Ensuring Compliance With Regulations as a Government Contractor
Construction is vital when building up infrastructure, and governments create contracts to acquire assistance with certain projects. This work can be lucrative, but recognizing the responsibilities that come with it is essential. Understand how you can ensure compliance with regulations as a new government contractor.
Understanding Government Compliance as a Contractor
Being a government contractor means maintaining connections and delivering goods and services. The federal government awarded around $755 billion in contracts in the fiscal year 2024. While it’s a reduction of $22.5 billion compared to the year before that, it’s still a significant representation of the number of people employed.
However, being hired doesn’t exempt you from understanding the government contract regulations related to your business and services. These rules include handling sensitive information, paying labor and meeting cybersecurity standards.
The Federal Acquisition Regulation, or FAR, is a critical reference for contractors in all industries. It consists of rules that govern all federal government procurement activities.
Common Challenges in Compliance With Government Regulations
Meeting government compliance can be challenging, especially for newer contractors. For instance, the tasks required of these organizations require high performance standards and deliverables. It’s vital to secure and sustain the specialized talent needed for those tasks to maintain viability. Other things to be aware of include:
● Complexity of overlapping regulations: While FAR is a baseline of the rules you must keep at the top of your mind, you still have to navigate the federal, state and local laws that concern your operations. It can be confusing and overwhelming, especially for newly hired contractors.
● Documentation and reporting: Audit readiness is vital to pass government or third-party compliance audits. Unfortunately, maintaining documentation and reports of operations can be relatively extensive. Those who cannot delegate dedicated staff to work on this run the risk of errors and penalties.
● Cybersecurity and data protection requirements: Government contract regulations will typically highlight the importance of maintaining data confidentiality. Unfortunately, the rise of cyberthreats makes it difficult for newer hires to meet these requirements.
How to Ensure Compliance With Regulations as a New Government Contractor
NeoSystems is an expert in understanding and addressing CMMC requirements and has been helping government contractors with compliance for more than 20 years. It delivers integrated strategic back-office services and solutions to enable, run and secure government contractors, nonprofit organizations and commercial entities.
Its experience, combined with its CMMC expertise and Costpoint exercises, shapes tailored solutions to its clients’ needs. Here’s an overview of how you can ensure compliance with regulations.
Establishing a Compliance Framework
Understanding compliance and reporting requirements and regulatory standards takes time. Creating clear internal policies and procedures can help meet government regulations. Unfortunately, new contractors must gain enough experience to comprehend those terms and ensure minimal error.
NeoSystems can help ensure compliance readiness that is unique to each organization’s business needs. It has developed a faster, accelerated approach to CMMC compliance. In addition, it is affordable and lower-risk for organizations that need to meet CMMC requirements.
Using Technology for Compliance Management
Numerous processes make meeting compliance management seem challenging. While innovations such as regulatory technology have become more common, it’s still vital to find the best systems for them and understand how to leverage them. A study finds that profits decline among companies with less sophisticated technology.
NeoSystems offers managed IT operations services that can help systems run smoothly. There’s also troubleshooting and technical issue resolutions for possible breaches and vulnerabilities. You can ensure secure and efficient operations.
Conducting Regular Internal Assessments
Audit readiness is key to meet government compliance, but it’s also a chance to identify various risks, from financial to operational and more. NeoSystems is prepared to help organizations achieve CMMC compliance from a security perspective.
For instance, its threat and vulnerability infrastructure involves examining current gaps in your defense system and mitigating the causes behind them. It can empower businesses to keep up with security threats and trends.
Staying Updated With Regulatory Changes
Government regulations can change over time. For example, in May 2024, the U.S. government advanced aspects of the National Cybersecurity Strategy, including developing scenarios and exercises and preparing for attacks.
NeoSystems is adept at meeting these requirements and providing a comprehensive organizational cybersecurity program that keeps up with changing industries. Its decades of experience have also helped it adapt to other kinds of regulatory changes.
Practice Proactive Compliance
Establishing a business as a government contractor can require understanding and meeting several regulations. Be proactive in complying with these federal standards by partnering with NeoSystems and ensuring all services are legal and ethical.