Another report saying "contract administration first!"

Once again, GAO manages to state the obvious, that contract administration is lacking in contracts for forward deployed contractors. One of the issues that GAO thinks is important is how many contractors and their employees there are.

There seems to be two issues here. First is a micro issue of how many employees need to be housed/fed/cared for at forward deployed installations. If this is an issue, perhaps something more than an annual report should be required.

Secondly, since we are buying performance and outcomes (FAR Part 37.1 says performance based contracting is still the method of choice), it is not relevant to the buying decision, so we don't require the contractor to report it anywhere, except for the Army's annual contractor manpower report.

There seems to be some sort of agenda in the Beltway about how many contractors are doing government work.

[Note: of course, some proposals have work breakdowns that include labor projections, however, contractors are not bound by them in most cases.]

The purpose of the A-76 and performance based contracting, as I understand it, was not to decrease or increase the workforce, but to save the government money. That should be the measure, not the number of employees.

Send me your comments. Post them right down here at the bottom of the post.