On September 12, 2022, President Biden issued an Executive Order (“E.O.”) announcing the National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative, a “whole-of-government” effort to further biotechnology and biomanufacturing innovations in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security. The White House subsequently announced that the Initiative would cost $2 billion.
With continued inflation putting pressure on the defense supply chain, the Department of Defense (“DoD”) has released guidance encouraging contracting officers to provide mutually agreeable relief to fixed-price contractors facing untenable costs.
DoD’s guidance, dated September 9, 2022 and available at the link here, follows a similar guidance earlier this summer which recommended that
Update as of September 15, 2022: OFCCP has extended the deadline by one month for contractors to submit objections to the FOIA request described in this article. The new deadline is October 19, 2022. Additionally, in an effort to clarify which government contractors are covered by this FOIA request, OFCCP has indicated that it will
UPDATED AS OF 10/26/2022:
Changing course after its August 31 announcement that it would not enforce the federal government contractor vaccination mandate absent further written notice, on October 14, 2022, OMB and the Task Force published an update stating that they plan to issue at least three new guidance documents with an eye toward potentially
On August 25, 2022, President Biden announced a new Executive Order (“EO”) addressing the Implementation of the CHIPS Act of 2022 (“CHIPS Act”). The CHIPS Act was signed by President Biden on August 9, 2022, and, among other things, authorizes $39 billion in funding for new projects to establish semiconductor production facilities within the United
Earlier this year, the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) opened the Contractor Portal, a new platform where covered federal contractors and subcontractors must annually certify whether they are meeting their requirement to develop and maintain written Affirmative Action Programs (“AAPs”). As we previewed in June, OFCCP required covered
On August 25, 2022, the Department of Defense (“DOD”) published — with immediate effect — two new Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (“DFARS”) clauses requiring defense prime contractors and subcontractors disclose any work in China on certain DOD contracts. Under the interim rule, the DOD is prohibited from awarding or extending certain new contracts if
On July 28, 2022, the United States Department of Transportation (“DOT”) published a Request for Information (“RFI”) on the implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s Build America, Buy America Act (“BABA”). As discussed in our previous post, BABA expanded Buy America preferences to cover all infrastructure projects and sets new domestic content
This is the fourteenth in a series of Covington blogs on implementation of Executive Order 14028, “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity,” issued by President Biden on May 12, 2021 (the “Cyber EO”). The first blog summarized the Cyber EO’s key provisions and timelines, and the subsequent blogs described the actions taken by various Government agencies to
The Eastern District of New York has enjoined a New York contractor’s federal debarment, in a rebuke of agency debarment actions that fail to honor contractors’ procedural rights. On July 8, 2022, part supplier Precision Metals Corporation (“Precision”) was granted a Temporary Restraining Order (“TRO”) vacating and setting aside a Defense Logistics Agency (“DLA”) debarment