A Senate bill that would give federal contract employees the same whistleblower protections as federal employees passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee today. Senate bill 241, introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., would protect contractors who report improper spending or management on federal contracts from retaliation. Contract employees who witness contract fraud currently can bring a civil claim, in the name of the government, against contractors under the False Claims Act. If the claim is successful, the whistleblower could receive up to 30 percent of the recovered funds. However, the False Claims Act does not protect whistleblowers who witness waste,…
Browsing: Claire McCaskill
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs contracting oversight subcommittee, plans to dive into the way federal agencies track government procurement data at a hearing scheduled for Sept. 29. In a news release today, McCaskill’s office said the hearing will “assess the problems of the decentralized and cumbersome systems presently in place, and discuss current plans to develop a new platform for integrating these systems to ensure that goals of efficiency, transparency, and accessibility are met.” The Federal Acquisition Regulation Council recently published a proposed rule to fulfill congressional mandates to integrate data from…