Nicole Owren-Wiest

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Firm/Organization: Crowell & Moring LLP
Blogs: Government Contracts Legal Forum, International Trade Law

Latest Articles

On March 21, 2019, the Department of Defense (DoD) Defense Innovation Board (“DIB”) released a report, Software is Never Done: Refactoring the Acquisition Code for Competitive Advantage (“the Report”), summarizing DIB’s Software Acquisition and Practices (SWAP) study, which was mandated by the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year (FY) 2018. The two-year study involved conversations with Congress, the DoD, federally-funded research and development centers, contractors, and the public focused on ways in which DoD…
On June 27, 2018, in Appeal of CiyaSoft Corporation, the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals held that the Government can be bound by terms of a commercial software license agreement that the contracting officer (CO) has neither negotiated nor seen.  CiyaSoft Corporation (CiyaSoft) submitted a claim asserting that the Army had breached its contract to purchase computer software by using more copies of the software than were permitted by the contract.  The Army…
The Defense Contract Audit Agency (“DCAA”) recently made public its Fiscal Year 2017 Report to Congress, which, among other things, provides an update on incurred cost audits.  Specifically, the report explains that DCAA: Closed “6,786 incurred cost years” using a variety of methods, namely reports and memos, but also for other reasons (e.g., per the FY 2016 NDAA, DCAA was prohibited “from providing audit support to non-DoD agencies”); Sustained audit exceptions for incurred costs…
Contractors looking for updates to the statutory allowable cost limits on employee compensation may be looking in the wrong place.  But what was once lost can easily be found, at least for the moment, by simply navigating to a different website. The Cost Principles and the Compensation Cap FAR 31.205-6(p)(4) governs the allowable compensation of contractor and subcontractor employees.  It promulgates section 702 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 (“BBA”), which set an initial…
On Valentine’s Day, two subcommittees of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a joint hearing on the potential application of blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrency and financial technology. This hearing highlights the U.S. Government’s growing interest in blockchain, a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that has powered platforms for secure and decentralized transactions. While its most visible exponent, Bitcoin, has been a hot topic, blockchain is gaining traction among some federal agencies as a…