POGO | The Contracting Education Academy

February 20, 2019 By AMK

POGO questions apparent contracting-out of ‘inherently governmental functions’

Recently, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) perused a few contractor job listings for congressional affairs specialists and budgetary analysts.

Reviewing the job descriptions, POGO was alarmed at the extent to which the jobs included tasks that are borderline illegal to contract out.

It’s no secret that the government relies on contractors to perform different tasks, and there is generally no problem with that given that the private sector has a vast amount of highly skilled workers. However, there are federal activities that, by law, must be performed by government employees, including determining agency policy, budget request priorities, and what supplies or services are to be acquired. Drafting congressional testimony or responses to congressional correspondence is also off limits to contractors.

One job announcement was so blatant that it even stated that a legislative affairs specialist would support the United States Cyber Command “With minimal guidance”’ or “With no guidance” to prepare background papers and talking points, and prepare leadership to testify before Congress, meet with Members of Congress, and meet with pertinent Congressional Committee Staff Members.

The government has become overreliant on contractors, and POGO is concerned about the blurred line between jobs that must be performed by a government employee and those that can be performed by a contractor. Jobs that must be performed by government employees are called “inherently governmental functions,” a term that generates much confusion and controversy. A 2014 Congressional Research Service report illustrates how multiple definitions of “inherently governmental” have been created over the years. The result is differences in controlling laws, regulations, White House policy and policy letters, which POGO has urged the government to clean up.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2016/08/to-be-or-not-to-be-contracted-out/

August 22, 2018 By AMK

Pentagon’s contracting gurus mismanaged their own contracts

The Pentagon’s contracting gurus repeatedly made massive, preventable mistakes while managing contracts for a critical software project of their own, violating federal budget law along the way, according to scathing internal reports and other records obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

Ironically, the purpose of the mismanaged system is to help manage the rest of the Pentagon’s contracts.

The Pentagon relies on the obscure Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) to negotiate and administer $5 trillion in contracts across the Defense Department as an average of $455 million in taxpayer dollars are paid out each day to contractors. How well that agency does its job directly affects both how wisely taxpayer dollars are spent and whether our troops get what they need when they need it. Yet the cascading series of major, systemic failures within the agency, which has nearly 12,000 employees and an annual budget of roughly $1.5 billion, led an independent investigator from the Army to go so far as to recommend that it be prohibited from awarding its own contracts in the future.

Documents obtained by POGO — including a September 2017 preliminary investigative report, an April 2018 internal memo, and a draft of the final report from this summer — show that over the course of several years, the agency mismanaged contracts for the software project. The agency spent far more than it was authorized to spend, violated numerous policies and regulations, and received insufficient oversight from the Pentagon. When these documents are viewed alongside Defense Department watchdog findings from recent years, there appears to be an agency-wide pattern of failing to adequately support the Pentagon’s procurement efforts and sufficiently protect the taxpayer — the agency’s very mission.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.pogo.org/our-work/articles/2018/pentagons-contracting-gurus-mismanaged-their-own-contracts.html

April 10, 2017 By AMK

POGO: Contracts need to be posted online

The third week of March was Sunshine Week, the one week out of the year when there is a coordinated effort by experts to highlight topics related to federal and state open records laws, the public’s right to know, and freedom of the press.

There were numerous events around Washington, DC, as well as in cities and on college campuses around the country. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a proud participant and works hard annually to bolster federal openness because “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Sunshine Week, however, is not just about talking about open government and cool events. It’s also about action. Last week, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced the “Contractor Accountability and Transparency Act of 2017” (S. 651), which POGO and eight other bipartisan groups supported.

The bill will expand the contracting information available on USASpending.gov (which now only offers summaries of contracts), make the contract information more accessible and readable, and help reduce Freedom of Information Act backlogs.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.pogo.org/blog/2017/03/contracts-need-to-be-posted-online-mccaskill-sunshine-transparency.html

April 4, 2017 By AMK

GSA’s new contract with Dun & Bradstreet draws mixed reaction

Last week’s announcement that the General Services Administration (GSA) had updated its Dun & Bradstreet contract will allow agency acquisition personnel and contractors wider latitude to use the standardized company information for purposes beyond mere identification.

But some transparency advocates consider the step insufficient.

In a Sept. 29 blog post, Kevin Youel Page, deputy commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, announced changes in the proprietary system for business identifiers in its Integrated Award Environment tracking system that are a “huge step forward in the goal to make data more accessible and readily available across government.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/management/2016/10/gsas-new-contract-dun-bradstreet-draws-mixed-reaction/132205/

December 8, 2014 By AMK

Government oversight group chides DoD for service contract spending

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) criticized the Defense Department (DoD) for not being able to bring service contract spending under control.

In a Nov. 25, 2014 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, POGO charged the DoD with hindering efforts to rein in its service contract spending.

POGO said billions of dollars are being wasted because of the DoD’s failure to assemble contracting data and to implement an Enterprise-wide Contractor Manpower Reporting Application. POGO also said the agency hasn’t adequately staffed its Total Force Management Support Office.

“POGO has reason to believe that this is being done at the urging of the service contractors themselves,” POGO said.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/pogo-chides-dod-service-contract-spending/2014-12-02

Read POGO’s Nov. 25, 2015 letter at: http://pogoarchives.org/m/co/pogo_ics_ltr_to_dod_%2020141125.pdf

Read GAO’s Nov. 19, 2014 report containing finding that DoD had incomplete inventories of its service contracts at: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-88

Recently, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) perused a few contractor job listings for congressional affairs specialists and budgetary analysts.

Last week’s announcement that the General Services Administration (GSA) had updated its Dun & Bradstreet contract will allow agency acquisition personnel and contractors wider latitude to use the standardized company information for purposes beyond mere identification.

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