POGO just learned that the Department of Defense (DoD) rejected our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the data contained in the government’s new contractor performance and responsibility database, the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS).
This should make the contracting community—especially the lawyers over at Wiley Rein LLP—very happy.
We originally submitted our request in April to the General Services Administration (GSA). GSA is the agency tasked with creating and maintaining the database, so we were surprised to get a response from GSA several weeks later directing us to re-submit our request to DoD. We did, and we also took the opportunity to add one additional request:
All materials developed by the Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI), the Defense Acquisition University (DAU), or any other office or agency to assist and train acquisition officials in the proper use of the data in FAPIIS.
DoD said the information contained in FAPIIS is exempt from release “in its entirety” under FOIA exemption (b)(5), which covers “inter-agency or intra-agency memoranda or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency” (POGO has blogged about this infamous exemption before). According to DoD, “FAPIIS information is considered source selection sensitive and therefore not publicly releasable.”
As for our request for FAPIIS training materials, DoD insists that “all responsive information has already been posted online” on the PPIRS and CPARS websites. If you visit the sites, you can see there is almost nothing there, although the CPARS site contains a link to this brochure containing a few somewhat-useful tidbits about FAPIIS.
POGO still believes that the public has a right to know the past performance and responsibility backgrounds of federal contractors, and that it makes absolutely no sense to deny access to a database largely made up of information that comes from public sources. POGO will therefore appeal this denial.
-- Neil Gordon
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