What Is the Procurement Integrity Act, and How Can Contractors Avoid Unintentionally Violating It? – Part 1

Sandeep Nandivada, Michaela Thornton, and Alex Ward authored an article for Pratt’s Government Contracting Law Report providing practical guidance for government contractors navigating potential Procurement Integrity Act (PIA) violations, from understanding the elements of a PIA violation, to investigating potential violations, to defending against bid protests.

“In a perfect world, the PIA would rarely cause heartache for government or contractor employees,” the authors wrote. “Government employees would never disclose Protected Information prematurely or to unauthorized parties and, as a result, contractor employees would never obtain such information. But we are not so lucky. In the real world, potential PIA violations arise frequently, and usually without any improper intent from either government or contractor personnel. It often starts with the government’s inadvertent transmission of Protected Information to an offeror in a procurement, followed by dissemination of the information by the offeror’s employees, who do not realize they received information they should not have. At the end of this unfortunate chain of events, the government and offeror each find themselves in a difficult position: the government has an ongoing competition in which one offeror may have an unfair competitive advantage, and the offeror faces potential disqualification from a competition based on an error by the government.”

Read the full article.