We’ve been discussing the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)’s six proposals for streamlining the acquisition process and improving the acquisition environment, intended to be included in the FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Proposal 3 is about uniformity in procurement thresholds. So right now purchases starting at $2 million must adhere to cost accounting standards (CAS), but complete coverage doesn’t start until you’re at $50 million. This change will eliminate these wide differences by raising the basic threshold to $15 million.
That means you will only need to start paying attention to CAS at $15 million, and full coverage still starts at $50 million. The reason for this change is that there were already some exemptions established at various other threshold levels that caused confusion about when the basic CAS really apply.
The reason this is important for us as small businesses is that full CAS coverage is very comprehensive and has a lot of details, and it’s really hard for a small business to manage this. That’s why you don’t hit full CAS coverage until $50 million. At that point you presumably have the infrastructure in place to handle the extra requirements.
One other legalistic thing being done is that they’re decoupling the CAS thresholds from the similar thresholds in what’s called the TINA (Truth in Negotiations Act), because there’s some concern that by putting them together, issues and problems come up in both.
