Are You a Government Contractor Seeking PPP Loan Forgiveness? Be Careful What You Wish For!

Source: lexology.com

Anyone engaged in government contracting work knows that it is very different from working in the private sector. The CARES Act passed in March of last year illustrates this point. For most private sector companies, loans received under the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) were eligible to be fully forgiven and treated—essentially—like grants. There was no obligation on private sector businesses to refund these loans to the government. The whole purpose of the PPP program was to help businesses keep their doors open and their employees working during a global pandemic. Requiring private businesses to repay those loans would have defeated that purpose.

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GSA, DHS making big push to address shortcomings in contractor assessments

Source: federalnewsnetwork.com

If the federal acquisition workforce is ever going to make contractor evaluations meaningful, it’s going to happen this year.

The General Services Administration and Department of Homeland Security are offering two different, but equally important initiatives that either will prove that the federal community cares about past performance as a key evaluation factor or has been playing lip service to the issue since 2009.

Over the past 11 years, successive memos from the Office of Federal Procurement Policy encouraging agencies to do more research and evaluation of contractor performance on contracts have had little impact.

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Federal Agencies Can Require COVID-19 Testing for Employees, CDC Says

Source: govexec.com

Employees who refuse tests could face "consequences," while those forced to quarantine should be supported, guidelines say.

The Biden administration has issued guidelines for agencies to test their workers for COVID-19, spelling out when widespread testing is appropriate and confirming that federal offices can mandate employee testing.

Federal employees who have a testing requirement to enter their workplace and refuse can face “consequences,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, though it did not specify what those might look like and said all facets of testing policy were up to individual agencies. CDC issued the guidance in response to an executive order from President Biden, emphasizing it consisted of strategies for agencies to consider rather than policy requirements.

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