Posts Tagged: GAO

Award Fees and Incentive Contracts, a Focus on Cost Savings

From the Acquisition Corner In light of the recent memos by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to improve government performance and save on contract costs, focus has turned to the use of award fees on incentive contracts. Earlier this week, the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and InternationalRead… Read more »

Defense Acquisition Reform Needs Common Sense

From the Acquisition Corner: An interesting piece on defense acquisition reform came out by Scott Reynolds, a professor of program management for the Defense Systems Management College at Defense Acquisition University on how we can come to see poor performance in the defense acquisition process as a matter of fact rather than something that isRead… Read more »

The Outsourcing Debate: Realism versus Rhetoric

The Federal Acquisition Innovation and Reform (FAIR) Institute, a new nonprofit focusing on federal contracting reform, released a report in response to the push by the Obama administration to reevaluate when it is appropriate to outsource and use contractors. Specifically, the report provides high-level policy guidance on the specifics of President Obama’s March memo onRead… Read more »

Past Performance Data and the Need to Change the Source Selection Paradigm

The GAO report entitled Better Performance Information Needed to Support Agency Contract Award Decisions (GAO-09-374), lays out a disturbing trend in government oversight and contract management that needs to be corrected on many levels if the government is to increase performance of federal contracts. As noted in the report, the typical information management problem ofRead… Read more »