Update on Contract Support Costs

I met with the IHS Direct Service Tribal Advisory Committee during their quarterly meeting last week. While they intend to send me written recommendations shortly, our discussion confirmed the same basic next steps as suggested by the IHS Tribal Self Governance Advisory Committee. The plan is to continue our discussion on calculation of Contract Support Costs (CSC) estimates in the pre-award/negotiations phase with a goal to find additional areas of agreement. Now that both IHS advisory committees have discussed the issue, the next step will be to convene the IHS CSC Workgroup to make recommendations on this topic, which will be shared with all Tribes through a consultation process. We will schedule a meeting of the CSC Workgroup in the near future, likely in early December. The discussions with each of these advisory workgroups have been productive and educational, and everyone agreed to move forward with these discussions.