June 24 OUSD A&S COVID Conference Call Notes

OSD A&S:

• Sec Lord and CEO of Development Finance Corporation signed an MOA this past Monday to institute a Title 3 DPA Loan program—first time ever to have such a loan program under DPA.
• Next week is a holiday week so no call next Wednesday. Next call planned for Wednesday July 8th.

Small Business:

• 3pm small business roadmap for facility clearance webinar today; business.defense.gov for details of this event and future events.

JATF:

• Planned industry information days—July 14-15th--to discuss domestic demand for PPE; provide current and potential suppliers of PPE with an understanding of known government demand and what DoD and FEMA think will be the needs in the near future and to try to understand long term sustained PPE demands based on market research and consumption patterns; trade associations will be included in this event; senior USG participants from DoD, DHS, VA, etc., will be dialed in on the 14th of July so this is a critical first day.
• To date minimal USG guidance outside of medical community needs and looking to associations to better understand industry needs and requirements to maintain production and supply to DoD and others now and tomorrow; day 2 will be a product focused discussion i.e. masks, gloves, face shields and eye coverings, etc. and the discussion will be led by those industries in those specific categories who will share lessons learned to date and how they are managing requirements tomorrow.
• June 25th the JATF website will open for more event information and a link to register (Chamber will pass this information along later today once OSD provides it).
• Industry PPE demand projections, ideas from industry that would drive demand in the US beyond COVID response, how do we incentivize buying domestic PPE—is it cost, relief from regulations, etc. is in part what OSD is trying to understand.

DLA:

• Catalogue loaded in Fed Mall and 221 items listed thus far; supplier side—getting stronger and more industries willing to participate and supply.
• Challenge now is no small businesses registered to buy—shocking to DoD and DLA given initial demand signal from small businesses regarding need for PPE.
• DLA and others working to advertise this new supply option in the hopes that small business buyers actually choose to participate. DLA needs feedback from buyers to ensure this option, the Fed Mall, works as planned and offered.

DCMA:

• Health of DIB improving with only three industries closed to date.
• +$1.1B in payments over the last week—believe that some large payments were frustrated over the recent weeks due to additional data needed from industry and that all these frustrated payments were resolved in one lump.
• Over 7000 vouchers for $2B processed in past week as well; so the past week DCMA has witnessed historic high in payment values.
• Issues with how Services each uniquely treat property which impacts progress payments thus DCMA published a new standard guide on how best to treat property with respect to progress payments.

DPC:

• COVID response to support entire government has resulted in over 20K individual award actions completed totaling $4.6B in value to date.
• DPC guidance: Sec 3610 checklist—working on a streamlined version focused on items/claims that are $500K or less that would be at the prime or subcontract level, company or division level—DPC targets end of June to publish.
• Continue to work very challenging memo on other COVID REA costs—getting close to publishing end of month as well. Section 889 Fund—OMB still working thru wording adjustments and OSD has not stopped engagement with Hill on 889.

Small Business Services:

• Army--at $289M in awards to small businesses, just issued 2020-24 small business planning guidance on their website.
• Navy small business—COVID $193.7M executed to date, their premier procurement event Aug 31-Sept 2nd will now be a virtual event in partnership with NDIA, Navy webinar tomorrow on project Spectrum—see their Navy site for details and to register.
• USAF small business—COVID support to date totals over 400 small business awardees receiving over $200M in obligated awards.

Associations and Chamber:

• Question raised specific to testing guidance and DPC took action to report back to us in July.
• Discussion on next stimulus effort from an industry perspective—DoD quiet on their details for stimulus 4.0 given Hill deliberations ongoing.
• Some discussion on remaining loan value under CARES Act and whether the DoD is working with Treasury to relieve industry of some of the loan application burdens to ease the loan program application process and actually use the funds available—OSD took for action.
• Discussion about those industries who applied for loans and cannot to date get an answer from Treasury as to the status of their loan application and need for OSD at the highest levels to engage Treasury on this issue immediately; OSD agreed and took for action (again).
• Any opportunity to extend fiscal year to ensure completion of contract awards delayed due to COVID work and focus? DPC noted that early on OSD raised this issue with the Congress--specifically the possible need to extend 2020 funds—the Hill was not receptive to doing so.
• Noted many are beginning to plan for a second wave of COVID 19.
• Question with respect to Sec Lord COVID effort and General Gus Perna and his Warp Speed effort. The two have met to de-conflict roles. JATF will wind down by September of this year implying a hand off to Warp Speed and General Perna. OSD A&S will address more on this issue of roles at our July call and invite a Warp Speed spokeperson to attend our next call.

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.

Read more