From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Agencies' Suspension and Debarment of Contractors Audio interview by GAO staff with Bill Woods, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management Related GAO Work: GAO-11-739: Suspension and Debarment: Some Agency Programs Need Greater Attention, and Governmentwide Oversight Could Be Improved Released on: October 6, 2011 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the Government Accountability Office. It's October 6, 2011. Last year, the federal government spent more then $535 billion on contracted goods and services. Suspensions and debarments, which allow agencies to exclude contractors for misconduct, can help ensure that contracts go to responsible sources. A group led by Bill Woods, a director in GAO's Acquisition and Sourcing Management team, recently reviewed agencies' use of suspensions and debarments. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Bill to learn more. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] How do suspensions and debarments work? [ Bill Woods: ] A suspension is a temporary exclusion of a party from participating in government programs, be they contracts, grants, various types of assistance. A debarment is for a fixed period of time, usually no more than 3 years. The way the process works is each agency will have a suspension and debarment official who will receive information from various sources about contractors and other parties who might be candidates for listing on the excluded parties list system. The suspension and debarment official will review the facts and circumstances and then make a determination about whether the government's interest would be best protected by excluding those parties from participating in contracts, grants, or other assistance from the government. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And that exclusion often comes as a result of some sort of misconduct, your report notes. Can you give some examples of the sorts of misconduct that could lead a contractor to be suspended or debarred by and agency? [ Bill Woods: ] Sure. It really spans the gamut, sometimes a statute will provide for an exclusion for various reasons like health care fraud or tax evasion or something similar along those lines. Other types of misconduct might be a serious failure to perform on a government contract or fraud or something along those lines. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team looked at the use of this tool by 10 federal agencies, some of which used it frequently and others of which barely used it at all. Can you talk about your findings? [ Bill Woods: ] Sure. We wanted to get a mix of agencies, both large and small, a mix of agencies that were frequent users of the suspension and debarment process as well as agencies that appeared not to be using it at all. And our purpose was to identify whether there were any differences in practices among those agencies, and in fact we did find some differences. We found that agencies that had dedicated staff resources, policies and procedures, and a robust referral process ended up with more use of the suspension and debarment process. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You also looked at efforts to oversee and coordinate the use of suspensions and debarments across the government. Can you talk about what you found here? [ Bill Woods: ] Certainly. There's an entity that was first created by executive order called the Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee; that is the primary committee responsible for oversight and coordination among other federal agencies. But we did find some problems with that, how that committee is operating. The principle problem is although it has statutory recognition it does not have any funding, it does not have any staff. So it relies on the participating agencies, primarily the Chair and the Vice Chair, to provide their own staff resources. It also doesn't have any authority to compel other agencies to cooperate in terms of providing data, and we pointed out that a statutory report that was required from the Congress took over 2 years to prepare and submit simply because the data was slow in getting generated. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] That was an annual report, right? [ Bill Woods: ] That was an annual report, and the first annual report had to cover 2 years. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Finally, what recommendations is GAO making in this report? [ Bill Woods: ] We had a number of recommendations. First, for those agencies that we found did not have good practices in the suspension and debarment area, we recommended that they take a look at the three key components that we identified in terms of staffing, in terms of policies and procedures, and in terms of a robust referral process, and that they adopt those practices. We also had recommendations for the Office of Management and Budget to issue governmentwide guidance that would identify those three factors and encourage all agencies to adopt those three. And then finally we had recommendation again to the Office Management and Budget that it provide additional support in terms of guidance both to the Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee and to other agencies to cooperate with that committee in getting its work done. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO's website at GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.