Overview
The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), in conjunction with an inter-agency task force on combating trafficking in persons recently published for public comment a set of “Anti-Trafficking Risk Management Best Practices & Mitigation Considerations.” The task force states that the proposed guidance was developed as a set of best practices and mitigation considerations to promote clarity and consistency in applying the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) provisions addressing Combating Trafficking in Persons (CTIP) (primarily FAR 52.222-50) and to help “contracting officers determine if a contractor is taking adequate steps to meet its anti-trafficking responsibilities under the FAR.”
While the proposed best practices contain relatively general statements of best practices and leave implementation to industry, they raise some interpretive questions, such as:
- (1) To what extent do the best practices imply that prime contractors should flow-down their CTIP policies to subcontractors, a practice that many contractors avoid?
- (2) Whether the listed mitigating factor of “notif[ying] to the US government immediately of any violations” fails to appropriately memorialize the continued right of contractors to conduct internal investigations to determine if credible information of a violation exists, as reiterated in the FAR Council’s “Discussion” in the final FAR CTIP rule issued in 2015?
