Government Contracts

Last Monday, April 28, 2025, the House passed a bill titled Removing Our Unsecure Technologies to Ensure Reliability and Security (“ROUTERS”) Act (H.R. 866), which directs the Secretary of Commerce to study national security risks and cybersecurity vulnerabilities “posed by consumer routers, modems, and devices that combine a modem and router, that are designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the influence of a covered country.”  Similar to some other recent supply chain requirements imposed on federal contractors, the bill defines “covered countries” by reference to 10 U.S.C. 4872, which prohibits the acquisition of sensitive materials from North Korea, Russia, Iran, and China.Continue Reading ROUTERS Act on the Horizon: U.S. House Passes New Legislation

Update: On March 14, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order, “Additional Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions,” which revoked Executive Order 14026, discussed below. The U.S. Department of Labor has stated it is “no longer enforcing Executive Order 14026 or the implementing rule (29 CFR part 23) and will take steps, including rescinding 29 CFR part 23, to implement and effectuate the revocation of Executive Order 14026.” We will continue to monitor further developments.

Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of a Biden administration order raising the minimum wage of many types of federal contract workers.  The executive order remains subject to litigation (in both the Fifth Circuit and elsewhere), but is currently effective throughout the country, with a narrow exception for certain state agencies. 

President Biden’s Executive Order 14026 (“the EO”), issued in April 2021, raised the hourly minimum wage to $15.00 for federal contract workers for the following contract types:

  • Procurement contracts for construction projects covered by the Davis-Bacon Act (“DBA”);
  • Service contracts falling under the Service Contract Act (“SCA”);
  • Concessions contracts, including those excluded from the SCA by DOL regulations at 29 C.F.R. 4.133(b); and,
  • Contracts related to federal property or lands and connected to providing services for federal employees, their dependents, or the general public.

EO 14026 directs the U.S. Department of Labor to annually update the hourly minimum wage.  We wrote in October 2024 about DOL’s annual update effective January 1, 2025, which raised the minimum wage for covered contracts from $17.20 to $17.75.  More details are below.Continue Reading Fifth Circuit Adds New Wrinkle to Ongoing Fight Over Federal Contract Worker Minimum Wage Requirement

Domestic sourcing requirements are not new, but the Government is always developing new tools for increasing the sourcing of goods from the U.S. and allied countries.  Both sides of the political aisle have marched to a drumbeat of increased domestic sourcing for the past several years.  Most recently, the Biden Administration implemented Executive Order 14005 to “maximize” the U.S. Government’s purchase of goods and services produced in the United States and Executive Order 14104 to increase domestic manufacturing and commercialization in certain research and development supported by federal funding.  The ongoing bi-partisan support for bolstering domestic sourcing is illustrated no better than through this year’s NDAA, which focuses on expanding the domestic supply chain for materials and supplies critical to the U.S. military, encouraging the purchase of domestic end items, and providing more opportunities for the Department of Defense (“DoD”) to engage with and purchase from domestic businesses.Continue Reading Key Domestic Sourcing Provisions of the House and Senate Versions of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)

On December 22, 2021, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced the Fiscal Year 2021 transaction figures for the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Program, reporting $34.8 billion in total transaction value.  FMS declined for the second consecutive year, down 31 percent from $50.8 billion dollars in transactions in FY 2020.  …
Continue Reading U.S. Foreign Military Sales Down Over Thirty Percent in FY 2021

On May 12, the Biden Administration issued an “Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.”  The Order seeks to strengthen the federal government’s ability to respond to and prevent cybersecurity threats, including by modernizing federal networks, enhancing the federal government’s software supply chain security, implementing enhanced cybersecurity practices and procedures in the federal government, and creating government-wide plans for incident response.  The Order covers a wide array of issues and processes, setting numerous deadlines for recommendations and actions by federal agencies, and focusing on enhancing the protection of federal networks in partnership with the service providers on which federal agencies rely.  Private sector entities, including federal contractors and service providers, will have opportunities to provide input to some of these actions.

In particular, and among other things, the Order:

  • seeks to remove obstacles to sharing threat information between the private sector and federal agencies;
  • mandates that software purchased by the federal government meet new cybersecurity standards;
  • discusses securing cloud-based systems, including information technology (IT) systems that process data, and operational technology (OT) systems that run vital machinery and infrastructure;
  • seeks to impose new cyber incident[i] reporting requirements on certain IT and OT providers and software product and service vendors and establishes a Cyber Safety Review Board to review and assess such cyber incidents and other cyber incidents, and;
  • addresses the creation of pilot programs related to consumer labeling in connection with the cybersecurity capabilities of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

The Order contains eight substantive sections, which are listed here, and discussed in more detail below:

  • Section 2 – Removing Barriers to Sharing Threat Information
  • Section 3 – Modernizing Federal Government Cybersecurity
  • Section 4 – Enhancing Software Supply Chain Security
  • Section 5 – Establishing a Cyber Safety Review Board
  • Section 6 – Standardizing the Federal Government’s Playbook for Responding to Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities and Incidents
  • Section 7 – Improving Detection of Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities and Incidents on Federal Government Networks
  • Section 8 – Improving the Federal Government’s Investigative and Remediation Capabilities
  • Section 9 – National Security Systems

The summaries below discuss highlights from these sections, and the full text of the Order can be found here.Continue Reading President Biden Signs Executive Order Aimed at Improving Government Cybersecurity