November 2013 Blogs

New partnership with Notah Begay III Foundation

IHS and the Notah Begay III Foundation are collaborating on activities aimed at preventing childhood obesity in American Indian and Alaska Native youth. The partnership will include sharing best practices on the implementation of community-based activities directed at addressing childhood obesity in Indian Country.

On November 12, 2013, I signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Notah Begay III to initiate this new partnership with his foundation. Here is the press release, and here are pictures from the signing ceremony.

Click on the thumbnails for larger images

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.

Update on Contract Support Costs

On September 9, 2013, I sent a letter to Tribes that included an update on Contract Support Costs (CSC) and information on a plan to discuss calculation of estimates of CSC in the pre-award context with Tribes. As indicated in the letter, the next steps were to meet with the IHS Tribal Self-Governance Advisory Committee (TSGAC) and the IHS Direct Service Tribal Advisory Committee (DSTAC) to develop a charge for a smaller group to make specific recommendations on developing standards for the contract negotiations. This week I met with the IHS TSGAC, and we had a productive discussion on the topic of CSC and agreed to move forward with a discussion on how CSC is calculated in the pre-award, or negotiations, phase. We also discussed TSGAC's recommendation to convene the IHS CSC Workgroup to discuss and make recommendations on this topic, and I agreed with that recommendation. The IHS TSGAC will send me their written recommendations after this week, and I will also discuss this with the IHS DSTAC next week. This conversation has the potential to help us move forward and make progress on CSC issues in contract negotiations. I will provide an update after meeting with the IHS DSTAC next week and when we are ready to give a specific charge to the CSC Workgroup. We will convene that group as soon as possible to allow them to make recommendations.

I appreciate all the input we have received from Tribes and we are working to continue progress on this issue.