Brian S. Gocial and Stephanie M. Harden
As government contractors know well, a robust compliance program can be critical—both in preventing, detecting, and resolving compliance problems and in working with agencies and/or the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to resolve compliance issues when they arise. Though DOJ has previously issued guidance on how it evaluates corporate compliance programs, on April 30, 2019, it greatly expanded upon its earlier guidance with a lengthy new guidance document. The document is notable for its emphasis not just on the design of compliance programs, but also on their effectiveness in practice. The document is a useful benchmark for contractors to evaluate their compliance programs, as well as to demonstrate their affirmative responsibility to agencies when facing agency-level investigations.
The guidance document focuses on three central questions:
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- Is the corporation’s compliance program well designed?
- Is the corporation’s compliance program implemented effectively?
- Does the compliance program actually work in practice?
The following outline provides a summary of the various factors DOJ discusses in connection with each of these questions—and more information on each topic can be found here.
Contractors should assess how their own compliance programs measure up against these factors: Continue reading “What Contractors Should Know about DOJ’s Revised Guidance on Evaluations of Corporate Compliance”