DAEC COVID-19 Update May 1: Notes from Today's OSD Call

May 1st OSD A&S COVID Conference Call Notes:

OSD:

• There was an Hon. Lord press discussion yesterday—remarks will be provided to us shortly.
• Sec 4003 loan program--$17B for critical national security industries with a soft close at 3pm today for loan applications.
• Companies with a DoD certification will receive priority consideration for the loan program and the industrial base council meeting conducted on Fridays will be the decision authority for DoD to Treasury.
• Small business webinar this past Wednesday regarding adversarial financing was very successful.
• OSD welcomes input to the survey passed out this week for future small business webinar topics so please respond to those surveys.
• Next webinar event will be May 13th featuring Kim Herrington from OSD DPC—invite with details will follow shortly; business.defense.gov has the list of events that are currently planned.
• PPP reopened up this week and OSD is not hearing of any concerns this time around but welcome hearing of any issues under the PPP program 2.0; the SecDef letter to essential workers will be signed and released today.

Services Small Business leads:

• Air Force is tracking all actions and issued 258 small business contract actions obligating over $23M, several efforts to collect metrics underway and supporting broader USAF pandemic response, their website is updated daily.
• Army obligated over $140M to small businesses for COVID support, concerted effort to build out social media and to keep their website updated daily.
• Navy: there is a lot of interest in their small business industry day details and have uploaded those details on their website, next week each day from 3-4pm several speakers featured on a daily webinar for Navy small business community as part of next week’s Navy Week activities.

CIO:

• Signed a memo this am for DoD regarding connecting peripherals to government issued computers and will share with industry soon.

DCMA:

• DIB impact trending ok with 98 closed and 143 reopened as of today.

DPC:

• LM, Boeing and L3 Harris public releases today regarding active flow down of payments to their supply chains and OSD appreciates the transparency and working with others who are doing the same but just not publically discussing.
• DPC issued a FAR deviation yesterday for a minor administrative item regarding surety bonds and need for notarizing and corporate seals--thus issued a deviation to address difficulty of meeting these standing requirements during the pandemic and instead DPC authorized the use of automated means to meet these requirements.
• Reimbursements for Sec 3610 or via other authority-- working internally within DoD next week and draft plan the week of May 11th for industry comment via DPC portal and then finalize and publish near end of May and reinforced desire to put in place a process for adjustments other than contract by contract modifications.
• OSD DPC is developing a check list for adjustment qualifications under Sec 3610, which will be published with this new guidance later in May; progress payment fix for UCAs—the legislative language has gone to the Hill and would be included in stimulus 4.0 when there is one.

DLA:

• Small business office: total business up 20% overall and up 40% for DLA small businesses in April and overall DLA has pushed out $1B to their small business supply chain to date.

Policy:

• DHS CISA 4.0 will be released in next couple of days.
• DHS CISA guidance on video teleconferencing can be found on the DHS website which was coordinated with DoD.

JATF:

• Industry Expansion effort: in partnership with HHS—this will be a long term effort and will use these discussions to keep industry informed re the program.

Associations:

• The issue of performance impacts due to COVID and desire to see a policy published to reassure industry that such negative performance impacts will not be held against them with respect to future contract awards.
• OSD DPC chimed in that they have issued this guidance earlier noting that there will be no negative rating impact in the future and that they will push this out to us for the record.
• Concerns that as the economy opens there is emerging evidence of States issuing PPE standards for the workforce in their State that differ and are lesser than what the essential workforce has currently been operating under and is there any USG effort to harmonize all these requirements—OSD is not sure what level of control they can have over this matter

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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