By NEIL GORDON
Long-time POGO friend Pratap Chatterjee has written three excellent papers on federal contracting for the Center for American Progress (CAP). CAP's "Doing What Works" project promotes solutions that will boost government efficiency and accountability. Chatterjee, a Visiting Fellow at CAP, explores the money-saving and accountability-enhancing potential of contracting from three different angles and proposes many sensible recommendations. Here is a quick summary of the three papers, which you are encouraged to read in full by clicking on the heading links:
There is a simple way for the federal government to save billions of dollars while ensuring contractors do not perform inherently governmental functions—transfer certain jobs back to the public sector. In addition, the government should cut down on unnecessary layers of subcontracting, improve the cost data used in preparing service contract inventories, and streamline the federal hiring process. Insourcing will save money (as POGO reported in last year’s Bad Business report), eliminate conflicts of interest, and help the government build up and maintain vital in-house skills.
A single streamlined database that tracks fraud, waste, and abuse in federal government contracts will help save money. The President and Congress have taken major steps in this direction—USAspending.gov, FAPIIS, President Obama’s June 2011 executive order calling for the creation of a comprehensive system to track government spending, the General Services Administration’s forthcoming System for Award Management (SAM), and the Federal Accountability Portal system proposed in the DATA Act—but these reforms are not enough. More must be done to integrate the government’s multitude of contracting data systems, make sure officials have the relevant, timely and accurate data needed to make informed contracting decisions, and make this data (especially past performance data) available to the public.
To ensure taxpayers get the most bang for the buck, the government needs to strengthen its contract auditing practices. This means boosting the staff and funding at the principal contract auditing agency: the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). The DCAA claims a return on investment of at least five dollars in recovered funds and cost savings for every dollar spent on its operations. DCAA should be allowed to operate more independently. The auditors at DCAA and other agencies should be given the authority to subpoena contractor records and conduct more risk-based and random audits. There should be “naming and shaming” and a fee withholding punishment for contractors with inadequate business systems. (POGO has testified about needed federal contract auditing reforms, including the creation of an independent federal contract audit agency.)
Chatterjee has written three separate papers, but he believes that federal contracting reform requires an integrated, “big picture” strategy. “Policymakers bicker endlessly over what is inherently governmental, what can be audited and how, who can win contracts and who cannot,” he told POGO. “It is high time to realize that we cannot take a fragmented approach with these issues.”
Neil Gordon is a POGO investigator.
Image via Mustafa Khayat.
Back when the US Navy designed their own ships we had a 600 ship Navy. Now that we contract out their design we can't even keep 300 ships afloat. Clearly we need to outsource more? When NASA designed their own rockets we made going to the Moon look routine. Now we can't even get to our own space station without renting a ride from the Russians. Government contractors are robbing us blind! They are nothing but leaches. If they were worth a damn, they'd be competing in the free market.
Posted by: Dfens | Mar 30, 2012 at 07:16 PM
Dear Sir or Madam;
Instead of the government paying the contractors at one time, Why don't they spread the payment out? If it was a 2 year contract, why don't the government pay them for the first 6 months in advance. Like a payment. Then pay them for the next 6 months.With a 3% cost over run.And so on. When the Government pays the last 6 months in advance the company has 6 months to finish the contract. If they have not finished the contract, make the company finish the contract on their own dime.
Sincerely Yours
fe0li0cif0ic0
Posted by: fe0li0cif0ic0 | Mar 30, 2012 at 01:10 AM
Mr. Chatterjee's thoughts are pedestrian. Just as contracting failures are legion and are caused by both company and government behaviors, there is a 50-foot shelf of diagnostic, analytic, and forward-looking studies of contracting failures and what needs to be done.
Mr. C's thoughts contain nothing original and are very tactical. They would/will be easily defeated by both government and industry people who like the status quo and successfully block most changes. There is no political will to fix these problems, especially because the finger of blame is so easily and understandably pointing back at government--both executive agencies and Congress.
To achieve breakthrough, we need to have a few cases where government miscreants who invited problems fired, and if warranted, prosecuted for their negligence and waste of taxpayer funds. On the contractor side, DOJ and USAs and the FBI need to stop namby pamby investigations and prosecutions and go after the hiding-in-plain-sight contractor atrocities. The best cases will be those where the connivance of government and contractor are pursued in the same investigation and prosecution. Even a few jail sentences will do wonders.
It may surprise many, but deliberate fraud is hardly the problem. Rather, it is the colossal mismanagement and negligence that does the majority of the damage, almost always with no penalty for government or contractor miscreants.
Focus: airborne platforms, IT systems, operational support for national security agencies
Posted by: Bronto | Mar 29, 2012 at 08:46 PM