We recently received a contract (Federal) with the following clause: "The
Contractor must educate its employees, through formal training, not to
divulge the proprietary data, trade secrets, confidential information, or
restricted data of companies received in connection with the performance of
work under this contract. The Contractor shall provide a plan to implement
this training for the approval of the Contracting Officer."

Our present procedure is that contracts with proprietary information
considerations require the PI and any other individual (including students)
who might work with this data must sign a non-disclosure agreement. We do
not have a formal training program for all employees and feel that providing
a plan to be approved by this one contracting officer would be micromanaging
on the part of the Federal agency (their requirement above is in relation to
commercial data that might come our way.)

Have other institutions agreed to this clause or one like it or do you have
formal training programs for proprietary information situations?

Thank you!

Val Seaquist
Office of Research Administration
The University of Alabama in Huntsville

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