It is that kind of incentive that Oscar said he is hoping will be adopted. An Army study last year identified 30 or so incentives that could be incorporated into contracts, Oscar said. Some of the incentives the Army came up with in that study, entitled Constructing Successful Business Relationships, are new, but many have been used in the private sector for some time. But a few of those incentives would require changes in procurement law, according to Terrence Tychan, member of the Procurement Executives Council and deputy assistant secretary for grants and acquisition management at the Health and Human Services Department. We have some laws in the way.
Competition is good, but it has been taken to a great extreme.
Other incentives, however, would appear to be easy to create. Joseph Cribbins, special assistant for safety, aviation and logistics at DynCorp in Reston, Va., would like government to ask contractors what they would like to see in the contract. They should ask what would be attractive to us. They should treat the contractor as part of the family, Cribbins said. For the Acquisition Reform Working Group, a coalition of about a half-dozen contractor associations, any change that would introduce commercial practices would be welcomed.