DAEC COVID-19 Update April 27: Notes from Today's OSD Call

April 27th OSD A&S COVID Conference Call Notes:

• There is a Wednesday webinar at 3pm for small business trusted capital vs adversarial capital discussion—press release due out later today announcing this event—please sign in to webinar 15 minutes in advance given expected load on system.
• New addition to today’s meeting with the participation of the Deputy Director for Defense Intelligence.
• Over 60,000 DoD personnel are currently supporting COVID actions.
• $835M awarded since start of pandemic.

DODI:

• Finger printing during COVID: 25 March OPM memo for temporary procedures was issued and Agencies determined as unable to conduct finger printing for both federal and contract personnel were provided alternative guidance and procedures.
• DoD has determined that they are able to collect finger prints so the exception from OPM does not apply. Thus finger printing and checks must continue. This is the primary source of identifying criminal history and DoD is not willing to accept a higher level of security risk so finger printing is needed. This includes for interim clearances, issuance of CAC cards, and eligibility for final clearances. More than 50% of DoD’s sites for printing are open plus a few others have come on line.
• DoD continues looking for new vendors—found a company called Field Point with 1300 locations, many sites collocated with UPS sites, that are open and able to receive finger prints. Finger printing for DoD must continue—no exceptions.

CIO:

• They just sent out a telework memo and link for CIO.
• They are finalizing another memo for use of non- government issued IT items with government issued laptops or devices, and procedures for the return of GFE post COVID—memo copy will be provided to us once signed.

DPC:

• New FAQs re Sec 3610 were published and posted last Friday evening and OSD DPC is still working through some additional questions that they couldn’t include in Friday’s posting.
• Speed of payment stats roll in late on Mondays and they should be able to update us on Wednesday’s call.

DCMA:

• As of Friday, 95 companies closed; 118 reopened, so trending good.
• Of those 95 closed 24% closed by government direction and most of those are foreign production sites closed by foreign governments.
• DCMA is therefore shifting to international engagement to address these supply chain closures by foreign government and Hon Lord is working Mexico hard; reported that the most effective approach to reopen foreign government closed companies has been by US Primes engaging with their Mexican supplier and together engaging local governments instead of DoD leadership engaging at their level.
• More closures are showing up in India so they are engaging there now as well.
• Looks like we will see PPE needs at industry level for a very long time and need industry to share best practices on how to reopen while protecting employees.
• They would like to see industry associations do a pooling and sharing of best practices to help DoD out.
• DCMA wants to see more publicly shared prime industry payment flow down data to their supply base.

DLA:

• Award made last week regarding nursing home kitting through the DLA tailored logistics with six small business vendors for over 1000 nursing homes for over $40M in value.

OSD Policy:

• DHS 3.0 CISA published last week and now DHS is working a draft version 4.0 to be released next month.
• DoD is asking DHS to reinsert statement specific to gov owned gov operated facilities as essential, which mistakenly fell out of the current DHS CISA.
• Companies are expressing more concerns about needing PPE and testing and liability concerns for their employees—all impacting their ability to remain open or reopen.

Associations:

• Some questions on Sec 3610 regarding the color of money allowed for reimbursement and need for clarification. DPC added a FAQ on this issue to this past Friday’s FAQ update and basically the answer is what is deemed by the contracting officer as “legally available under the contract.”
• Regarding contract deviation-- is there a recommended contract clause for various types of contracts? DPC is working guidance on formats and check lists but not actual clause language.
• There was a question on stimulus 4.0: DoD input to OMB has not left the building yet but DoD request specific to the next stimulus bill will be directly related to COVID response—Hill has not asked for input so once they do ask DoD final input will move quickly and details can be provided.

About the authors

Keith Webster

Keith Webster, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Defense and Aerospace Council, guides the focus of the council to strengthen the U.S. defense and aerospace industries by influencing domestic and international policy on behalf of its members.

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