Earlier this year, Lanier Ford’s Federal Government Contracting team earned a favorable decision in a security-clearance revocation before the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA) within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). The matter came before the DoD after the agency became concerned about the security clearance level held by an employee of a private-sector contractor. The DOD issued a statement of reasons to the employee (the applicant) in which the DoD sought to revoke applicant’s security clearance because of financial difficulties the applicant faced. After a hearing on the matter, the DOHA determined that the applicant was not a security risk and was therefore eligible for security clearance. See In the Matter of: *** Applicant for Security Clearance, ISCR Case No. 12-11841, 2015 WL 1881742, at *1 (DOHA Apr. 20, 2015).

Since 2009, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has been cracking down on misclassification of workers. The DOL has just issued another document that confirms its determination to enforce those provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Internal Revenue Code that require employers to do the following for employees (but theoretically not for independent contractors):

A Huntsville manufacturer, who did more than $2 million in business with the federal government during 2014, has been investigated and sanctioned by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).

If you are a government contractor that must maintain an information system for the government under a contract, you will want to take note of a recent document issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the U.S. Department of Commerce: “Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Information Systems and Organizations,” NIST Special Publication 800-171.

On October 31, 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) denied three protests by companies bidding on providing information technology required by the U.S. Army Materiel Command.