Amazing though it may seem, private contractors were awarded contracts worth $500 billion last year . . . and yet the federal government continued its long practice of letting private contractors off the hook and not demanding that they be held accountable. This is hardly secret information. Unbossed has reported on GAO after GAO study that has regularly found shoddy work by private contractors, harm to private data, and no accountability. Now that seems to be changing. . . .
Last year the American Constitution Society blog described the big claims made for privatization . . .
When the cherry blossoms bloom each spring, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which assists the President in preparing the federal budget and oversees and coordinates the Administration's procurement policies, releases a sunny report on the large amounts of money taxpayers have saved as a result of the government’s privatization initiatives. Only a careful reader would notice that all the purported savings are not fact; they are projections. And those projections stretch credibility while ignoring costs associated with privatization.
For example, OMB’s press release for Fiscal Year 2006, cleverly entitled “Competitive Sourcing Saves Billions of Dollars for the Federal Government,” said “public-private competitions completed in FY 2006 are expected to yield $1.3 billion in savings over the next five to ten years.” And OMB’s press release for FY 2007 touted “competitive sourcing” as “producing significant savings for federal agencies” and claimed a slightly more modest nearly “$400 million in savings over the next five years.”
and the lack of any evidence for those claims . . .
OMB silently acknowledged the validity of criticism of its cost and benefit accounting in its FY2007 report: “OMB recently asked agencies to establish validation plans on a reasonable sampling of competitions to ensure that cost savings and performance improvements are being realized as promised.” This pressure may explain why billions in savings claimed for FY2006 became mere millions claimed for FY 2007.
For example, OMB forbids agencies from including costs they incurred in preparation for privatizing jobs. Yet, preparing to privatize work can take years and require agencies to move employees from work connected with the agency’s mission to working to identify “inventory” — that is, jobs — to privatize. In fact, the competition preparation process is so complex that it has spawned a new breed of consultants to guide agencies through the process. Staff and consultant salaries could easily be quantified and included if OMB did not forbid it.
But Now There’s a New OMB Sheriff in Town
OMB has issued three new memoranda designed to reign in abusive - theft from the taxpayers by another name - regime of contracting that existed under the Bush kleptocracy.
A Whitehouse July 29 memorandum begins:
“The Federal government awarded more than $500 billion to over 160,000 contractors last year for a wide variety of services and supplies. Holding contractors accountable for past performance is an important tool for making sure the Federal government receives good value from its contracts.”
It’s no wonder. As GAO has regularly reported there are no methods or no effective methods in place to provide for a system of accountability. The memorandum states:
Some agencies prepare manual performance evaluations that reside only in paper contract files. Other agencies maintain evaluations in internal data systems that are not available to acquisition officers outside that agency. In addition, many such entries are incomplete or offer insufficient information to inform subsequent contracting decisions.
The memorandum sets out new tools for basic accountability lodged in the key offices that oversee the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) process, the Chief Acquisition Officers (CAOs) and Senior Procurement Executives (SPEs) within federal agencies, and in the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP).
The new accountability tools include, among other things:
* web-based system that now serves as the single, government-wide repository for contractor performance information
* identification of specific agency officials who are to be held accountable
* public naming and shaming by making information public (not quite how they put it)
Finally, the memorandum says:
In coming months, additional guidance will be released to further assist agencies in their use and collection of contractor performance information.
OFPP will work with the FAR Council to issue regulatory changes or guidance, as appropriate, to address other recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its report, Federal Contractors: Better Performance Information Needed to Support Agency Contract Award Decisions (GAO-09-374).The FAR will be amended to: 1) require reporting of termination for cause or default and defective cost or pricing data information in PPIRS; and 2) require agencies to review performance and integrity information in a new database as required by Section 872 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009.
What’s that sound? Could it be the sound of accountability? Lordy me, We can only hope.
Comments
Add Comment