These weaknesses are essentially the consequence of failing to understand how agencies and contracting officers will use the broad discretion they have been granted or the limits of their discretion. There are lots of examples, many can be drawn from the meetings and programs of the Section of Public Contract Law. Some of you have heard me say how important it is that the source selection process be both fair and transparent in order to promote rational source selection on the basis of merit, prevent fraud and abuse, and increase public trust in government decision making. There was basis for real concern that early drafts of the pending FAR Part 15 were so focused on agency and contracting officer discretion that they ignored these important system values. I believe the new draft of the rewrite reflects real improvement in this area, but we still have work to do on this issue.
Past performance is another good example.
Possibly the biggest change in source selection in recent years has been the weight given to an offeror's past performance. We recently saw past performance amount to 50 percent of the selection criteria for a multibillion dollar missile procurement, and a weight of 75 percent is not unusual. At the same time, GAO has received and sustained a growing number of past performance protests. This is true largely, I believe, because we don't have a common understanding of what a performance measurement system should be. Another example is the dramatic liberalization of the rules for using the GSA schedules.