New Reporting Requirements for Government Contractors

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) was signed on September 26, 2006. The Law was designed to empower American's with "... the ability to hold the government accountable for each spending decision. The end result is to reduce wasteful spending in the government". The FFATA legislation requires information on federal awards (federal financial assistance and expenditures) be made available to the public via a single, searchable (and free) website. Government procurement agencies have already been populating that website and there is considerable information available already. We don't imagine that most contractors would find the information too useful expecpt perhaps to figure out awards made to the competition. The website  is http://www.usaspending.gov/.

 

Now its the contractors' turn to begin populating the database. On July 8th, the FAR Councils published an interim rule requiring contractors to furnish (i) executive compensation data and (ii) information on first-tier subcontract awards over $25 thousand.

The newly created FFATA Subaward Reporting System (FSRS) (see https://www.fsrs.gov/) will collect data from Federal prime contractors on subcontracts they award. Prime Contractors awarded a federal contract or order that is subject to Federal Acquisition Regulation clause 52.204-10 (Reporting Executive Compensation and First-Tier Subcontract Awards) are required to file a FFATA subaward report by the end of the month following the month in which the prime contractor awards any subcontract greater than $25,000. This FAR clause, by the way, applies to nearly all contracts, except classified contracts. This reporting requirement will be phased-in as follows:

 

• Phase 1: Reporting subcontracts under federally-awarded contracts and orders valued greater than or equal to $20,000,000, reporting starts now.
• Phase 2: Reporting subcontracts under federally-awarded contracts and orders valued greater than or equal to $550,000, reporting starts October 1, 2010.
• Phase 3: Reporting subcontracts under federally-awarded contracts and orders valued greater than or equal to $25,000, reporting starts March 1, 2011.

Tomorrow we will discuss the specifc reporting requirements for executive compensation. In the meantime, you might want to become acquainted with the FSRS system.