Since the early 1990s, DOD has increasingly relied on contractors to meet many of its logistical and operational support needs during combat operations, peacekeeping missions, and humanitarian assistance missions, ranging from Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm and operations in the Balkans (e.g., Bosnia and Kosovo) to Afghanistan and Iraq. Factors that have contributed to this increase include reductions in the size of the military, an increase in the number of operations and missions undertaken, and DOD’s use of increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. Depending on the service being provided by contractors, contractor employees may be U.S. citizens, host country nationals, or third country nationals. Contracts supporting weapons systems, for example, often restrict employment to U.S. citizens, while contracts providing base operations support frequently employ host country or third country nationals. Contracts supporting deployed forces typically fall into three broad categories—theater support, external support, and systems support. Theater support contracts are normally awarded by contracting agencies associated with the regional combatant command, for example, the U.S. Central Command or service component commands, such as the U.S. Army Central Command, or by contracting offices at deployed locations such as in Iraq. Contracts can be for recurring services—such as equipment rental or repair, minor construction, security, and intelligence services—or for the one-time delivery of goods and services at the deployed location. External support contracts are awarded by commands external to the combatant command or component commands, such as the Defense Logistics Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Under external support contracts, contractors are generally expected to provide services at the deployed location. LOGCAP is an example of an external support contract. Finally, systems support contracts provide logistics support to maintain and operate weapons and other systems. These types of contracts are most often awarded by the commands responsible for building and buying the weapons or other systems. The individual services and a wide array of DOD and non-DOD agencies can award contracts to support deployed forces. Within a service or agency, numerous contracting officers, with varying degrees of knowledge about how contractors and the military operate in deployed locations, can award contracts that support deployed forces. According to DOD estimates, in 2005 several hundred contractor firms provided U.S. forces with a wide range of services at deployed locations. Figure 1 illustrates the broad array of contractor services being provided in Iraq and the DOD agency that awarded each contract. The customer (e.g., a military unit) for these contractor-provided services is responsible for identifying and validating requirements to be addressed by the contractor as well as evaluating the contractor’s performance and ensuring that contractor-provided services are used in an economical and efficient manner. In addition, DOD has established specific policies on how contracts, including those that support deployed forces, should be administered and managed. Oversight of contracts ultimately rests with the contracting officer who has the responsibility for ensuring that contractors meet the requirements set forth in the contract. However, most contracting officers are not located at the deployed location. As a result, contracting officers appoint contract oversight personnel who represent the contracting officer at the deployed location and are responsible for monitoring contractor performance. How contracts and contractors are monitored at a deployed location is largely a function of the size and scope of the contract. Contracting officers for large-scale and high-value contracts such as LOGCAP have opted to have personnel from the Defense Contract Management Agency monitor a contractor’s performance and management systems to ensure that the cost, product performance, and delivery schedules comply with the terms and conditions of the contract. Defense Contract Management Agency officials delegate daily oversight responsibilities to individuals drawn from units receiving support from these contractors to act as contracting officer’s representatives for specific services being provided. For smaller contracts, contracting officers usually directly appoint contracting officer’s representatives or contracting officer’s technical representatives to monitor contractor performance at the deployed location. These individuals are typically drawn from units receiving contractor-provided services, are not normally contracting specialists, and serve as contract monitors as an additional duty. They cannot direct the contractor by making commitments or changes that affect price, quality, quantity, delivery, or other terms and conditions of the contract. Instead, they act as the eyes and ears of the contracting officer and serve as the liaison between the contractor and the contracting officer. Table 1 provides additional information on the contract management roles and responsibilities of key DOD personnel. A number of long-standing problems continue to hinder DOD’s management and oversight of contractors at deployed locations. Although DOD has issued departmentwide guidance on the use of contractors to support deployed forces and some DOD components have taken some actions to improve management and oversight of contractors, there is no DOD-wide effort in place to resolve these long-standing problems. These problems include a lack of visibility over the totality of contractor support at deployed locations; a lack of adequate contract oversight personnel; the failure to collect and share institutional knowledge on the use of contractors at deployed locations; and limited or no training of military personnel on the use of contractors as part of their pre-deployment training or professional military education. In June 2003, we recommended that DOD take steps to improve its guidance on the use of contractors to support deployed U.S. forces. Our report noted the lack of standardized deployment language in contracts that support or may support deployed U.S. forces. Since then, in June 2005, DOD amended its acquisition regulations, the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, by providing DOD-wide policy and a contract clause to address situations that may require contractors to accompany U.S. forces deployed outside the United States. Our 2003 report also noted a lack of DOD-wide guidance regarding DOD’s use of and responsibilities to contractors supporting deployed forces. Since then, DOD has taken steps to improve its guidance by issuing the first DOD-wide instruction on contractor support to deployed forces. Specifically, in October 2005, DOD issued DOD Instruction 3020.41, entitled Contractor Personnel Authorized to Accompany the U.S. Armed Forces, which states, among other things, that it is DOD policy to coordinate any proposed contractor logistic support arrangements that may affect Combatant Commanders’ operational plans and operations orders with the affected geographic Combatant Commands, ensure contracts clearly and accurately specify the terms and conditions under which the contractor is to perform and describe the specific support relationship between the contractor and DOD, and maintain by-name accountability of contractors deploying with the force and contract capability information in a joint database. DOD Instruction 3020.41 provides guidance on a wide range of contractor support issues. For example, the instruction provides guidance on when contractors can be used to provide security for DOD assets, when medical support can be provided to contractors, and commanders’ responsibilities for providing force protection and security to contractors. In addition, the instruction references a number of existing policies and guidance that may affect DOD’s responsibilities to contractors supporting U.S. forces at a deployed location. However, the instruction does not address a number of problems we have raised in previous reports. For example, although the instruction addresses the need for visibility over contractors, it does not address the need to provide adequate contract oversight personnel, to collect and share institutional knowledge on the use of contractors at deployed locations, or to provide pre-deployment training on the use of contractor support. While issuance of DOD Instruction 3020.41 represents a noteworthy improvement to DOD’s guidance on the use of contractor support to deployed forces, we found little evidence that DOD components are implementing the guidance. Moreover, Congress has concerns over implementation of the instruction as evidenced by a provision in the Conference Report accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 requiring the Secretary of Defense to submit to Congress a report on the department’s efforts to implement the instruction. DOD Instruction 3020.41 assigns responsibility for monitoring and managing the implementation of the instruction to the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness (within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics). However, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Material Readiness is responsible for several policy areas including supply chain management and transportation policy. A number of assistant deputy under secretaries serve as functional experts responsible for these areas. For example, the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Transportation Policy) serves as the principal advisor for establishing policies and providing guidance to DOD components for efficient and effective use of DOD and commercial transportation resources. However, no similar individual is responsible primarily for issues regarding contractor support to deployed forces, including implementation of the instruction. According to senior officials within the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Material Readiness, given the multiple issues the office is responsible for, addressing contractor support to deployed forces issues is a lower priority. Consequently, at the time of our review we found that few measures had been taken by the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Material Readiness to ensure that DOD components were complying with DOD Instruction 3020.41. For example, a senior official with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence told us that the office was not aware of its responsibility under the instruction to develop and implement, as required, procedures for counterintelligence and security screenings of contractors, until our inquiry regarding their compliance with that requirement. Similarly, a senior Joint Staff official involved in the issuance of DOD Instruction 3020.41 expressed concerns that only some of the senior officials who needed to know about the instruction had been made aware that it was issued. Instead, we found that working groups of subject matter experts within the Joint Staff and the services have begun to address the instruction’s requirements. For example, in May 2006 a working group began to draft a new joint publication that provides guidance on meeting the requirements of DOD Instruction 3020.41, as well as addresses other contractor support issues.