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S. Hrg. 113–382 

OVERSIGHT OF CONTRACTOR PERFORMANCE 

INFORMATION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL AND 

CONTRACTING OVERSIGHT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

MARCH 6, 2014 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEIKAMP, North Dakota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Staff Director 

JOHN P. KILVINGTON, Deputy Staff Director 

KEITH B. ASHDOWN, Minority Staff Director 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk 

LAUREN CORCORAN, Hearing Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL AND CONTRACTING OVERSIGHT 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

MARGARET DAUM, Majority Staff Director 

RACHEL WEAVER, Minority Staff Director 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator McCaskill ............................................................................................ 1 

Senator Johnson ............................................................................................... 3 

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2014 

Captain Brian T. Drapp, Supply Corps, United States Navy, Commanding 

Officer, Naval Sea Logistics Center .................................................................... 4 

Kevin Youel Page, Assistant Commissioner, Integrated Award Environment, 

United States General Services Administration ............................................... 6 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Drapp, Captain Brian T.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 23 

Youel Page, Kevin: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 29 

APPENDIX 

Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record: 

Mr. Drapp .......................................................................................................... 39 

Mr. Youel Page ................................................................................................. 42 

Lockheed Martin Assessment Report ..................................................................... 50 

(1) 

OVERSIGHT OF CONTRACTOR PERFORMANCE 

INFORMATION 

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2014 

U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL AND CONTRACTING OVERSIGHT

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:37 a.m., in room 

342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Claire McCaskill, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators McCaskill and Johnson. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCASKILL 

Senator MCCASKILL. In 2009, I held a hearing in this Subcommittee on the management of government’s dizzying array of 

databases for government contracting. At that hearing, I heard 

from witnesses representing the government, the contracting community, and transparency advocates that the government’s contracting databases were cumbersome, difficult to use, and that the 

data was incomplete. The witnesses pointed to the past performance database, the database that tracks information about contractor performance on previous Federal contracts, as being particularly problematic. 

More than 4 years later, I am here to ask many of the very same 

questions again. Today, however, I am going to focus specifically on 

the databases that contain information about contractor performance and integrity. Before the government awards a contract, the 

contracting officer is required to review the contractor’s past performance on other contracts. This review is meant to ensure that 

the government only awards new contracts to companies that are 

able to perform the work. The contracting officer must also ensure 

that the contractor has a satisfactory performance record and a 

record of integrity and business ethics. 

To ensure that these determinations are meaningful, the contracting officer needs to be able to access and review adequate information about the contractor’s performance and integrity. Unfortunately, the system we have today is not capable of doing that. Information about past performance and integrity is scanty, and what 

there is can be scattered across multiple databases. Reports can be 

difficult to find or just plain wrong. 

The government has three main databases that contain information about past performance and integrity: Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS), which contains past performance 
2 

evaluations; Federal Awarding Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS), which contains adverse actions; and the System for Award Management (SAM), which contains suspension and 

debarment information, among other things. Then there is a fourth 

database called Contractor Peformance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS), which is where contracting officers enter in the past 

performance evaluations that are displayed in PPIRS, because neither system can be used to both collect and search this information. 

In 2014, when most Americans are used to navigating systems 

designed to be quick and easy to use, PPIRS and FAPIIS, which 

was built as a module within PPIRS, both look and feel shockingly 

old and clunky. For example, I learned that the back link in 

FAPIIS only seems to work if the user is in Internet Explorer. 

Someone using Chrome is just out of luck. 

During today’s hearing, I plan to demonstrate just how difficult 

they can be to use. I also have questions about the current policies 

we have regarding what information is collected, the way the information is collected, and the way the information is organized. To 

start, FAPIIS has very little information, and most of the information in there is self-reported by contractors with no quality assurance by the government. 

Not surprisingly, there is a great deal of variation in what contractors interpret as to what is their duty to report. In addition, 

these systems are built around the Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS Number), a numerical tracking system which the government has bought the rights to use at substantial cost from Dun 

& Bradstreet. DUNS Numbers, however are not unique identifiers. 

A large contractor can have dozens or more different DUNS Numbers for each subsidiary. 

Lockheed Martin, for example, has more than 80 entries. When 

contracting officers look up the DUNS Number for the contractor 

in the system, they only see the past performance for that specific 

DUNS Number. They do not see anything about the contractor’s 

parent company, if they have one, or subsidiaries. They also cannot 

track a company if it merges or is acquired or simply changes its 

name. 

The system also does not contain information about performance 

on State or local contracts. Since many contractors who perform 

work for the Federal Government also perform similar work for 

States or municipalities, this kind of work can be highly relevant. 

It also appears that the performance reports in the system may not 

fully or accurately reflect a contractor’s performance. Take for example a company called CGI Federal, the contractor primarily responsible for Healthcare.gov. The most recent past performance 

record for CGI Federal’s work on Healthcare.gov is an assessment 

dated June 12, 2013, assessing their performance from June 7, 

2012 to June 6, 2013, on which they were ranked exceptional for 

their performance in every category. As we know, it turned out not 

to be true. 

Another example is British Petroleum (BP). You may recall that 

after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suspended BP and its related subsidiaries from 

obtaining new Federal contracts. Despite the catastrophic disaster 

which caused billions of dollars in damage and subsequent suspen-
3 

sion, there does not appear to be any record of poor past performance in PPIRS for any of the BP entities suspended. 

These issues raise serious technical and procurement policy questions, and because the relevant policies in this area are set by the 

Office of Management and Budget (OMB), I invited OMB’s deputy 

director for management, or her designee, to provide testimony at 

this hearing. I sent the invitation in early February. After I 

learned that no one at OMB could provide testimony during the 

week that hearing was originally planned, I moved the hearing, 

and the Subcommittee again asked if OMB could provide a witness. 

Again, OMB refused. 

I am disappointed by OMB’s apparent lack of interest in improving government contracting and its willful disregard of legitimate 

congressional oversight. On the other hand, I am very pleased to 

welcome Captain Brian Drapp from the U.S. Navy, and Kevin 

Youel Page from the General Services Administration (GSA). I 

thank both witnesses for being here today. I would also thank you 

both for your flexibility with starting a little earlier than we originally planned because of my need to go to the floor for votes and 

debate on an important matter dealing with the military in fact. 

So I am pleased you could come early. And now I will turn it over 

to Senator Johnson for his statement. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would also 

like to welcome the witnesses and thank them for their flexibility. 

I also share your frustration that OMB is not showing up to give 

us their insight and their testimony. Obviously, performance tracking in procurement makes all the sense in the world. But it is also 

a very difficult task. I know in private business we do it all the 

time, and we are talking about companies with millions of dollars 

worth of sales and millions of dollars worth of contracts, and now 

we are talking about a performance tracking system in a Federal 

Government entity that spends $3.5 trillion. So this is an enormously difficult task. 

From my standpoint, the most important thing is to get the current system operating as effectively and efficiently as possible and 

as accurately as possible. Unless the information is accurate, unless it is transparent, you will not be fair to the supplier base and 

it will not be usable to the government. It is just simply not going 

to work. 

I appreciate the testimony. My suggestion is before we try and 

add any more requirements—which is generally government’s tendency if something is not working, let’s add more layers of additional 

information that we are going to request—I would really suggest 

we concentrate on getting the systems that are up in place right 

now operating correctly, providing accurate information, transparent information, before we start biting off even more than we 

can chew. 

So again, I think this is a very good hearing. Appreciate your 

dedication to getting to the bottom of this. Just understand, it is 

a pretty enormous task for working with small businesses. It is 

even a more enormous task for a large Federal Government trying 
4 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Drapp appears in the Appendix on page 23. 

to get their arms around these types of procurement tracking information systems. 

Thank you. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Thank you. Let me introduce the witnesses. 

Captain Brian Drapp is the commanding officer of the United 

States Navy Supply Corp, Naval Sea Logistics Center. He received 

his Navy commission from Officer Candidate School in 1987, following graduation from the University of South Florida. He is also 

a designated Joint Service Officer. 

And Kevin Youel Page is an assistant commissioner of the General Service Administration, Integrated Award Environment (IAE). 

In this role, he leads the ongoing maintenance, operation, development, and governance of mandatory Federal wide shared services 

in the IAE. Mr. Youel Page previously served at the Department 

of the Treasury as deputy director of Office of Procurement Executive. 

I would like you both to know how much I appreciate you for 

being here and your service and for appearing today, especially 

with your flexibility. It is the custom of this Subcommittee to swear 

in all witnesses, so if you would not mind standing and taking the 

following oath. 

Do you swear that the testimony that you will give before this 

Subcommittee will be the truth and the whole truth so help you, 

God? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I do. 

Captain DRAPP. I do. 

Senator MCCASKILL. We will use the timing system today. We 

would ask you if you could hold your oral testimony to around 5 

minutes. We are not picky about that, but about 5 minutes. And 

then obviously, we will take all of your written testimony for the 

record. Captain Drapp. 

TESTIMONY OF CAPTAIN BRIAN T. DRAPP,1 SUPPLY CORPS, 

UNITED STATES NAVY, COMMANDING OFFICER, NAVAL SEA 

LOGISTICS CENTER 

Captain DRAPP. Thank you. Senator McCaskill, Ranking Member 

Johnson, and distinguished Members of the Committee, good morning, and thank you for holding this hearing and affording me the 

opportunity to testify about the contractor past performance database systems that my command operates. I am honored to be here. 

I am Captain Brian T. Drapp, Supply Corps, United States Navy, 

Commanding Officer of the Naval Sea Logistics Center, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. My command is a shore-based activity that 

administratively reports to Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Keyport, a field activity of Naval Undersea Warfare Center 

headquarters that reports to Naval Sea Systems Command. 

I understand the Navy’s Legislative Affairs Office has provided 

a copy of my written statement to the Committee and respectfully 

request that it be entered into the record. 

Senator MCCASKILL. It will. Thank you. 

Captain DRAPP. Yes, ma’am. One element of my command’s mission is to serve as the Naval Sea Systems Command technical 
5 

agent for maintaining life cycle logistics data systems. This includes the oversight, management of database operations, 

sustainment, configuration, customer support, and training for 

three systems, as the chairman previously talked about, first, Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System, Past Performance Information Retrieval System, and finally, third, the Federal 

Awarding Performance and Integrity Information System. 

Although Naval Sea Logistics Center is a Navy command, our 

functions in operating and maintaining contractor past performance databases are at the direction of our two program resources 

sponsors, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, and the General Services Administration, Integrated Award Environment. 

In our role as operator and maintainer of these systems, my prepared witness statement for the record addresses one, how the Federal Government collects, manages, and uses information about 

contractor performance and integrity; two, how the performance 

systems and FAPIIS have been implemented and used; and finally, 

third, how the past performance systems work together along with 

upcoming improvements that will be implemented. 

A key responsibility of the Naval Sea Logistics Center’s team 

sustaining these systems is to properly maintain the hardware and 

software and to upgrade them based on requirements provided by 

the Integrated Award Environment and the Configuration Change 

Board chaired by the General Services Administration represented 

by over 25 Federal agencies. Additionally, Naval Sea Logistics Center provides training on the use of these performance and integrity 

information systems to military and Federal acquisition officials, 

their support staffs, and Federal contractors. 

We also provide helpdesk support to customers daily via phone 

calls and e-mails, the majority of which are answered the same 

day. In terms of database systems reliability, CPARS, PPIRS and 

FAPIIS, are accessible to customers 99 percent of the time, with 

announced outages related to routine and required maintenance accounting for the remaining 1 percent. 

Please be assured the Naval Sea Logistics Center is committed 

to the readiness of our systems, the needs of our thousands of customers, and moreover, to provide a means to strengthen communications and processes between contractors and acquisition officials and to enhance the government oversight and the contracting 

source selection process. 

Senator McCaskill, Ranking Member Johnson, and distinguished 

Members of the Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss 

the contractor performance and integrity systems the Naval Sea 

Logistics Center operates and maintains. I will be happy to answer 

any questions you may have. Again, thank you for this opportunity 

to testify. 
6 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Youel Page appears in the Appendix on page 29. 

TESTIMONY OF KEVIN YOUEL PAGE,1 ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, INTEGRATED AWARD ENVIRONMENT, UNITED 

STATES GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. Good morning, Chairman McCaskill, Ranking 

Member Johnson, and the distinguished Members of the Committee. My name is Kevin Youel Page. I have been the Assistant 

Commissioner for the General Services Integrated Award Environment since July 2013. I am responsible for, among other things, the 

Federal Government’s shared past performance systems, and I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today to discuss GSA’s role 

in managing Federal contractor past performance systems and information. 

Contractor past performance systems are part of a broader Integrated Award Environment which was created under the E-government Act of 2002 to streamline and unify the Federal award process for government and nongovernmental participants in the loans, 

grants, and contracting communities. IAE’s main goal is to evolve 

the existing shared portfolio of 10 systems into a user-centric open 

source secure common services platform that will improve operations for those who award and administer grants, loans, and contracts. 

We undertake this work in concert with the Office of Federal 

Procurement Policy (OFPP) and the interagency governance bodies, 

the Award Committee for E-government. This governmentwide collaboration enables us to save money, be more efficient, reduce the 

burden on the communities we serve, and provide more transparent Federal award information to continuously monitor and improve Federal award management. 

GSA serves as the executive agent for the management of all 10 

governmentwide award systems, three of which are contractor past 

performance information systems operated by the United States 

Navy. The three systems, as mentioned, are PPIRS, CPARS, and 

FAPIIS. 

Because PPIRS and CPARS were initially developed and operated by the Navy, GSA, with its Federal governance, chose to leverage the Navy’s expertise in asking the Navy to continue to operate 

all past performance systems governmentwide. Prior to 2002, agencies maintained their own systems to track past performance. This 

was duplicative, inefficient, and gave agency contracting officers no 

ability to ensure they had a comprehensive or a consistent view of 

a contractor’s past performance. 

In 2002, PPIRS was established as the enterprise application to 

allow source selection officials to retrieve contractor performance. 

Once a single retrieval point was established, our efforts turned to 

consolidating systems to input past performance information. Before 2010, agencies used nine separate input systems, each with its 

own contractor rating criteria, making the comparison of past performance information and data challenging. 

In 2010, CPARS was made the governmentwide system for 

inputting the contractor past performance information into PPIRS, 

so consolidating to a single input and a single retrieval system has 

represented a major improvement over that period of time. During 
7 

this improvement, the Duncan-Hunter National Defense Authorization Act of 2002 mandated the creation of a new system, FAPIIS, 

to display information regarding the integrity and performance of 

certain entities awarded Federal contracts and grants. In order to 

reduce the cost of this new system, and to reduce the burden on 

our government users, FAPIIS was integrated into our existing systems. 

FAPIIS was deployed in March 2010. It displays criminal convictions, certain civil judgments and administrative findings of fault, 

certain compromises or agreements that settle civil, criminal or administrative proceedings, ineligibility due to suspension or debarment, administrative agreements issued in lieu of suspension or debarment, non-responsibility determinations, contracts and grants 

terminated for default, defective pricing determinations, and past 

performance evaluations. 

The publicly accessible component of FAPIIS was deployed in 

April 2011, and it includes all of the above information except past 

performance evaluations, which are source selection sensitive information. Going forward, GSA and the Navy are committed and are 

working with the award community to make further enhancements 

to the collection and display of contractor performance information. 

These enhancements will further reduce the number of systems, 

improve user experience, add search features, and create the capability for users to run more reports that meet their user needs. 

Chairman McCaskill, Ranking Member Johnson, and the members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss 

IAE’s contractor performance systems. I am happy to answer any 

questions you may have for me at this time. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Well, first, let me say, the reason we are 

having this hearing today is because I think that this is an area 

that continues to need a lot of oversight. But I do not want you to 

think I do not recognize that there has been some progress. But we 

still have a system where we have three databases with contractor 

performance information: PPIRS, FAPIIS and SAM. 

I understand that FAPIIS pulls suspension and debarment from 

SAM but not all the details, so contracting officers still have to use 

all three databases. Isn’t that correct? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. Yes, Senator. If they wanted the full information on the background of a suspension and debarment, that information is in SAM. But it is true that it is displayed in FAPIIS to 

enable that further research, if needed. 

Senator MCCASKILL. And so now we are integrating it, so this 

will be in fact a one-stop shop. 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. Yes, ma’am. 

Senator MCCASKILL. And when do you think this integration will 

be complete? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. We are working on a series of incremental developments to do small and agile development across the 10 platforms. We have scheduled the entire environment to be put into a 

more user-centric format by the fiscal year (FY) 2018, but with 

phased improvements between now and then in some increments, 

beginning with some of the work in FedBizOps (FBO) and making 

our Federal opportunities available to small companies. 
8 

Senator MCCASKILL. Is there anything you need to make that go 

faster that we could help you with? I was told at the hearing in 

2009 that the process of integrating PPIRS would be done by 2013, 

at that hearing, and clearly that has not happened. So what I am 

worried about is that we are not really talking about 2018; that we 

are really talking about a long way away, when both of you will 

be probably in different assignments, I am willing to bet. 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. Your question is, is there anything that you 

could provide or help to make this go faster. I think that we have 

been working very diligently with the administrator to make sure 

that the resources are available to keep to this plan. We have, of 

course, suffered our own missteps along the way of creating this Integrated Award Environment and we are working diligently to 

learn those lessons and move forward using the new 21st Century 

architectural principles and the right kind of development approaches to minimize risk and to continue developing these systems the way we all want them to be developed and expect them 

to be developed. 

Senator MCCASKILL. In 2009, Vivek Kundra, the Federal chief information officer and the administrator for Electronic Government 

and Information Technology at OMB, said the following, ‘‘Part one 

of this contract, what GSA is asking, is to make sure that there is 

requirements gathering, there is a broad array of people that are 

consulted ahead of time, that there is actually profiles created on 

the different types of users.’’ 

It sounds like we are still stuck there 4 years later. Is that accurate? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I think we are looking at the profiles of individual users and we are attempting to use that user-centric design 

technique to put ourselves very much in the shoes of an end user, 

whether it is a Senate staffer, a contractor, or a small grantee operating out of a university, to understand how they are going to experience the system and make the best use of their role in the system. 

So we have developed profiles and are continuing that process 

and are beginning, now that we have finished the work, stabilizing 

the system for award management to use these profiles to tackle 

different aspects of functionality across the Integrated Award Environment. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I want to talk a little bit why FAPIIS has 

so little information. My staff reviewed FAPIIS and found around 

1,500 government-entered records and about 650 vendor-entered 

records. Considering that we have thousands of Federal contractors 

and the amount of data going into PPIRS since 2011, this is nothing. 

Now, it is my understanding this problem is caused by the fact 

that all the past performance evaluations in PPIRS are labeled 

source selection sensitive, and therefore, not transferred to FAPIIS. 

Is that right? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. To the public version of FAPIIS, the individual 

contracting performance assessment reports are not available to 

the public because they are source selection sensitive. But the 

other eight categories of administrative agreement and adverse action are available to the public through FAPIIS. 
9 

Senator MCCASKILL. So are past performance evaluations available to the public or are they source selection sensitive? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. The evaluations that are completed in CPARS 

by contracting officers are not available to the public. They are 

deemed to be source selection sensitive information. 

Senator MCCASKILL. And who deemed that? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. That is how I understand the law to be written 

and how I understand the regulation to have been implemented. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. So you think that is statutory language 

that is dictating that? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I believe so, yes, ma’am. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. Let’s look at this source selection sensitive limitation and what seems to be an arbitrary length for protection, which is 3 years. Let’s look at it on a case-by-case basis. 

Is it decided on a case-by-case basis? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I am sorry. Is what decided? 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. All the evaluations in PPIRS, the performance evaluations, if it is source selection sensitive, OK, is that 

true for all the evaluations in PPIRS, that they are deemed source 

selection sensitive? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. All of the CPARS records are deemed source 

selection sensitive. All of the records entered by contracting officers 

related to performance on government contracts that they manage 

and oversee are considered source selection sensitive. The information on administrative agreements and other determinations for default, that information is public and is not deemed source selection 

sensitive. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I am looking at my notes here and it says 

that the rule for the time period that you protect this information 

as source sensitive says at least 3 years. So what is being done in 

terms of how long it is protected? Is it protected for 3 years, or is 

it decided on a case-by-case basis? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I am sorry. I believe that this is a question of 

how long a past performance record is relevant. I think that the 

policy is that 3 years is considered the period of relevance. These 

records are maintained for 5 years in the system, are archived 

afterwards. They are considered Federal records. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. So they are archived, but I am asking 

how long the source selection sensitive limitation stays in place. 

Three years? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I am not certain of the answer to that. I believe 

it is indefinite, but I would have to get back to you with a concrete 

answer. 

Senator MCCASKILL. It is hard for me to imagine that the vast 

majority of the past performance evaluations are even the slightest 

bit sensitive. It seems to me that it is not in the interest of transparency to put evaluations behind a veil because we are not maybe 

sorting out the very few that might have some sensitive information. 

I know it is simpler, but I think it is something we need to take 

a look at—and we will take a look at it because I know it is rulebased—and figure out how we could put more transparency into 

this source selection sensitive limitation. 
10 

OK. I would like now to actually take a look, all of us together, 

how the databases actually work. The first issue actually arises before you even get to either PPIRS or FAPIIS. When you navigate 

to either PPIRS or FAPIIS, you get an ominous security certificate 

warning. Now, I think most contracting officers know to click continue despite the warning, but I am curious why there would be 

a security certificate warning for two official government databases. 

Anybody know? 

Captain DRAPP. I do not have an answer for that. We will have 

to take that for action, ma’am. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. I think it is troubling. There are lots 

of places that I think security warnings are appropriate, but I 

think we need to track down why we are getting a security warning for these particular databases that are run by the U.S. Government. So let’s take a look at that. 

I would also love to talk about why OFPP just issued a rule that 

said for the few things FAPIIS is allowed to display, namely just 

adverse actions, that it would only be allowed to include information from when it went live in April 2011. I wish we could have 

a discussion about whether or not we should change that rule to 

include information before April 2011. 

OFPP declined to send anyone to this hearing, so I don’t have an 

opportunity to ask them, but I will followup with OMB to figure 

out why they are doing that. I do have questions about suspensions 

and debarments. We are going to search for a company that we 

know has an exclusion in SAM, and that is a B&J corporation. 

With this DUNS Number, we see that FAPIIS shows suspension 

debarment information for this company pulled from SAM. When 

we click on the link within FAPIIS to see suspensions and 

debarments from SAM, we see the two debarments pulled from 

SAM but no information on exclusion type or description of the exclusion, only the date of the exclusion. 

So in order to see more, a contracting officer would then have to 

go into SAM and search again by the DUNS Number. In SAM, you 

see the two debarments, and if you click into them, you see a lot 

more detail in SAM than in the FAPIIS entry that supposedly 

pulled that information from SAM. 

Why does FAPIIS not include all the suspension and debarment 

details from SAM? Why is there a requirement that you only get 

cursory information and then you have to go into SAM specifically 

to get more detail? 

Captain DRAPP. I do not have an answer for you. We will have 

to get back to you on that, ma’am. 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I guess I will try to answer this way. We certainly could bring more information in from SAM. As a practical 

matter, a source selection official who identifies a company as 

being suspended or debarred may be curious as to deeper reasons 

why that is the case. But most will, at least in my experience, act 

fairly immediately to cease considering that company for further 

consideration for award without—they may search the system to 

confirm that this is accurate, contact their own policy and suspension and debarment officials to ensure that they are making a 
11 

1The Assessement Report appears in the Appendix on page 50. 

proper decision, but they will not in general need much more than 

to know that this is a suspended or debarred firm. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Well, what would be helpful for us to know, 

the Committee to understand, is that if this decision is being made, 

for the reasons that you indicate, Mr. Youel Page, and that is efficiency, then all somebody needs to know, that there is a suspension 

or a debarment, then that would be good news. But it appears that 

it is just clunky interface. 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. It is something if we were—I have not heard 

the feedback that this is something that is of great concern to the 

contracting officers, but it is certainly something if we were hearing it through our change control board, through our interagency 

governance that it was something they wanted more in the system. 

It would be something that we would put on our list for incremental improvement over time. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. Now I want to illustrate a basic difficulty with searching for a contractor’s information. Because there 

are so many Federal contractors, many of which have similar 

names, my understanding is that the Data Universal Numbering 

System—or DUNS Numbers—are the way that we accurately 

search for the entity one is looking for. 

The problem with that is contractors have different DUNS Numbers for different parts of their organizations and the DUNS system does not illustrate in any way the relationship between a parent company and a subsidiary; therefore, the result is that FAPIIS 

does not track contractors as a whole organization, and contracting 

officials miss important information about the big picture. 

If a contracting officer were to do a name search in an effort not 

to miss the big picture, it can render the system nearly impossible 

to navigate. I want to illustrate how problematic this is with a common example—Lockheed Martin. If we search for Lockheed Martin 

by name in an effort to get a big picture sense of the company’s 

past performance, instead of a particular subsidiary, we get a list 

of over 80 entries. 

We prepared a marked-up handbook that illustrates for you what 

the screen is showing when we search for Lockheed Martin.1 As 

you can see, it is riddled with confusing names, some of which with 

bad typos. Each group of the same color arrows illustrates a variation on the same name, and some of them can be quite silly. 

For instance, we have Lockheed Martin Corporation, which apparently is different from Lockheed Martin Corp, without a period; 

Lockheed Martin Corp., with a period; Lockheed Martin Corporation; Lockheed Mar. I think you get the idea. We also have Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, without a comma; Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, with a comma; and another identically 

named Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, but the two have different DUNS Numbers so they are listed separately. And one has 

346 evaluations under it and the other one with the exact same 

name, right down to the comma at the end, only has one evaluation 

under it. 

I realize these might not be all the Lockheed Martin, or even related to it, but most of them are. The point is if you have a DUNS 
12 

Number for one small part of Lockheed, you are missing all the 

other subsidiaries and parent corporations which could shed light 

on the corporation’s behavior. But if you do not have a DUNS 

Number and try to search by name, this is what you have to deal 

with. 

I am not sure how the contracting officer is supposed to handle 

this. Can you give me some reaction to this? How can we fix this? 

And I am a little worried that we are captured by the DUNS Numbers since we do not even own them. We are paying a bunch of 

money for them. Has there been any thought or any effort to making this a little bit more accurate as to subsidiaries in like names 

and DUNS Numbers? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. Senator, yes, indeed. And you are very much 

focused in this question on something that we are well aware of 

and share your concern. Some of the nuance behind the reason we 

are here has to do with PPIRS being a collection point for historically a number of different entry points, and so there are data 

standards, mismatches between those legacy systems and what is 

in PPIRS. 

It is a known problem that we are seriously trying to grapple 

with as we consolidate the systems and do a better job as a Federal 

Government managing data standards more broadly across the acquisition world. 

We do have efforts in place. There is a Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) case that is moving forward to establish the CAGE 

Code, the Department of Defense (DOD) CAGE Code, as a mechanism for doing a better job of capturing the parent/child relationship among entities in the system, and so that is one effort underway to do a better job to address the entity management problem. 

And we have been looking and continuing to scan the environment 

for other ways beyond Dun & Bradstreet and DUNS Numbers to 

manage entity management, things like, for example, the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) being pursued by the G–8 and the G–20, and 

some of our—I believe the Federal Reserve is managing that on behalf of U.S. Government. 

So this is a byproduct of years of going it separately that we need 

to do the hard work on data standards and management and migration to improve, and is in fact on our path. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Well that is good, because I think some of 

this is—I know there is a hesitation to give up all the legacy information. But at some point in time, you have to pull the band-aid 

off and begin a system that makes more sense. Because you could 

not expect a contracting officer to navigate something like this and 

get accurate information; it is just impossible. 

Let me also talk about the evaluations. When there are hundreds 

of evaluations, I think it is almost impossible to draw conclusions 

from them. It makes it very difficult, I think, for a contracting officer, especially if you cannot view all the information that is contained in them. 

Have there been discussions about aggregating the ratings and 

the evaluations? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. Yes, ma’am. We have been in discussions with 

OMB and with the interagency community on what it would take 

to do that, and a step precedent to being able to aggregate is to 
13 

get to common standards for definitions of past performance so that 

we are in common definitions as to what a rating means. 

And we are very far along in managing that problem, and so I 

think we are closer to being able to do better analytics on the large 

numbers of past performance reports in the system, and to do different kinds of analytics. Because this is a nuanced problem. On 

the one hand, we do want to see every relevant piece of past performance for parent/child/sibling part of the entity. On the other 

hand, the CO may judge that some of that past performance is 

more relevant and wish to narrow down their search on relevant 

parts rather than parts that may not be as relevant. 

A large company like the one you have brought forward here by 

necessity has operating units that operate quite independently and 

certainly with different staff, different past performance histories, 

and we would not necessarily want to lose the opportunity to do 

business with the greatest vendor on earth in one area because 

they happen not to be as responsive in another area. 

So it is a nuance and complicated decisionmaking process for the 

CO, and the system, we agree, needs to do a better job enabling 

the kind of analytics that would enable that sophisticated decision—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. It seems a numerical analytic would make 

more sense in terms of being able to aggregate accurate information, the satisfactory and—I think that makes it much harder. We 

will continue to followup on that, but I am glad that you are addressing that, because I think it really is a problem. 

It appears that the CGI Group—which this is a really big-time 

public failure, the contract with CGI for Healthcare.gov. I do not 

know that we have had a bigger one that got more attention, that 

more people understood that it was a complete failure. It appears 

that CGI Group purchased a company called American Management Systems (AMS) that had a number of pretty high contracting 

failures, some on the State level that resulted in millions in penalties and widely reported failure on the Federal level for the Thrift 

Savings Plan (TSP), the retirement savings plan for Federal employees. 

CGI Group then renamed AMS to CGI Federal. And as we all 

know, the newly renamed CGI Federal, which was still made up 

of the AMS management and employees, won the contract for 

Healthcare.gov together. It seems that the CMS contracting officers 

in this case may not have realized that CGI Federal, which has a 

clean past performance record under its new name, was essentially 

the same company of the not so clean former AMS, which illustrates a major problem in our contracting process. 

Are there any safeguards in place? Can you recommend safeguards that should be put in place for a situation like this where 

we have an acquisition and a name change? Sometimes it is just 

as simple as a name change. And negative performance information that would have been vital in this situation was never even 

obtained or known about. 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. We do. Through the System for Award Management, I have information from Dun & Bradstreet that helps us 

understand the nature of relationships between novated companies, 

parent and child companies, and so I believe there are ways that 
14 

we could use that information that we currently have rights to do 

a better job in managing that kind of business problem. 

But I say that with some trepidation. The whole issue of corporate control and governances is very complicated. It was not in 

this case, but it can be very complicated and difficult to manage 

for all companies trying to grapple with the question of what is an 

entity, when is an entity substantially the same as an entity last 

year. These become, again, difficult. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Shouldn’t there be some kind of trigger 

when you have a company that is new? I would think if we were 

CGI Federal is a relatively—I mean, this was clearly not something 

that had been around for decades. This is something that had happened. 

The AMS failure with the Federal Thrift Savings Plan is still all 

over the web, if you search it, and it resulted in a Senate hearing. 

But the past performance database-PPIRS—does not contain a single record of it. Now, I assume that is because it happened back 

in the late 1990s and early part of this decade. Is that—— 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I am not sure I could answer that question. I 

am sorry, Senator. I do not know the specifics of this case or the 

record that we are talking about. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Well, it is a great example of where the 

databases are not serving the contracting officers as effectively as 

they need to. I guarantee you; everybody at CMS who made that 

contracting decision would have loved to have known this before 

they did. It might have avoided a huge black eye for this administration and for the healthcare reform program. 

Another issue is assessing the self-reported information from contractors. FAPIIS pulls self-reported information from SAM. For example, Honeywell self-reported that it answered yes to both questions about contracts and at-fault proceedings below, but the only 

answer is yes. And there is no information about these proceedings. 

The yes answer to such a question is pretty useless on its own. We 

need to be able to access the details of these proceedings. 

Have you considered changes to require additional audits or 

oversight of contractors reporting into the database? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I am sorry. I am watching the website trying 

to understand why the administrative agreement is not contained 

in the record. It ought to be. Is the suggestion that there is no detailed information in this record? 

Senator MCCASKILL. Correct. There is no information about the 

proceedings; they just answered yes. And I guess the issue here, 

Mr. Youel Page, is that we are relying on the contractors to selfreport, but I do not think we are ever going back and checking—— 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. That they are reporting. 

Senator MCCASKILL. That they are reporting accurately, completely, or if they are reporting at all. 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. My understanding is that to the extent that 

they are reporting, the self-reporting is happening through their 

certifications and representations in SAM. My understanding is 

that when those two questions are answered in the affirmative, 

yes, I have a contract of this value, and yes, I have a proceeding, 

that the system will require an upload of a copy of some information related to that proceeding, and that is contained and available. 
15 

So I will look into this case where that apparently is not the 

case. But my understanding has been that this is—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. If you would followup, because my understanding is that based on the research that my staff has done, that 

this is not always occurring. And the question is what mechanism 

is there to check when it is not occurring? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. No, it is a very fair question and I will look 

into that. I believe there is a check and we will make sure the 

check is working the way it is supposed to. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. My staff has also found several technical issues with FAPIIS, including issues as simple as the back 

button not working. In FAPIIS, both the public website and the 

module within PPIRS, the back link to go back to search results 

only works in Internet Explorer but not in any other browser. 

Is there any work being done to ensure that people have the ability, regardless of what browser you are using, to utilize the back 

link, something pretty basic in 2014? 

Captain DRAPP. I will look into that. I am not aware of that, 

ma’am. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. If we do a search for past performance 

in PPIRS and then want to see the adverse actions in FAPIIS for 

the same company DUNS Number, you have to switch applications. 

It is now not possible to be signed into both PPIRS and FAPIIS 

module at the same time. Now, while it is not difficult to switch 

from PPIRS to FAPIIS and vice versa, what happens when you 

switch is that you lose whatever search you were doing in the database you switched from. 

You follow me? 

Captain DRAPP. Yes, ma’am. 

Senator MCCASKILL. So in addition to whatever technical 

glitches, is these little things that make a contractor officer’s job 

more difficult and can easily lead to overlooking information. I do 

not think it is unreasonable to expect these databases to not have 

these technical blocks that make it much more difficult to do this 

basic research. 

And if you could, Captain Drapp, if you could followup about 

those technical issues that we discovered in trying to utilize these 

databases in an effective way. 

Captain Drapp. Yes, ma’am. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Right now contractors are self-reporting 

whether they have been subject to any criminal, civil or administrative procedure in connection with a Federal award that has resulted in a finding of fault. Shouldn’t the contractors report their 

involvement in any litigation, or should we just limit it to those 

where they had resulted in a finding of fault? 

My concern is that a contractor could settle a lawsuit without admitting fault. And by the way, that is more common than anything 

else, that there is a settlement of a lawsuit and the reason that the 

company settles is because they are worried that they are going to 

be found at fault. 

There is no motivation to settle unless you got liability. So a settlement always means that there is some liability on the part of 

the company. In some instances, it may be they want to settle to 

avoid legal costs. I get that. But typically, those are de minimis 
16 

cases because, you do not want to settle for legal costs—if it is a 

de minimis settlement then it would be just for legal costs. 

But if I were a contractor, I would seek to make sure that happens so as not to impact any future business I did with the U.S. 

Government. That would be a motivation to settle, because if I settle and do not admit fault, I never have to report it. So is it not 

a good idea at least to ask the contractors to delineate litigation 

that they have been involved in and then if the contracting officer 

has other things that they are asking questions about, it gives 

them the ability to inquire? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. It is an excellent question. It is a very deeply 

policy-weighted question and I think there are probably great arguments on the pro and the con side of that question that I am not 

sure I am the right person or well-equipped to give to you right 

now, Senator McCaskill, but I do think it is a good question. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I understand that there could be some arguments that you want to—it is not fair to the companies, that they 

have to report all of this, because there could be a frivolous lawsuit 

and settled for a minimal amount, but they always have the ability 

to report that. It is not as if they cannot explain it, if that is in 

fact the case. 

So I would love to debate someone who—because I am sitting on 

the side that I want the government to have as much information 

as possible, because I do not want the government to be spending 

public money with a company that it should not be spending public 

money with. So if it is a close argument, then they should lose, because the government is the one that is giving them money to perform a service or to provide products, and we have the right as the 

customer to demand certain standards. And if they do not want to 

have those standards, then they are not required to do business 

with us. Nobody is putting a gun to the head of these contractors 

and saying you must do business with the Federal Government. 

So if it is a close argument, I think this one should go to the government for more information, and I would appreciate if you would 

followup and see what would be the objections to, and by the way, 

if you get the cite of the case in this day and age, all you would 

have to do is get the pleading and the court filing and in about 2 

seconds you can look up the lawsuit. You can look up what the 

facts of the lawsuit were. You can look up the pleading. You can 

learn whether or not this on its face is something that would cause 

us concern or whether on its face it is something that we do not 

need to bother with. 

And maybe this is not the kind of deep research that would need 

to be done on every contract, but it certainly would be done on 

some, especially those that are of high security matters that we 

have contracts with all the time. 

What are the obstacles to requiring contractors to report labor or 

human rights violations? If there is a labor violation that they have 

had or a human rights violation they have had, is there any mechanism now that requires them to report that? And are there obstacles to that? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. It is my understanding right now that the regulation is set so that the self-reporting is self-reporting of these administrative matters in relation to a Federal contract. So I think 
17 

at the moment the regulation is set in such a way that other violations or other civil actions not in conjunction with a Federal contract are not required to be reported. 

Senator MCCASKILL. So what we would probably have to do is 

have the FAR clarify that business integrity would include compliance with labor and other human rights laws such as those regarding trafficking? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I believe that I would answer that, yes. 

Senator MCCASKILL. It is currently not defined, business integrity. Although it is mentioned many times in FAR, we cannot find 

a definition for it. 

OK. We have spent some time talking about how we can make 

the databases work better, but as they are working now, I have 

some concerns as to whether they are informing contractor officers 

the way they should be. For example, although CMS has decided 

not to renew CGI Federal’s work on Healthcare.gov and has instead given it to Accenture, CMS has nevertheless given CGI Federal additional work on other projects. 

Is there a policy in place that there is some kind of warning that 

goes out across the system? I mean, what worries me is that someplace else in the Federal Government they would be contracting 

with this company after this massive failure to provide a basic 

website that worked on a very important date. 

I mean, what happens if a contractor overlooks relevant past performances, contracting officer? Is there something built in that 

there is some kind of disciplinary action or does anybody even notice? Is there some kind of oversight in that regard that you can 

speak to, either one of you? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I can say for certain that contracting officers 

are required to look at FAPIIS and at PPIRS before they make an 

award. They are required to look and do an evaluation of past performance on any purchase over the micro purchase threshold. So 

each CO has to engage—each source selection official engages in 

that analysis under their own management structures and oversight and quality assurance. 

And it is our job to make sure that the system, as we have been 

talking about today, gives them raw material to work with to help 

them form their opinion about past performance as part of an overall source selection decision, as one component of the source selection decision, in order, exactly as you pointed out, to mitigate the 

risks to government of entering into business with a vendor that 

is not capable or less capable of doing the work and perhaps should 

be not considered for that work. 

Senator MCCASKILL. It just worries me that they overlook it and 

then there is nothing that happens. That is my biggest concern. 

I am almost to the end here. Another problem with assessing 

past performance is the information contained in them does not always reflect the contractor’s performance. For example, the most 

recent past performance for CGI Federal’s work on Healthcare.gov 

is an assessment dated June 12, 2013, because it was an annual 

for the previous year. They were ranked exceptional for their performance in every category. 

As we pulled up on the screen, and you can see, this was a period 

of time during which the Administration was acknowledging that 
18 

there would be issues with the rollout. As early as March 2013, 

Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer at CMS, said at an insurance industry meeting that he was ‘‘Pretty nervous,’’ about the 

exchanges being ready October 1, and adding, ‘‘Let’s just make sure 

it is not a Third World experience.’’ 

And on June 19, 2013, GAO said the health insurance exchanges 

might not open on time because they had missed deadlines and 

were behind schedule, including on testing the system. But on the 

PPIRS assessment dated a week before, CGI was not just ranked 

as OK on their contract but ranked exceptional in every category. 

Another example is BP. You might recall after Deepwater, the 

EPA suspended BP and its related subsidiaries from obtaining new 

contracts, a suspension that BP and the British Government are 

actively fighting. Despite the catastrophic disaster which caused 

billions of dollars in damage, there doesn’t appear to be any record 

of poor past performance in PPIRS for any of the BP entities suspended. My staff did a search for every single DUNS Number that 

is listed as a suspended BP entity in SAM and in PPIRS. Only 

pulled up a handful of past performance evaluations that BP did 

overseas for the U.S. Government and all the evaluations were 

rated satisfactory or higher. 

It is weird to me that a contracting officer using a non-public 

database would have less complete information about a contractor’s 

performance than somebody who just googled them. What can we 

do to ensure that past performance reports actually include negative information? It is like there is this thing out there—and I 

found this with contracting oversight that I have been working on 

now for 7 years. There is such a reluctance of people evaluating 

these contractors putting negative information down. I mean, I can 

tell you horror stories—and you are probably aware of them—of the 

contracting and contingencies overseas where we not only were giving them excellent ratings when they were ripping us off and doing 

substandard work, we were giving them performance bonuses for 

doing great work at the same time they were electrocuting our soldiers in showers because they had wired them faulty. 

So what can we do about getting negative information that is accurate that is available to anybody if they just do a web search of 

the company included in PPIRS? What steps need to be taken? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I think we have been in receipt of several 

memos from OMB asking the Federal agencies to take a very close 

look at how they’re managing past performance records, whether 

they are doing factual and accurate assessments on an annual 

basis as they are required to do. They have been promoting fuller 

compliance with evaluating each of the contracts required to be 

evaluated so that the information could be in the system, and I 

think they have been working on aspects of the training of the acquisition community as to how to do a better job evaluating past 

performance and doing it in a more comprehensive and fact-based 

way. 

At the end of the day, this entire system is made up of people, 

processes, policies, and technology, and each of them need to be 

doing their part to make the entire system evolve and get to those 

better answers. 
19 

Senator MCCASKILL. It is really a hard question to answer, and 

I know it is. I guess what I wonder about, are the contracting officers, or more importantly, the contract evaluators, are they given 

enough training about—I mean, first of all, if there is negative information that comes up, you should not wait a year. CGI Federal 

should have had entries on October 1st in PPIRS. Major screw up. 

That is probably all you need to put in there. 

But it is almost like if a contracting evaluation gives negative information, they know they are going to get blowback from the contractor, right? And it is just easier not to. I mean, that is part of 

my sense of this is that, you do not want to fight the battle that 

if you put negative information down that there is—we are going 

to sue you or that is not true or you are not being fair. 

I think it is true throughout the Federal Government frankly. 

We let things slide because it is just too hard to fight it. And I 

think in this area, past performance, that is what is going on. I 

mean the notion that there is not negative information about CGI 

Federal or the subsidiaries of BP in PPIRS is embarrassing, that 

we’re responsible for that. And I would love someone—and I do not 

know who was in charge of doing this, but someone needs to find 

out why that stuff has not been entered. Is it because it is not on 

an annual basis and that is the only time you do it? 

Anybody? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. They are required to do it on an annual basis 

or at the end of the contract performance. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Are they allowed to do it midstream? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. Yes. 

Senator MCCASKILL. They can do it at any time? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. That is right. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. Well, somebody needs to ask some 

tough questions about why this is not occurring, because it is clearly not, and I think there are a lot of contractors that are skating 

by on substandard performances that are not getting noted because 

it is just easier to say satisfactory than it is to give them negative 

information knowing that that is now going to be a contentious situation. 

It is the same thing with evaluating employees, the saying in the 

Federal Government that it is hard to get a job there, but once you 

do, do not worry, which is not fair to most Federal employees because they are terrific and they work hard and they are dedicated 

and they make less money than they would in the private sector. 

But there are from time to time problem employees, and it is 

very difficult sometimes to remove them because it has not been 

documented. And this is a kissing cousin of the same problem, that 

it is just easier to let it slide. 

So if you have some sense that you need to improve reporting 

into CPARS and PPIRS, which I know you do, are you implementing programs to improve the quality and frequency of reporting? Are there actually programs that are in place that are doing 

that? And I know PPIRS is not 100 percent yet. Where are you at 

reporting and how do you feel about the quality and frequency in 

terms of improvement? Do you really feel like you have turned a 

corner or do you still see that there are other programs that we can 

implement that would make it even better? 
20 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. For our part on the system side, we have been 

working with the community to give them management reports 

that would help them identify areas where they need to improve 

their compliance with the past performance requirements. I think 

that OMB has been focused on this issue in a couple of memos that 

they have issued. And I know just in past roles where I have been 

responsible for ensuring compliance with the FAR that it is an 

issue taken seriously and it is on report cards and performance 

evaluations, at least in places I have worked. 

I can’t say that is happening throughout the Federal Government, but I suspect it is. And so I think that there are known improvements that are underway in terms of getting the quality and 

the time limits of reports up, and no doubt miles to go. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Has there been any discussion about trying 

to include contracting at the State or local level, or is that just a 

bridge too far at this point with all the challenges that you face? 

Mr. YOUEL PAGE. I am not sure I have been party to that discussion, but I would not necessarily be in the policy discussions where 

that would come up routinely. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Well, I think it is important with AMS, the 

predecessor to CGI. There was a littered history of disastrous contract work they did for States besides the Thrift Savings Plan debacle, that fairly easy to find if you just googled that company. And 

I know that we have not gotten our act completely together just 

getting the information from Federal contracts yet, but I do think 

in some of the cross-agency groups you have that talk about this, 

I think it needs to get on the agenda for discussion, especially with 

everything being so technically available now by computers. 

Most of these State databases are available to the public, and, 

I mean, we are getting to the point that integration is not rustling 

the main frame any more. It is much simpler and much easier with 

the technology that we have now today compared to even just a few 

years ago. So I do think it would be elegant and seamless and important if we could have a complete picture of a contractor in terms 

of their government contracting and one that was not just limited 

to the Federal Government. 

Well, I hope you can leave this hearing knowing that there is one 

person in Congress that actually cares about this stuff. It is complicated and hard, but it is really important. And I want you both 

to know that you probably—you try to explain to people what you 

do, I am sure their eyes glaze over before you can get to the second 

sentence. 

At least you know that my eyes are not glazing over and that 

there are folks that are looking very carefully at what you are 

doing and how you are doing, because we believe it is very important. We will continue to followup in these areas, and I just wanted 

to have this hearing. And my staff has done a terrific job of doing 

some of the research to see how this is actually working now. 

I hope to have a hearing in a few years to congratulate you on 

a more integrated system with more information that is immediately transparent to anyone who wants to see it, that is accurate 

and complete, and makes the job of contracting the Federal Government’s money much more effective and efficient. And if you 

would provide the answers to the questions that you took for the 
21 

record to the Committee, and we may have a few others as followup questions for the record before we close the record on his 

hearing. 

And I bet you guys will not be back when I have the next hearing, but please tell the people that take your jobs when you leave 

that they can expect another hearing like this in the coming years. 

And we probably will not wait four or five this time. We will probably do another one in a couple years to see if we are continuing 

to make progress. 

Thank you both very much for being here. 

Captain Drapp. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 10:44 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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