A new proposal on thorny conflict-of-interest regulations issued by the Obama administration conflicts with a draft proposal the Defense Department issued last year, according to a report in Federal Computer Week.
The administrationâs new proposal is actually less stringent than DoDâs version, per the report, giving individual program managers more latitude to accept risk, when considering potential conflicts between business entities. The departmentâs version, on the other hand, is strongly tilted toward full mitigation — in other words, divestment. Industry observers have noted the âpendulum shiftâ in terms of mitigating OCI.
âAcceptance of performance risk represents a novel means of addressing OCIs,â the proposal states. âThe risk of harm to the governmentâs business interests may sometimes be assessed as an acceptable performance risk,â according to the proposal. However, the potential harm must be outweighed by the expected benefit.