Jeepers, Creepers...What's The Deal With PPIRS?

On Friday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an assessment of the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS--pronounced “peepers”), a database of contractor past performance information that federal agencies are supposed to consult before awarding or renewing contracts. The report, "Federal Contractors: Better Performance Information Needed to Support Agency Contract Award Decisions", looked at the current state of PPIRS and found it wanting.

GAO estimated that an assessment of past performance occurred in less than a third of contracts awarded by the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy, General Services Administration and NASA in fiscal year 2007. These five agencies combined accounted for about 85 percent of all contracts awarded that year.

The report found that contracting officials have a deep skepticism about the relevancy and reliability of PPIRS data. It also found that only a small percentage of contracts had documented performance assessments, while other useful performance-related data, such as terminations for default and subcontract management, are not being systematically tracked across agencies. As a result, agencies are renewing or awarding contracts to contractors with questionable performance records. Most significantly, the report concluded that a lack of central oversight and management of PPIRS, combined with a lack of funding, ensures these shortcomings will continue to plague the system for the near future.

“Several efforts have been initiated to improve PPIRS and provide pertinent and timely performance information,” the report states, “but little progress has been made.”

Since its implementation in 2002, concerns have been raised about the sufficiency of the information contained in PPIRS. In February 2008, the DoD Inspector General examined the Pentagon's Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS), which is fed into PPIRS, and found it to be so lacking in completeness that it concluded DoD contracting officials “do not have all past performance information needed to make informed decisions related to market research, contract awards, and other acquisition matters.”

POGO has repeatedly pointed out the limitations of the federal government's main tools for vetting contractors: PPIRS and another Web-based data resource, the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS). It was these limitations, in fact, which prompted POGO to create its Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD).

Last year alone, the federal government did business with over 186,000 contractors and spent over $536 billion outsourcing functions ranging from landscaping services to intelligence gathering. A government that relies so heavily on contractors must be able to thoroughly evaluate their background, including how they have performed on prior contracts. As the GAO report observed, basing contract award decisions on past performance encourages contractors to achieve better acquisition outcomes over the long term.

-- Neil Gordon

Comments

[Thomas Doherty]

Just read the FCMD and again I am confused as to why 2 of Raytheon's well known misdeeds are not in it. I was on both these projects while at Raytheon between 1995 and the summer of 2002 when I was forced out of Raytheon for informing some of their management that the Patriot IFF radar was not working.

(1) Patriot IFF radar did not work. In April 2003 it shot down 3 jets killing 4 pilots. Raytheon lied at the time and said all the pilots did not turn on their IFF transponders. In Dec 2007 in a Boston courtroom Raytheon confessed that they knew that the IFF radar did not work. prior to this Raytheon pretended to look for birdies and ghosts in their radars and removed the old IFF and replaced it with one from the newly acquired Allied Signal Company. Who paid for the phony birdie watching and the new IFFs ? Why was Raytheon allowed to lie to the Public for almost 5 years? What is real reason Nathan White's Widow's lawsuit was dismissed ? This should be the biggest item in your database, Not Absent entirely!!

(2) STD Missile 2 when halted for it huge amount of overruns including the cost of transferring the project from Boston MA to Tuscon AZ, just changed its name to STD Missile 3 and keep on going.

[Michael Lent]

Neil: I share your hope for the same reasons for better evals, but the chances are slim as long as the government harbors its own built-in conflict-of-interest. The vast majority of firms have nothing to fear from honest, complete evals. But the government preparers, if they know of the eval requirement at all, do have understandable concerns. Straight reporting of a contractor's problems could well expose the government's defective requirements, negligent oversight, and bad contractor selections, as well. And with government and companies mouthing the hollow and hackneyed "partnering," the air is fouled for straight eval reporting. As it is, systems like PPIRS are condemned to be unfair to companies and downright dangerous for government purposes as long as the set of reports is so woefully incomplete and report quality is uncertain or gamey. Because of the under-reporting, there is some pattern--that no one can see--of biases by company, agency, and quality of performance reported. This makes it probably unfair to some companies and misleading for the government to use these reports when comparing a set of firms in a competition. Some may have their good (or bad) performances exposed while others have no reporting or some degree of under-reporting. As for POGO's db helping to compensate, that's not likely either. That's because some of the so-called misconduct, such as settlements with no admission of wrongdoing, is not the kind of matter that many contracting officers consider in determining responsibility, or proposal eval panels use when comparing offerors' past performance. The pity remains that troubled past performances by a minority of contractors doesn't seem to keep them from the next award. And on the government's side, similarly, there is scant accountability for troubled program management, contractor oversight, or for selecting a contractor that malperformed in the first place. Only the taxpayers and end-users of the contract services or product get hosed. Again, good performers on both sides have nothing to fear from honest evals of all performances. We'd like to see the ongoing procurement reforms address this vexing issue, but there's no sign of it yet.