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Defense Acquisitions: Observations on the Department of Defense Service Contract Inventories for Fiscal Year 2008

GAO-10-350R Published: Jan 29, 2010. Publicly Released: Jan 29, 2010.
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Highlights

The Department of Defense (DOD) is the federal government's largest purchaser of contractor-provided services and relies on contractors to support its varied missions. DOD's contractors provide a range of services, such as consulting and administrative support, information technology services, and weapon system and base operations support. However, DOD contract management has been on our high-risk list since 1992, and our recent work continues to identify weaknesses in DOD's management and oversight of services contracts. In particular, we have reported on the need for reliable data on how service acquisition dollars are spent to make informed contract management decisions and achieve positive acquisition outcomes. Congress has enacted legislation in recent years to increase the availability of information on services acquisitions to improve DOD's ability to manage these purchases. As part of those efforts, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 amended 10 U.S.C. 2330a to require DOD to submit an annual inventory of the activities performed pursuant to contracts for services for or on behalf of DOD during the preceding fiscal year. These inventories are to contain a number of different elements for the service contracts listed, including information on the functions and missions performed by the contractor, the funding source for the contract, and the number of contractor full-time equivalents (FTE) working under the contract. Once compiled, the inventories are to be reviewed by senior DOD officials and used to inform a variety of acquisition and workforce decisions.

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Topics

Air Force procurementArmy procurementContract performanceContractsData integrityDefense procurementDepartment of Defense contractorsFull-time employmentMilitary appropriationsMilitary forcesMilitary inventoriesMilitary materielMilitary procurementNaval procurementReporting requirementsService contractsStrategic planning