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ARTICLE · 08 JANUARY 2009

Fighting FOIA With FOIA

Reed Smith
Explore more from Reed Smith

Wouldn’t your competitors love to know your confidential calculations used in contract bidding – your internal overhead costs, your indirect rates, your contract line item (“CLIN”) pricing, your proprietary technical and management information?

United StatesGovernment, Public Sector
Jason Matechak
Jason Matechak
Lawrence Sher
Lawrence Sher
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Wouldn't your competitors love to know your confidential calculations used in contract bidding – your internal overhead costs, your indirect rates, your contract line item ("CLIN") pricing, your proprietary technical and management information? Like most businesses, government contractors take elaborate internal measures to ensure protection of such sensitive corporate business information. Unlike most other businesses, however, government contractors' information is necessarily shared with the government and may be disclosed directly to competitors at their request. This disclosure can be made available to any interested party who simply asks for the information through the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), 5 U.S.C. § 552.

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