[ih] misc questions about 1970s/1980s contracts and funding

[touch at strayalpha.com]

FWIW:
- proposals not funded are excluded, AFAICT
- proposal narrative that isn’t cited in the SOW by inclusion is excluded, AFAICT

So yeah, you might get SOME of the information. But I recall that all our proposals were always marked “USC proprietary” throughout and we checked to make sure none of the conditions for release of the “idea” part applied.

YMMV.

Joe

—
Joe Touch, temporal epistemologist
www.strayalpha.com

> On Feb 3, 2022, at 5:48 PM, Timothy J. Salo via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> For questions #7-10: Proposals are not publicly available,
>> nor are contracts; they are typically considered “proprietary”.
>> Research results and some reports may be publicly available,
>> e.g., via DTIC or the funding agency’s site, or may be published
>> in journals, conference proceedings, etc. that are open to the
>> public (but may involve access fees).
> 
> Generally, proposals to a federal agency are subject Freedom of
> Information Act (FOIA) requests, once a contract has been signed
> between the proposer and the agency.  See:
> 
> "FOIA Update, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, 1997" U.S. Department of Justice
> <https://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/foia-update-new-statute-protects-contractor-proposals>
> 
> I believe that most of the narrative part of a proposal can be
> obtained with a FOIA request (after the contract has been signed).
> A proposer can usually mark most or all of the narrative part of
> a proposal as proprietary, but I don't believe that these marking
> will prevent the disclosure of the material, beyond the exceptions
> for trade secrets and proprietary information contained in the FOIA.
> I believe that financial information is pretty much always considered
> proprietary without much debate (although I have never been
> involved in these discussions).
> 
> The Department of Justice later wrote ("FOIA Update, Vol. II,
> No. 2, 1981"):
> 
>  The prices in government contracts should not be secret. Government
>  contracts are "public contracts," and the taxpayers have a right to
>  know--with very few exceptions--what the government has agreed to buy
>  and at what prices. Most knowledgeable students of American history,
>  law, and government would agree. Public access to public contracts was
>  well established before FOIA, and FOIA was hardly intended to promote
>  secrecy in such matters.
> 
>  <https://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/foia-update-disclosure-prices>
> 
> I'm pretty sure that "prices" does not include detailed financial
> information about how the proposer calculated those prices (e.g.,
> internal cost information).  But the cost to the Government should
> be available.
> 
> So, if one is interested, I think that one should be able to obtain
> most of the interesting parts of a proposal submitted to a Federal
> agency that resulted in a contract with a FOIA request.
> 
> I think that one may also be able to obtain the interesting parts
> of a Federal contract with a FOIA request.  This should certainly
> include the total cost of the contract.  It think that the
> statement of work should also be available.  (I have seen proposal
> instructions that permitted a proposer to mark all of the proposal
> as proprietary, except for the proposed statement of work, which
> for that agency, was the basis of the statement of work in the
> contract.  But again, marking material as proprietary does not,
> in and of itself, prevent FOIA disclosure.)
> 
> Many agencies have information about making FOIA requests on their
> websites.
> 
> I have heard that there are firms in D.C. that specialize in making
> these sorts of FOIA requests, which permits the requester to
> remain anonymous, but I have never had any contact these sorts
> of firms.
> 
> -tjs
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