Regulators put conflict-of-interest proposals on hold

The Defense Acquisition Regulatory Council has put on hold previously proposed rules on contractor conflicts of interest while regulators draw up new proposals, according to documents updated Oct. 31. On the day before, defense and civilian agency regulators opened a case for new Federal Acquisition Regulation rules, based on the fiscal 2009 National Defense Authorization Act () that President Bush signed Oct. 14. Defense Department lawyers are drawing up for the Defense Acquisition Regulation staff members a draft of a proposed FAR rule by Dec. 10, according to a DOD detailing the status of proposed regulations. The law requires the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to develop and issue a policy to prevent personal conflicts of interest by contractor employees doing work closely associated with inherently governmental functions. The policy must require those employees to identify conflicts of interest and prohibit employees with access to private government information for using it for personal gain. In addition, the law requires government contracts and task and delivery orders to include clauses regarding the policy. The clause must take effect by next September. Members of Congress have said they’re concerned that contractor employees who work alongside government employees are not subject to the same conflict-of-interest provisions as government workers. As for the proposals now on hold, regulators had been reviewing for several months public comments on proposed rules on organizational and service-contractor employee personal conflicts of interest.