GAO calls for DoD to examine contractor use - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

GAO calls for DoD to examine contractor use

The Defense Department has failed to examine its use of contractors, military members and civilian employees to ensure it isn’t outsourcing inherently governmental work, the head of the Government Accountability Office told lawmakers Wednesday.

Such a study has been a standing recommendation of GAO since 2006, but has never been carried out, Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said.

Defense spending on services contractors — such as acquisition support contractors, intelligence analysts, interpreters and security guards — has doubled over the last six years as the department struggles to meet growing demands with insufficient staff.

But those contracting decisions, rather than being strategically planned, “resulted from thousands of individual decisions to use contractors to provide specific capabilities,” Dodaro told the House Appropriations subcommittee on Defense.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said he would consider setting a mandatory deadline for the department to comply with the recommendation, with the penalty of withheld funding if it fails.

Although contractors provide benefits such as flexibility and surge capabilities, a strategic assessment of their use is important because over-reliance on contractors can create mission risks, particularly since the department lacks the acquisition staff to oversee the contractors’ work, Dodaro said.

Without proper oversight of contracting, warfighters might not get the equipment and services they need, he said.

While services contracting doubled, the size of the Defense acquisition workforce grew by 1 percent. Often the staff lacks skills to monitor contracts, particularly staff deployed to the battlefield, Dodaro said.

For example, contracting officers have used contracts subject to cost overruns, such as time and materials contracts, when they couldn’t say why that type of contract was necessary, he said. In addition, contracting officers have failed to document actions to show the government got what it paid for, Dodaro said.

Also as a result of poor management, costs and schedule delays on weapons projects have grown. The average weapons system was 26 percent over budget in 2007, compared with 6 percent in 2000; and 21 months behind schedule in 2007, compared with 16 months in 2000, Dodaro said.

Defense needs to ensure it has staff with the technical skills to understand what they are buying, and it needs to establish intermediary performance goals to hold contractors accountable throughout a weapon system’s development, Dodaro said.