On January 4, 2017, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics released a memorandum to implement the class deviation issued by the Department of Defense (DOD) on December 1, 2016 for its final rule amending the DFARS.
The initial final rule came out of Better Buying Power 3.0 as a way to improve IR&D investments by industry that are recouped as allowable costs. Public comments on the December 1 2016 final rule were received that expressed concern that the technical exchanges be allowed to occur before costs were generated for these types of projects.
This class deviation alleviates the requirement that the technical interchanges between “major” defense contractors and a technical or operational DOD government employee occur before costs are generated for IR&D projects initiated in a contractor’s Fiscal Year 2017 so as to afford contractors a phase-in period to develop processes and procedures.
This levies the responsibility on industry to initiate discussions with the appropriate DOD government employee to get the process started and fulfill the “technical exchange” part of the process.
It should be noted that this is not a new practice, but DOD has now made it official with the final rule and the subsequent memorandum.