Commercial Purchasing: The Chasm Between the United States

							Troubling Trends in
Procurement and
Governance
November, 2004

 Professor Steven L. Schooner
 George Washington University
 Washington, D.C., USA
 www.law.gwu.edu/facweb/sschooner
                Good News
• Great to live in the USA
  – Last week: Free election – increased turnout
  – Safe on streets, in home – no reported election
    violence
• Strongest argument – non-domestic travel
• Travel (non-US perspective) -- encourages
  critical assessment of domestic issues
  Good News (Procurement)
• We buy great stuff
• Government enjoys:
  – Highest quality goods
  – Cutting edge technology
  – Full range of services
• Government gets value for money
• Government gets what it needs
  Bad News (Procurement)
• Workforce Reductions -- permanent
• Cyclical Acquisition
  Reform/Change
  – Pick your favorite (cycle, wave,
    pendulum, rubber band)
• It’s time….
  – Proliferation of problems not seen
    since the mid- to late-1980’s
    Transparency International
Corruption Perceptions Index 2004
     Items of Concern
• Bad Actors – large and small
• Political Influence
• Insufficient Resources
  –Iraq: CPA & Abu Ghraib – potent
   anecdotes
• Systemic Failures – large and
  small
Darleen
Druyun
          LOGCAP
   Panacea or Lightning Rod?
General Kern:
The Logistics Civil Augmentation Program
(LOGCAP) provides vital support to our
forces both in peace and war. It increases
the efficiency and warfighting capability of
the Armed Forces, immediately improves
the quality of life for soldiers and forces on
the ground, and actually allows fewer
soldiers to accomplish a larger mission.
 The LOGCAP/KBR Phenomenon
• Successful, transformative battlefield
  support
• Political hot button topic during hotly
  contested election
• DoD, Government public relations –
  between a rock and hard place
• LOGCAP as a foot in the door….
  Bunny
Greenhouse
              Abu Ghraib
General Taguba ... urged that a civilian
contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI …,
be fired …, reprimanded, and denied his
security clearances for lying to the
investigating team and allowing or ordering
MP’s “who were not trained in interrogation
techniques to facilitate interrogations by
‘setting conditions’ which were neither
authorized” nor in accordance with Army
regulations.
CONTRACTOR ATROCITIES AT ABU
GHRAIB: COMPROMISED
ACCOUNTABILITY IN A
STREAMLINED, OUTSOURCED
GOVERNMENT
Stanford Law & Policy Review
http://ssrn.com/abstract=605367
- insufficient contract administration
- proliferation of fee-based ID/IQ’s
Suspension & Debarment
• Enron & Andersen
• MCI
• Boeing
  – Boeing v. Lockheed (trade secrets)
• CACI (?)
  – shifting the burden on out of scope
    work
            Reactions….
• Stop talking about the bad news and
  focus on the success stories….
• If someone really wants to defraud the
  government, they’ll figure out how to….
• A few bad apples don’t spoil the whole
  bunch…
• At what point do anecdotes become
  trends?
 Procurement, Acquisition
• What is the tasking?
• What are the metrics (or measures
  of success)?
• How do we know when the system
  is working well? Struggling?
• In a perfect world, what would our
  procurement system look like?
Goals, Principles, Constraints?
•   Transparency
•   Integrity
•   Competition                Traditional?
•   Uniformity                 Transitional?
•   Risk Avoidance             Current?
•   Wealth Distribution(*)
•   Best value
•   Efficiency (administrative)
•   Customer Satisfaction
Aspirations v. Constraints

• Best value        •   Transparency
• Customer          •   Competition
  satisfaction
                    •   Integrity
• Efficiency
  (administrative   •   Uniformity
  efficiency)
 The New Public Management
NPM … strives not only to
apply private sector
management techniques to the
public sector, but to change the
very culture of public service
itself.
 Public Service Ethics
 (Football v. Soccer?)
• Rules based
• Principles based
• Consequentialst
       The Future?
• Reduced Acquisition Resources
• Increased Flexibility
• Unrelenting Demands

  Can we maintain confidence in
       public procurement?