A lobbying group for federal information technology contractors has said it has no considerable objections to any provisions in both House and Senate versions of new defense authorization bills, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.Jared Serbu writes the IT Alliance for Public Sector has expressed its support to provisions that would require the Defense Department to focus more on commercial-off-the-shelf technologies in their acquisitions decisions.
“When you read the report language, especially on the Senate side, it tells DoD over and over again to get the (COTS version) first,” said Pamela Walker, who deals with defense and homeland security issues at ITAPS.
“Most of this stuff doesn’t need to be modified. It’s already being used worldwide.”
The Senate and House authorization bills also contain provisions that would provide IT companies liability protections if counterfeit items enter the Pentagon’s supply chain by mistake provided that they follow the department’s rules for identifying fake parts, Serbu reports.
“If there’s a failure in the supply chain, the failure needs to be shared between the contractor and the government, because we’re doing it based on how we’re supposed to be looking for counterfeit part,” said Trey Hodgkins, a senior vice president at ITAPS.
