DoD Interim rule to increase competition in its Major Defense Acquisition Program – Watch out!
The attached article from Venable LLP addresses DoD efforts to increase completion on MDAP contracts for both prime and subcontractors. While this would appear good on the surface, what is very troubling about this interim rule, which will become a final rule, is the language addressing the release of Technical Data on such contracts.
This rule will make it very difficult for contractors to hold on to proprietary technical data. It is the government’s way of obtaining all the technical data developed during a contractor’s Independent Research and Development efforts in coming up with new or improved MDAP products.
Obtaining this data will allow the government to release the technical data in subsequent RFPs to the developing contractor’s competitors; thereby putting that contractor at a financial disadvantage. Through this process the contractor’s competitors will obtain all the necessary technical data to produce the product without incurring any of the development expense.
The potential back lash to DoD is that contractors refuse to incur the cost of research to create new or improved MDAP products knowing that DoD will just release the technical data to its competitors on future RFPs.
For further information please contact Tim Di Guiseppe at TD Government Solutions, tim.diguiseppe@tdgovernmentsolutions.biz
Office 814-535-7046
Cell 814-242-2410
Fax 814-260-4222
Click link to obtain a PDF of this Article
Tags: Contracting, Contracts, Defense Department Contracting, DoD contracts, Government Contracting
This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 7:46 am.
