Debarment – the exclusion of a firm or individual from working with a government – allows governments to protect themselves from the reputational and performance risks posed by unqualified firms and individuals. As a March 2019 conference at King’s College, London made clear, governments the world over are reforming their debarment systems, though often in strikingly different ways. The U.S. government is now moving to reform its debarment system, by more closely aligning the rules that govern debarments for grants and contracts. The rules would be revised “to improve consistency between the procurement and non-procurement procedures on suspension and debarment, based on recommendations of the Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee,” under a pending Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) reform case No. 2019-015. Many have long argued for this reform, and a 2017 Public Contract Law Journal article by Robert Meunier and Trevor Nelson described the issue in detail. A report on the pending FAR case is currently due in January 2020, and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget anticipates that a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) will be published in February 2020. We will be tracking this issue closely in a special short seminar that George Washington University Law School offers online, on suspension and debarment.
