6 U.S.C. § 396 — Lead system integrator; financial interests

(a) In general: For contracts signed after July 1, 2007, and except as (b) allows, no entity acting as a "lead system integrator" in the Department of Homeland Security's acquisition of a major system may have any direct financial interest in developing or building any individual system or part of a "system of systems." (b) Exception: An entity described in (a) may still have a direct financial interest in developing or building an individual system or part of a system of systems if either: the Secretary of Homeland Security certifies to several named congressional committees — the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, the House Homeland Security Committee, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee — that the Department picked the entity to develop or build the system or part through a competitive process, and that the Department took proper steps to prevent an organizational conflict of interest during that selection; or a subcontractor picked the entity to serve as a lower-tier subcontractor, through a process the entity itself did not control. (c) Construction: Nothing in this section stops an entity described in (a) from doing work needed to integrate two or more individual systems or parts of a system of systems with each other. (d) Regulations update: By July 1, 2007, the Secretary of Homeland Security must update the Department's acquisition regulations to fully spell out the matters this section covers about lead system integrators. These updated regulations must include a precise, complete definition of "lead system integrator," modeled on the definition the Department of Defense uses, and a description of the types of contracts and fee structures that are appropriate for lead system integrators to use when producing, fielding, and sustaining complex systems.