# Presentation: 381746

## 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

## Slide 7

## Darleen Druyun

## Slide 9

## Slide 10

## Slide 11

## 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

## Slide 15

## 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

## Slide 18

## Slide 19

## Slide 20

## Suspension & Debarment

**Enron & Andersen**
**MCI**
**Boeing**
**Boeing v. Lockheed (trade secrets)**
**CACI (?)**
**shifting the burden on out of scope work**

## Slide 22

## 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***
***Uniformity***
**Risk Avoidance**
**Wealth Distribution****(*)**
**Best value**
**Efficiency **(administrative)
**Customer Satisfaction**

***Traditional?***
**Transitional?**
**Current?**

## Aspirations v. Constraints

**Best value**
**Customer satisfaction**
**Efficiency (administrative efficiency)**

**Transparency**
**Competition**
**Integrity**
**Uniformity**

## 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?