Better Government Oversight = Better Contractor Performance (Yes, Even in Weapons Procurement)

As Scott pointed out in his previous entry, contractors perform better when the federal government exercises oversight. Yesterday's mammoth Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on Selected Defense Department Weapons Programs provides more evidence that oversight can improve program performance when Congress acts on the lessons learned from acquisition problems and makes meaningful improvements.

One of the systemic problems in in the Department of Defense's (DoD) weapons procurement is that it doesn't consistently use what GAO terms a "knowledge-based approach" -- making sure that the Pentagon knows enough to establish relatively stable requirements, technology, and design before a program goes forward. Yesterday's report found that DoD has improved their implementation of this approach when it comes to technology maturity, which "coincided" with a change in the law (specifically, a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act) that required all programs entering system development to certify that their technology has been demonstrated in a relevant environment. See that: find a problem, legislate a solution that requires more vigilant oversight of the problem, implement the solution (this part is key), and the problem is mitigated, if not solved.

Unfortunately, the GAO also found that there may be a decrease in the federal government's control of their weapons programs:

"For the first time since we began reporting on program office staffing in 2008, programs reported having more nongovernment than government staff working in program offices....The greatest numbers of support contractors are in engineering and technical positions, but their participation has increased in all areas, from program management and contracting to administrative support and other business functions." (Emphasis POGO's)

-- Mandy Smithberger

Comments

[Mandy]

Thanks for the input, I wanted to highlight something beyond the usual problems in defense procurement. My favorite write up highlighting those problems is here - http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/03/navy_gaoreport_033110w/

On your second point, it addressed oversight within the Pentagon to the extent that it made planning / meeting technological maturity goals a requirement.

[SoCal Contractor]

1. The HASC Committee Report is not the same thing as the National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 109-364).

2. P.L. 109-364 did not address oversight so much as it addressed planning (and technology readiness, as your post noted). See the actual law here: http://www.wifcon.com/dodauth07.htm

3. The GAO report had quite a bit to say, almost none of which had to do with actual contractor oversight. In particular, problems with contractor quality continue to plague MDAPs.

I'm just sayin'.