Technical committee profile: Committee on Government Business.

In times of war or peace, the major U.S. government contractors have huge programs in place and are constantly interacting with the various branches of government. On the finance side, the contractors find a series of ever-changing rules and policies coming from the agencies and from Congress.

To help sort it out, there's FEI's Committee on Government Business (CGB). Technically, CGB is the representative for the business community on government regulatory and oversight matters for all businesses large, small, public, private, colleges and universities and other not-for-profit organizations. But its principal focus has been defense contractors, with members drawn from a literal roll-call of the largest defense contractors, like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Electric, General Dynamics and Bechtel.

Committee member companies are constantly seeking to understand new mandates or rules impacting government contractors--such as rules stipulating that no work can shift from the government to the private sector unless substantial savings would be realized.

The special nature of the government relationship with CGB tends to set the committee, formed in 1963, apart from its FEI counterparts. "As FEI committees go, they are a bit different," says Mark Prysock, FEI's Director of Public Affairs and staff liaison to the CGB. "Their primary customer is the federal government."

Committee Chairman William Romenius, Director of International Business Compliance for the Boeing Co., notes that the 21 members are "comprised of a good cross-section of talent, including CFOs, senior directors/managers and subject matter experts." Romenius also notes that since anyone doing business with the government is impacted by its procurement rules, it behooves companies large or small, and non-profits with substantial government business, to participate in the CGB.

Like most other technical committees, the group meets quarterly, with three meetings in the Washington area and one on the West Coast each year.

Romenius, who has been on the committee since the late 1990s and began supporting it as a non-member in 1986, emphasizes that the meetings provide a platform for hearing directly from senior agency officials, Presidential appointees and Congressional staffers, and serve as an introduction for a CGB member to meet subsequently with the government official to discuss a company issue.

At the committee's February meeting, for instance, members heard directly from Dee Lee, Director of Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy at the Pentagon. One clear message she left was her own preoccupation with the situation in Iraq, "which was important for us to hear," Romenius says.

Other common presenters include representatives from the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) and Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), Prysock notes. Last year, for example, the director of the DCAA briefed the committee on recent activities, with a special focus on the agency's audit work on Iraqi reconstruction projects and guidelines regarding compensation costs under those contracts.

A key asset for the group is the work done by Steve Knight, a partner at Smith, Pachter, McWhorter, and Allen, a law firm specializing in government contracting law and a technical adviser to CGB. Knight puts together a review of current developments in the government procurement arena and assembles briefing materials for each meeting. Romenius says this review covers as many as 40 to 50 different issues.

Like other technical committees, CGB will occasionally submit written position papers on financial and/or accounting matters in response to formally proposed changes in government regulations. Romenius mentions issues such as cost accounting standards and federal acquisition regulations as the subjects of past papers. Recently, it issued a paper on a cost principle involving worker training and education, "where we gave perspective on cost allowability contained in that principle," Romenius says. "We also stepped back and, recognizing the importance of Industry's initiatives and best practice in training and education of our workforce, suggested that the government also adopt similar initiatives in training its workforce."

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CGB has also made its presence known on the Cost Accounting Standards Board. Romenius notes that the lone industry representative on the five-member board has long been someone from CGB--a position he himself held some years ago.

Asked about his goals for the year, Romenius says, "One of our goals is to remain current on the issues, and to be flexible and nimble enough to provide an independent and objective assessment on those issues. I'd like to be able to look at having us focus perhaps on compliance programs that companies have put in place to deal with regulatory issues." Globalization is another focus. "When you're doing business globally, you've got a plethora of monitoring mechanisms for compliance in those overseas sites. We'll be getting together and looking at best practices.

"I would also like to see us reach out to the smaller companies and non-profits, as they are as impacted, perhaps more than the large companies, on some of these procurement rules."