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DOL proposes rule to collect compensation data from federal contractors

August 28, 2014 By ei2admin

On August 6, 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced a proposed rule that would require most federal contractors and subcontractors annually to submit Equal Pay Reports on employee compensation to the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). The aim of the proposed rule is to collect summary data on how federal contractors and subcontractors pay their employees, with an eye toward identifying potential gender-based and race-based pay disparities. This marks a significant change in compliance requirements for the federal contractor community because until now, federal contractors were required to disclose compensation data only in OFCCP compliance reviews.

The Equal Pay Report rule comes after President Obama issued a presidential memorandum on April 8, 2014, instructing the Secretary of Labor to propose a rule to collect summary compensation data from federal contractors and subcontractors. The proposed rule would require contractors to provide compensation information for their workforce broken down by sex, race, ethnicity and specified job categories. The rule was published in the Federal Register on August 8, 2014, and all comments must be received by November 6, 2014. After consideration of public comments, the DOL is anticipated to issue a final rule in the first half of 2015.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=334810

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: compensation, compliance, DOL, equal pay, OFCCP, reporting requirements, rule-making, subcontracting

VA sole decider in SDVOSB status protest decisions, rule says

October 21, 2013 By ei2admin

The Veterans Affairs Department will decide status protests for all  service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses and veteran-owned small  businesses and not cede that authority to the Small Business Administration, a  Sept. 31 interim rule says.

The rule doesn’t change the fact of self-certification for SDVOSB status by  companies bidding on contracts at agencies other than the VA.

The VA’s director of the Center for Veterans Enterprise will initially  adjudicate all SDVOSB and VOSB status protests, but those businesses can appeal  to the VA’s executive director of small and disadvantaged business utilization,  the rule says.

The VA says it considered reaching an interagency agreement with the SBA for it  to review and decide status protests, but determined that SDVOSB and VOSB status  protest adjudication should remain within VA.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/va-sole-decider-sdvosb-status-protest-decisions-rule-says/2013-10-16

See the new interim rule at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-09-30/html/2013-23759.htm

Filed Under: Contracting Tips Tagged With: protest, rule-making, SBA, SDVOSB, VA, verification, veteran owned business, VOSB

Agencies seek to improve acquisition rule-making process

February 17, 2011 By ei2admin

The process for issuing federal acquisition rules has become too slow and uncoordinated and must be dramatically revamped, according to top officials at the General Services Administration.

In recent years, the multiagency Federal Acquisition Regulations Council, the entity in charge of developing and codifying government procurement rules, has become bogged down in a cumbersome rule-making process that has created an unmanageable backlog of cases, many dating back several years, the officials said.

For example, in fiscal 2010 the FAR Council, which has representatives from the Defense Department, GSA and NASA, opened 36 cases and closed 42 others. But at the end of the year, 61 potential rules remained outstanding, meaning in most instances, rules took more than one year to finish. Some have taken up to five years, according to Kathleen Turco, associate administrator of governmentwide policy at GSA.

“If it takes that long, it’s not really good rule-making,” Turco said. “We want quality but not looking at timeliness is not acceptable either.” Typically, even a complicated rule should take less than one year, she said.

Looking to rectify the problem, leaders of the FAR Council and the Office of Management and Budget’s Information and Regulatory Affairs and Federal Procurement Policy shops, held a first-of-its-kind meeting on Feb. 9 to begin hashing out the process for reforming the outdated rule-making system.

Attended by 35 agency officials at GSA headquarters, the event was coordinated as a “slam,” in which key decision-makers lock themselves in a room to solve one problem and cannot leave until specific outcomes are achieved. GSA has hosted two previous slams on information technology and hiring for the acquisition workforce, but this was the first interagency event.

The meeting helped identify a number of causes for the backlog, including a lack of leadership on rule-making, particularly from GSA; a failure to elevate concerns to senior management; a high number of retirements and turnover; and insufficient interagency coordination.

“We need a tune-up on our system,” GSA Administrator Martha Johnson said. “Right now, we are driving our father’s car. It works, but is showing its age. I want a modern, electric car version of the FAR to take us where we need to go reliably and quickly.”

Officials during last week’s meeting identified three fundamental areas in need of examination: team management, case management and training. In each area, participants agreed to create action plans with projected milestones due by March 31.

“The slam was a huge success in effectively and efficiently getting all of the participating agencies to agree on these three key improvement areas,” said Bill Roets, senior procurement analyst in NASA’s Office of Procurement. “We are looking forward to working with the other federal agencies on these improvement areas and improving the FAR rule-making process.”

For example, the FAR Council currently is broken into six teams, with each devoted to a certain area of expertise such as small businesses, finance or technology. One of the three agencies represented on the council will take the lead in the effort, bringing in outside experts if necessary. The new review, to be led by NASA, will examine whether the FAR teams are structured correctly and coordinated most efficiently.

A second review, which Defense will lead, will examine the steps of the rule-making process, including rapidly resolving critical policy decisions, cutting the overall backlog, ensuring communication among the teams and bringing legal counsel in at the front end, Turco said.

The third examination, to be run by GSA, will look at enhancing the training program for FAR Council employees, many of whom have been on the job for less than one year. “We bring them on at GS-14 and 15 [levels] with a wealth of experience in procurement and contract management, but actual rule-making and policy drafting is an art all of its own,” Turco said. “We need to ensure they have training.”

While training is a concern, staffing for the council is not the problem, she said. GSA has 15 full-time employees devoted exclusively to studying, writing, editing and drafting acquisition rules. Previously, Turco said, many of those same workers would have multiple duties unrelated to the FAR.

“The structure of the office over here at GSA was convoluted and a mess,” she conceded.

But, other problems persist. In late March, Turco plans to address the lengthy and often unwieldy administrative process needed to submit a document to be published in Federal Register.

The working groups also will consider developing a collaboration tool — possibly a Google application — where the teams can work together online. Incredibly, much of the rule-making process, including the submission and editing of public comments, still is done on paper, contributing to the backlog, she said.

Once the backlog problems are addressed, senior leaders of the council plan to tackle the quality of the rule-making process, which Turco said has frequently devolved into “mommy management.”

“We are co-mingling rule-making with process,” she said. “We are too dictatorial in terms of how people carry out the policy and it is getting silly. We are co-mingling what we are supposed to be doing. Rulemaking is not telling people how to get from Point A to Point B.”

 — by Robert Brodsky – GovExec.com – February 15, 2011

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: DoD, FAR, GSA, NASA, OMB, rule-making

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