The Obama administration solidified an interim rule that requires agency officials to post a government contractor’s work history in a publicly accessible website.
The Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) is a one-stop web site for contracting officers and federal employees to look at the history of companies’ work with the federal government.
FAPIIS includes data from the Performance Information Retrieval System, as well as information from other databases, including the Excluded Parties List System, which lists companies that are suspended or debarred from federal contracting. The overall purpose of FAPIIS is to make it easier for contracting officers to get an overall assessment of a company before awarding a contract by not having to search numerous databases.
A year ago, acquisition officials issued an interim rule making all the information public, except for past performance reviews by agencies.
The final rule took effect Jan. 3.
In the Federal Register notice about the rule, officials recognized the risks about the information going public though.
The final rule gives companies seven days to find any information that should not be disclosed because it should be considered exempt from disclosure. In such a case, officials will remove the information from FAPIIS to resolve the issue.
If the government official does not remove the item, it will be automatically released to the public site within two weeks after the review period began, according to the notice.
About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer covering acquisition and procurement for Federal Computer Week. This article appeared Jan. 4, 2012 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2012/01/04/fapiis-public-disclosure-objections.aspx?s=wtdaily_050112.
