Senators express concern about administration’s contracting guidance

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed concerns about the Obama administration's new contracting guidance during a hearing on Wednesday.

While Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Bennett of Utah and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma all weighed in, some of the most pointed criticism came from Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs contracting subcommittee chairwoman Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a strong administration supporter.

"I was proud to be standing with the president during his announcement this March [that he would undertake contracting reform], and I was encouraged by his commitment to eliminate the waste, fraud and abuse in government contracts," McCaskill said. "Today, however, I have serious concerns."

Among the "significant problems" she identified with contracting memos released by the Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday and in July, was a lack of concrete direction on how agencies should achieve necessary reforms to improve procurement. The documents provide sets of questions and considerations for agencies to address, she said, but no clear way forward.

McCaskill also said the memos fail to hold agencies accountable for reforms by setting concrete deadlines.

"The guidance sets out only a handful of specific dates and deliverables, and even these are vague," she said. "OMB has not said how it will review progress for agencies, or what metrics or benchmarks the agency will use."

The chairwoman also lamented that the memos failed to address service contracts and provide a clearer definition of jobs that are "inherently governmental" and cannot be outsourced.

Collins credited the administration for acknowledging the importance of the acquisition workforce but blasted the memos as only superficially addressing critical workforce challenges and shirking the responsibilities Congress has given to OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy to develop an actionable workforce plan.

The guidance "lacks adequate analysis and substance in my view," Collins said. "It really is boiler plate -- it's standard material, it reiterates a list of human capital planning guidelines, it creates various interagency working groups. I'm tired of studies, I'm tired of working groups, I want to see action and in my view this plan simply delegates to each agency what the law required OFPP to do itself."

OMB Deputy Director for Management Jeff Zients challenged McCaskill's criticism that the administration has not established sufficient benchmarks. He said officials have put a number of "stakes in the ground," including making the overarching commitment to help agencies identify $40 billion annually in procurement-related savings. He also pointed out the Sept. 30, 2010, deadline for agencies to reduce cost reimbursement and noncompetitive contracting by 10 percent and the specific goals set for increasing the acquisition workforce.

"I believe we've done a good job of jumpstarting the effort and …we are going to have tangible management results," Zients said.

He acknowledged, however, that OMB's work is far from done, particularly in complex policy areas such as defining work that is off-limits from outsourcing.

"There is more policy work to be done, we've not yet done guidance explicitly on inherently governmental… that is an unbelievably complex terrain," Zients said. While committing to release some guidance by the end of the year, the chief performance officer said the agency will probably "take several shots at it."

"There is lots of work to be done," Zients said. "We're not where we want to be ultimately, but we're in a pretty good spot six months in from the March memo" announcing the contracting reform effort, he said.