Paul Khoury Quoted in Coverage of Government Contracts Policy Changes in 2018

July 19, 2018

Paul F. Khoury, co-chair of Wiley Rein’s Government Contracts Practice, was quoted by Law360 in a July 18 article highlighting significant policy changes for federal contractors to date in 2018.

One of the policy changes involves the System for Award Management (SAM), a database used by federal vendors to register to do business with the government. All federal contractors are required to register in the system, with a few exceptions such as contracts that are classified, according to the article.

The system was upended in March when the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) said that SAM appeared to have been compromised by unnamed third parties entering the system and diverting funds away from legitimate vendor accounts, the article noted. The steps taken by the GSA to rectify the issue included requiring new registrations and registration updates to be accompanied by a signed, notarized letter, which resulted in an extensive backlog in processing SAM applications.

“The SAM precertification [issue] caused a lot of our clients a big headache, because they did everything they were supposed to do, they sent in their information, and then SAM just sat on it,” said Mr. Khoury. “So we had a number of clients who were just kind of stuck.”

The article can be found here (subscription required).