Proposed rule

If you have opened a federal solicitation this year and felt like you were reading two rulebooks stapled together, you were not imagining it. Since the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) overhaul began, agencies have been buying under class deviations while the FAR Council works on making the new text official. The result is a generation of solicitations that cite the overhauled FAR in one clause and the old one in the next. Now the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has weighed in, and its answer is one part sympathy and three parts homework.

Continue Reading Not a Model of Clarity: GAO Takes Its First Hard Look at Solicitations That Mix the Old FAR with the New

The proposed rule is now history. On August 11, 2026, the Small Business Administration (SBA) published its final rule, Reforms to 13 CFR 124.103 To Remove SBA’s 8(a) Program’s Rebuttable Presumption of Social Disadvantage for Individually Owned Firms Only, 91 Fed. Reg. 51568 (Aug. 11, 2026) (the Rule). The Rule takes effect September 10, 2026, and by its own terms applies to all pending applications of individually-owned applicants as of that date. A firm with an application sitting in the queue will therefore be measured against a test that did not exist when it applied.

Continue Reading Prove the Policy, Not the Story: SBA’s Final Rule Rewrites the 8(a) Social Disadvantage Test

This year, The Rocky Horror Picture Show celebrates the 50th anniversary of its release. While that cult classic film has stood the test of time, another relic of the 1970s, the Cost Accounting Standards (CAS), is showing its age. When CAS was initially promulgated, Congress determined that the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) were not enough to satisfy the government’s requirements for evaluating contract costing and pricing. However, in the decades since, GAAP has evolved, and there are now areas of overlap that have arisen since CAS was first promulgated. Recognizing this overlap, the government has set in motion a review to determine which parts of CAS could be addressed by GAAP, which is the commercial standard regularly used by companies. If there were accounting areas where GAAP could stand in place of CAS, the government wants to reduce the overall burden in the procurement process by allowing contractors to more heavily rely on GAAP, which they are already using to report on their daily business activities.

Continue Reading CAS Madness Takes Its Toll: The Detailed Work of Conforming CAS to GAAP

Sequels are rarely better than the films that precede them, and yet, sometimes a story is just too compelling to be limited to just one film. At the tail end of a summer full of Hollywood sequels, the Department of Defense (DoD) released a long-gestating sequel of its own. On August 15, 2024, DoD published a Proposed Rule that would revise the DoD Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) to implement Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 into DoD contracts in the near(ish) future. This follows a December 2023 Proposed Rule, discussed here, establishing the CMMC 2.0 requirements in broad strokes. In this latest Proposed Rule, DoD proposes several changes to the DFARS that would do the following:

Continue Reading CMMC and DFARS 252.204-7021—Is the Sequel Better than the Original?

Cyber incidents involving critical infrastructure pose a serious risk to the US. In March 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Security Advisor warned state governors about potential attacks on drinking water and wastewater facilities by specific Iran- and China-aligned hackers. The following month (on April 4, 2024), in an attempt to prepare for such attacks and otherwise improve the federal government’s ability to collect and analyze data related to cyber incidents on critical infrastructure, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a proposed rule to implement cyber incident reporting requirements under the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA). Enacted in an omnibus appropriation, CIRCIA directed CISA to issue rulemaking requiring the reporting of cyber incidents or the payment of ransoms in response to cyberattacks affecting critical infrastructure.  

Continue Reading CISA’s CIRCIA Proposed Rule: Another Player Enters the Reporting Regime

What do you think is going to be scarier—artificial intelligence (AI) or the government’s effort to regulate AI? On October 30, 2023, the White House issued Executive Order (E.O.) 14410, Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. As the federal government’s latest foray into harnessing AI, this E.O.—like those before it, generally—recognizes that AI offers extraordinary potential and promise, provided that it is harnessed responsibly to prevent the exacerbation of societal harms. Since E.O. 14410, there has been a flurry of activity in the federal government, including guidance and policies providing an indication of how agencies can/should/will harness AI to support agency objectives. While we are far from a situation similar to Skynet from the Terminator franchise or HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the government’s accelerated activity to reap AI’s potential benefits far outpaces the provision of actionable guidance so contractors can understand and adapt to what will be required in offering AI products and services to the government. So let’s open the pod bay doors and explore…

Continue Reading Executive Order 14410: An Artificial Intelligence Odyssey

On October 25, 2023, the Department of Defense (DoD) published a Proposed Rule amending the Department of Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) and permanently authorizing the DoD Mentor-Protégé Program (DoD MP Program). In addition, the Proposed Rule makes several changes to the program—the most prominent of which include (a) lowering barriers to entry and (b) adding additional benefits for prospective mentors and protégés. Before we dive in to the Proposed Rule, a brief history of the DoD MP Program is in order.

Continue Reading DoD Mentor-Protégé Program Solidified under Proposed Rule

The Proposed Rule behind FAR Case 2021-017 may strike fear into the hearts of many contractors, as it implements new recommendations regarding cybersecurity reporting obligations. Alex Major highlights the necessary steps and potential risks federal contractors must consider in the Government Contractor.

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In 2006, the documentary An Inconvenient Truth chronicled former Vice President Al Gore’s efforts to educate the public on the consequences of climate change. In the sixteen years since the Academy Award-winning film was released, public interest in the impact that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have had, are having, and will have on our planet has increased exponentially. Most recently, at the 27th U.N. Climate Conference (COP27), countries from around the globe came together to discuss the implementation of battle plans to combat climate change. One such plan, which was discussed at COP 27 by President Biden, is a new Proposed Rule that would require “significant” and “major” federal contractors to disclose their GHG emissions and climate-related financial risk as well as set science-based targets to reduce their GHG emissions. If and when the Proposed Rule is finalized, it will have seismic implications for contractors, in that it ties contractor responsibility (i.e., a contractor’s ability to receive federal awards) to compliance with these requirements.
Continue Reading An Inconvenient Requirement: New Proposed Rule Would Require Federal Contractors to Disclose Greenhouse Gas Emissions