The Pentagon last month proposed amending defense federal acquisition regulations to enhance contractors' post-award debriefing rights, a move welcomed by contractors.
The proposed rule, released in the May 20 Federal Register, implements a provision in the Fiscal Year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.
This section called for enhanced debriefing rights for "competitive negotiated contracts, task orders, and delivery orders that exceed $10 million and to provide offerors the opportunity, upon receiving a postaward debriefing, to submit follow-up questions related to the debriefing and to receive agency responses," according to the Federal Register notice.
The proposed rule says offerors can submit written follow-up questions within two days of receiving the debriefing. Agencies then must respond within five days of receiving those questions.
The rule "ensures contracting officers do not consider the postaward debriefing to be concluded until the agency delivers its written response to an offeror," the Federal Register notice states.
Peter Dungan, a principal at law firm Miles & Stockbridge and a member of the National Defense Industrial Association's executive committee, told Inside Defense that after the FY-18 NDAA became law, the Pentagon issued a class deviation to implement parts of the statute.
"The class deviation immediately implemented the procedure for questions to be submitted and answers to be provided," he said.
The newly proposed rule "keeps that in place," Dungan noted. However, it also adds a provision that for contracts worth more than $100 million, "the debriefing information must include the disclosure of the written source selection decision document, redacted accordingly."
"The policy appears to be to provide offerors additional information so they can make their proposals better in the future," Dungan said.
Stephanie Kostro, executive vice president for policy at the Professional Services Council, told Inside Defense her organization is generally supportive of more informative debriefings.
"It does create more of a relationship between the two sides . . . of the equation," she said.
Kostro said PSC intends to comment on the rule. According to the Federal Register notice, comments are due by July 19.
"I suspect we will offer some suggestions," she said. "The regulations are catching up with reality, so I think that’s great, but there’s always room for improvement."
Dungan agreed, noting there are some areas of ambiguity.
However, "the overarching theme should be that it's a positive development," he said.