Helping individuals, companies, and organizations understand key legal and practical considerations for promoting compliance and making better business decisions in these types of federal, state, and local government contracting matters MORE

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A natural problem solver, Eric enjoys helping clients assess, understand, and develop and implement practical strategies to address complicated issues relating to government contracts, intellectual property, cybersecurity, and export controls.

Published on June 9, 2021, President Biden’s Executive Order on Protecting America’s Sensitive Data from Foreign Adversaries is the latest Executive Order seeking to strengthen national security by improving public and private sector capabilities and practices relating to cybersecurity and supply chain risks. As explained in a previous article, the first such Executive Order addressed five main areas. The latest Executive Order focuses primarily on protecting against risks “associated with connected software applications that are designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned or controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of, a foreign adversary.” However, unlike prior Executive Orders on the topic, it expands the scope of threat actors to be addressed in future to include those “persons who engage in serious human rights abuse,” noting, “If persons who own, control, or manage connected software applications engage in serious human rights abuse or otherwise facilitate such abuse, the United States may impose consequences on those persons in action separate from this order.”
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Recent weeks have brought news on multiple fronts regarding supply chain risks and actions in response thereto:

Commerce ICTS Regulations to Go Into Effect; Chinese ICTS Companies, Products and Services in the Headlights

The Trump Administration rolled out regulations to implement prohibitions on the use or delivery of covered Chinese telecommunications and video surveillance products

When an agency makes an award to the incumbent, the disappointed offerors often believe that the incumbent’s performance of the previous contract must have given it an impermissible leg up on the competition in the form of an organizational conflict of interest (“OCI”). However, as the recent Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) decision in Lukos-VATC JV

Even when agencies use simplified acquisition procedures, they generally must maximize competition to the extent practicable. There is, however, an exception to this default rule if only one source is reasonably available based on the urgency of requirements or other grounds. Unfortunately, as the recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) decision in Summit Technologies, Inc.,