The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan just released its interim report, "At What Cost? Contingency Contracting In Iraq and Afghanistan" (PDF file: 5.2 MB). Commission co-chairs Michael J. Thibault and Christopher Shays also presented their findings to the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. (In the interest of fairness, the subcommittee also invited Alan Chvotkin of the Professional Services Council, a contractor trade association, to testify.)
The commission was established by Congress in 2008 to evaluate and report on wartime contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, where about $830 billion has been spent on U.S. operations since 2001. More than 240,000 contractor employees--about 80 percent of which are foreign nationals--are supporting the operations and projects of the military, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In fact, as you've probably heard, there are more contractors over there than military and government civilian personnel.
The commission's final report is due in 2010. In the meantime, the commission highlights several “issues of immediate concern” that require prompt attention:
“Contractors are doing vital work, generally to good effect,” according to the report, “but the sheer scale of their operations and weaknesses in the federal contract-management and oversight systems create plentiful opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse.” As operations shift from Iraq to Afghanistan, the commission warns of a high risk of waste, fraud and abuse from the handling and disposition of government property, functions in which contractors are playing a key role. It recommends that the Department of Defense accelerate plans to establish a contracting oversight command in Afghanistan, rather than continue to perform this function from its current base of operations in Iraq. The commission also warns about the lack of accountability in the use of subcontractors. “Subcontracts account for about 70 percent of the work [in Iraq and Afghanistan], but the government has very little visibility into their operations,” according to the report.
-- Neil Gordon
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