Of Bids, Contracts, Prices and Costs

The Washington Post's Robert O'Harrow is back on the subject of "no-bid" federal contracts today (and on the front page of the paper), with a story centered on a contract issued by the Homeland Security Department's Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement to prepare a long-delayed plan.

That particular contract is placed in the overall context of growth in federal contracts awarded without full and open competition. O'Harrow notes that "government auditors say the result is often higher prices for taxpayers and an undue reliance on a limited number of contractors."

I don't doubt that. But I wonder if the result is actually higher total costs for taxpayers. The reason why the government implemented the procurement reforms back in the 1990s that have created the opportunity to award contracts with little or no bidding was that agencies were spending billions of dollars on "full and open competitions" -- and often not getting what they were supposed to be paying for.

This is not to suggest that there aren't some serious issues to explore in the area of contemporary federal contracting, but only to note that it's one of those areas where the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater is very real.