone.
While the DOD prefers mitigation, the administration's new proposal would allow contracting officers to accept risk if it’s appropriate. The risk factor would apply after the government and contractor first attempt other avenues.
“The risk of harm to the government’s business interests may sometimes be assessed as an acceptable performance risk,” according to the proposal.
Prior posts on this subject
No comments:
Post a Comment