Redstone Government Consulting Blog | Contracts & Subcontracts Administration (24)

President Obama signed another executive order July 31 2014 which will mandate contractors to disclose prior violations of federal labor laws, the superficial purpose of which is to enable federal procurement process to protect contractor workers and improve integrity of selection of contractors for future awards.  

The new DFARS business system rule requires audits by CPA’s, with DCAA approving the risk assessment and the audit program and reviewing the working papers afterwards.      

The obvious reason for this proposal is that DCAA is unable to perform the audits themselves.  At least not on a timely basis.  When DCAA was performing the audits, it was taking over 2 years to perform 1 system audit.  This rule requires it to be done within 6 months after the close of the contractor’s fiscal year.  In contrast, DCAA was not completing the risk assessment in that length of time.

So now let’s take CPA firms that are used to performing financial statement reviews in a timely manner and handcuff them to DCAA, an Agency that is notorious for missing due dates.

And THEN let that same Agency, in essence, audit the audit.  And furthermore, there are no provisions to limit DCAA to a reasonable time frame for approval of the risk assessment and audit program. 

Contractors who have analyzed the proposed rule released July 15, 2014, which places the responsibility on contractors to support the adequacy of certain business systems via utilization of Independent Public Accounting (IPA) CPA organization audits, have mixed reactions to the rules requirements: reactions ranging from total agony due to added and redundant audit oversight plus administrative strife in dealing with those redundancies, to a real opportunity to achieve some control over obtaining a reasonable and objective analysis of their systems the outcomes of which just might be completed timely. 

I recently delivered a presentation at the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) World Congress on the July 15, 2014 DoD proposed changes to DFARS business system Rules (DFARS Case 2012-042) for contractor accounting systems, estimating systems, and material management and accounting systems (MMAS).  A public hearing on the proposed changes is scheduled for August 18, 2014 and comments are to be submitted on or before September 15, 2014.  As noted in previous blogs, the new rules do not apply to small businesses or to other DFARS defined business systems (purchasing, EVMS, Government property).

As published in the Federal Register on May 6, 2014 the Department of Defense has issued a final rule amending the DFARS to require certain qualifying contractors to adequately address the detection and avoidance of counterfeit electronic parts.  This was done to implement those sections of the NDAA for fiscal years 2012 and 2013 respectively dealing with the same subject and is effective May 6, 2014.

As required by Section 702 of the 2014 Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA) signed by President Obama on December 26, 2013, the June 24, 2014 Federal Register includes an interim rule setting the FAR 31.205-6(p) executive compensation statutory cap at $487K (coincidentally a 49% reduction from the most recent statutory cap of $952,308).   The June 2014 rule notes that it also implements a possible “narrowly targeted” exception to this cost limit for scientists, engineers or other specialists upon an agency determination that such exceptions are needed to ensure that the executive agency has continued access to needed skills and capabilities.  The interim rule also includes a comment period which is for 60 days after the Federal Register publication date (June 24 to August 23, 2014).

On March 25, 2014, President Obama issued executive orders raising the minimum wage to $10.10/hour for contractor employees on government contracts.  The logic, the hardworking cooks serving hamburgers to our troops should not be living in poverty (most likely a reference to the fast food chains which are located on military installations).  Simultaneously, he also directed the Department of Labor to change the federal rules to make more “salary exempt” employees eligible for overtime pay.   The current threshold of $455/week will likely be increased to a significantly higher amount noting that the last change (April 2004) increased the amount from $155/week to $455/week.  The higher amount could be as much as $950/week in which case someone earning $949/week would be eligible for overtime pay (including overtime premium) for hours exceeding 40 hours per week.   In one press release, the Department of Labor used one example of the severe inequity of the existing threshold $455/week), noting that two “hardworking” gas station managers in New Jersey were effectively making less than minimum wage.

Non-U.S. contractors have many misconceptions as to what rules and regulations they must comply with under U.S. Government contracts. The two most common misunderstandings non-U.S. entities have are (1) their country laws trump U.S. laws and regulations, and (2) Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) rules on cost collection and allocations are less strenuous for non-U.S. contractors. These two misconceptions could not be further from the truth.

Coming as no surprise, President Obama signed the Bi-Partisan (2014) Budget Act on December 26, 2013 including an executive compensation cap of $487K (coincidentally one-half of the most recent statutory cap of $952,308 and significantly lower than an alternate bill with a cap of $625K).  This maybe Obama’s “crowning achievement” over his two terms proving that if someone (The President) whines enough and ignores all of the regulatory history and the fundamental principle that commercial prices constitute a reasonable cost, he will achieve his goal of forcing large government contractors to absorb more and more of their executive’s compensation.  It should be noted that the prior cap and the methodology was based upon compensation of publicly traded corporations with $50 million or more in revenues; hence, that cap was artificially low considering that a number of large government contractors have revenues in the billions and that executive compensation is correlated to company size/revenues.