Wartime Contracting

The Government Accountability Office released a report yesterday that looks at whether the Pentagon, State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development "have taken or planned actions that directly align with recommendations the [Commission on Wartime Contracting] made in its final and last two special reports."

According to GAO:

Over the past decade, the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of State (State), and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have relied extensively on contractors to help carry out their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between fiscal year 2002 and fiscal year 2011, these agencies reported combined obligations of approximately $159 billion for contracts with a principal place of performance in either country. Contractor personnel have provided a range of services related to supporting troops and civilian personnel and to overseeing and carrying out reconstruction efforts, such as interpretation, security, weapon systems maintenance, intelligence analysis, facility operations support, advice to Iraqi and Afghan ministries, and road and infrastructure construction. The use of contractors in contingency operations such as these is not new, but the number of contractors and the type of work they are performing in Iraq and Afghanistan represent an increased reliance on contractors to support agency missions.

Congress established the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan (CWC) in 2008 to assess contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan and provide recommendations to Congress to improve the contracting process.

The CWC was directed by Congress to assess contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan for reconstruction, logistics, and security functions; examine the extent of waste, fraud, and abuse; and provide recommendations to Congress to improve various aspects of contingency contracting, including defining requirements and identifying, addressing, and providing accountability for waste, fraud, and abuse. . . .

In summary, DOD reported having taken or planned actions that directly align with about half of the CWC recommendations applicable to it, and State and USAID each reported having taken or planned actions that directly align with about one-third of the recommendations applicable to each of them. Officials from the three agencies explained that for the remaining recommendations no actions were taken or planned that directly aligned with the specific recommendation. This was because, for example, the agencies had determined that existing policies or practices already meet the intent of the recommendations or had disagreed with the recommendations.

Inside the Army reported last September that the service expected to formally resolve problems related to expeditionary contracting in 2014, seven years after the topic first showed up as a "material weakness" in annual service audits required by law:

The time line is included in the attachments to an annual certification memo, dated Aug. 29, from Army Secretary John McHugh to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Known as a "statement of assurance on internal controls" for fiscal year 2011, the memo was published in the same week that a congressional commission unveiled a much-publicized report estimating that the U.S. government lost between $31 billion and $60 billion to contracting waste and fraud during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars because of problems similar to those diagnosed by the Army.

The trail of service certification memos going back to the 2008 version, when expeditionary contracting was first flagged as a problem, provides a stark picture of a known deficiency that has persisted for years, with progress from one year to the next documented mostly in slight adjustments to the jargon in the report language.

The description of the problem has remained the same in all reports. "The Army's acquisition workforce is not adequately staffed, trained, structured or empowered to meet the Army needs of the 21st-century deployed warfighters," it reads. In addition, the contracting process -- including requirements definition, contract management and contract close-out -- is "not treated as a core competency," and internal controls to mitigate risk are "ineffective or nonexistent," the reports state.