The IA Certification Program and Contractor Employees

Pursuant to each United States Government (USG) service contract, the contractor is required to provide trained personnel to accomplish the purposes of a contract. Contractors must train their employees if those employees require it to fulfill the contractor's contractual obligations. It is an inherent conflict of interest (perhaps fraud and waste) for the USG to contract for trained personnel, yet then provide certification/training to those contractor employees to do their assigned duties.

To allow the contractor employees to participate in the International Affairs (IA) certification program could be viewed as interfering with the contractor-contractor employee relationship. Contractor employees are not USG personnel, nor are they under the official control of USG personnel. The USG Contracting Officer is the only USG official the contractor must take direction from. The contractor, in turn, must provide direction to and exercise control over its employees. Other USG personnel may not interfere with the USG-contractor relationship or with the contractor-contractor employee relationship by attempting to exercise control over the contractor's employees by "certifying" them or otherwise regulating the contractor employees' credentials.

Outside of the prohibitions in labor/contractual relations arena, "certifying" contractor employees could be viewed as Department of Defense (DoD) playing favorites with certain contractors in violation of the Joint Ethics Regulation's provisions regarding impartial interactions with non-Federal entities. The IA certification program is not open to the public and contractor employees are members of the public. It could lead to contractor bid protests or other conflicts between potential DoD contractors if it is seen as the government (DoD) is providing an additional benefit to winning contractors' employees who aren't then considered as members of the public, (which, of course, they are). All losing contractors' employees would remain members of the public and thus, would remain ineligible for the certification program, but somehow DoD would argue that winning contractors' employees are not members of the public -- an unrealistic and very troublesome proposal. A winning contractors' employees would be eligible and this sets up the favoritism issue.

- DSCA Office of General Council (OGC)

Click here to view the official memorandum regarding contractors and the certification program.