House lawmakers advance bills on acquisition security, IT procurement
House lawmakers have advanced a raft of bills aimed at bolstering supply chain security efforts, streamlining technology purchases and increasing cross-agency sharing of software code.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Wednesday advanced 13 bills to the full House floor. Among them was the unanimously passed “Federal Acquisition Security Council Improvement Act,” which would bolster the council’s ability to ban products from federal supply chains.
The council was created as part of the SECURE Technology Act of 2018. It currently has the authority to issue recommendations for removing or excluding products and services from federal supply chains. Last fall, the Biden administration finalized acquisition rules for how contractors should comply with orders from the FASC.
But the House’s advancing legislation would authorize the FASC to directly issue binding removal and exclusion orders when directed to do so by Congress. It would also move the committee into the executive office of the president and set up a supporting FASC program office within the White House Office of the National Cyber Director.
“This bipartisan bill provides the Federal Acquisition Security Council with the teeth and resources it needs to protect the federal supply chain from technology companies and products owned or controlled by a foreign adversary,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement when introducing the bill earlier this week.
The bill would also change membership requirements for the council. It would require the national cyber director or the director’s designee to lead the FASC as chairperson. And required members would include the administrator for federal procurement policy, as well as the deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Currently, the federal chief information security officer serves as chairman of the FASC.
FIT Procurement Act advances
The oversight committee on Wednesday also unanimously approved the “Federal Improvement in Technology (FIT) Procurement Act.”
The bill would authorize agencies to make advanced payments for cloud computing services. The General Services Administration has made similar policy changes in recent years to allow agencies to buy cloud services through a consumption model.
The FIT Procurement Act would also require federal procurement officers to take cross-functional training. And the legislation would increase the simplified acquisition threshold from $ 250,000 to $ 500,000 and the micro-purchase threshold from $ 10,000 to $ 25,000.
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), the bill’s House sponsor, said the bill “would save taxpayer dollars and reduce waste.”
“We’re ensuring that small businesses and innovators have a real chance to compete in the federal marketplace,” Burlison said in a statement. Burlison’s bill is a companion to the legislation introduced by Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) earlier this year.
Software reuse bill on the move
Lawmakers on the House oversight committee also passed another Peters companion bill: the Source Code Harmonization and Reuse in Information Technology (SHARE IT) Act. The House version was introduced by Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.).
The SHARE IT Act would agencies share custom-developed source code with each other in an effort to reduce duplicative software efforts. In a press release earlier this year, Peters and co-sponsor Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) said agencies spend $ 12 billion a year annually buying software, including custom-developed products.
The bill would require agencies to publicly list custom code they develop or buy on Code.gov or other public websites. The legislation includes exceptions for national security systems, classified software, or code that would create risks to individual privacy if disclosed.
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