The Federal Acquisition Regulation councils have scuttled plans to make copies of contracts publicly available.

The councils withdrew their proposed rulemaking in a notice published in the Feb. 10 Federal Register. They said much information about federal contracts is already publicly available on a number of websites, such as FedBizOpps, usaspending.gov and acquisition.gov. Other contract documents may be available through a Freedom of Information Act request, though that is a slow process.

In rejecting the idea of posting the contracts themselves, the councils said, “No posting requirement can be successful without protections for both contractor and Government employees. Necessary protections for information and personnel involve, at a minimum, a FOIA analysis, which is time consuming and requires senior analysts and attorneys. [The councils] are concerned, too, that the on-going efforts to identify protections essential for safeguarding unclassified information are not yet sufficiently mature that such efforts can be bypassed to establish a contract-posting requirement prior to guidance on unclassified information.”

One of the 15 respondents to the proposed rule complained, “With more than 30 million transactions issued by the government annually, the redaction process alone would be overwhelming.”

Then-Sen. Barack Obama co-sponsored legislation in 2008 to post contracts online, but Congress never passed it.

The Defense Department says it awarded several million dollars to contractors after they had been suspended or debarred.

In a report to Congress, DOD said contracting officers awarded some contracts even though they knew the company was ineligible, “to ensure mission accomplishment and for safety and mission requirements.” In other cases contracting officers failed to check the Excluded Parties List System to see if a contractor was eligible.

The report said the director of Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy will issue new guidance on how to use the Excluded Parties List and the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System.

Consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton has kicked about two-thirds of its Washington area employees out of their offices and cubicles.

The company has turned to “hoteling,” the Washington Post reported. Most employees must reserve a space in advance when they want to come to one of Booz Allen’s offices. The strategy has enabled the company to expand its workforce without leasing additional space.

Many of the employees work from home or at a client’s site most of the time. Others said they can avoid long commutes by “checking in” to an office closer to home.