Section 861 of the NDAA for FY2008 directed the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the USAID Administrator to sign an MOU related to contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The law specified a number of issues to be covered in the MOU, including the identification of each agency’s roles and responsibilities for matters relating to contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, responsibility for establishing procedures for the movement of contractor personnel in the two countries, responsibility for collecting and referring information related to violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) or the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), and identification of common databases to serve as repositories of information on contract and contractor personnel. The NDAA for FY2008 requires the databases to track at a minimum: for each contract, a brief description of the contract, its total value, and whether it was awarded competitively; and for contractor personnel working under contracts in Iraq or Afghanistan, total number employed, total number performing security functions, and total number who have been killed or wounded. DOD, State, and USAID signed the MOU in July 2008. The agencies agreed that SPOT, a Web-based system initially designed and used by DOD, would be the system of record for the statutorily-required contract and contractor personnel information. The MOU specified that SPOT would include information on DOD, State, and USAID contracts with more than 14 days of performance in Iraq or Afghanistan or valued at more than the simplified acquisition threshold, which the MOU stated was $100,000, as well as information on the personnel working under those contracts. In contrast, the NDAA for FY2008 established a 14-day threshold for inclusion in the database but did not specify a minimum dollar value. As agreed in the MOU, DOD is responsible for all maintenance and upgrades to the SPOT database. The agencies further agreed to negotiate funding arrangements for any agency-unique requirements and for specialized training requirements. Each agency is to ensure that data elements related to contractor personnel, such as the number of personnel employed on each contract in Iraq or Afghanistan, are entered into SPOT and to require its contractors to enter that information accurately. Information entered into SPOT is more detailed than the number of contractor personnel as it is designed to track individuals by name and record information such as the contracts they are working under, deployment dates, and next of kin. Data elements, such as contract value and whether it was awarded competitively, are to be imported into SPOT from FPDS-NG, the federal government’s system for tracking information on contracting actions. While implementation of SPOT is still under way, DOD, State, and USAID’s criteria for deciding which contractor personnel to enter into the system differed from what was agreed to in the MOU and varied by country. This has resulted in not all contractor personnel being entered into SPOT as agreed to in the MOU. Further, SPOT currently does not have the capability to track all of the required contract information or readily generate reports on the total number of killed or wounded contractor personnel. For the majority of our review period, DOD, State, and USAID were phasing in the MOU requirement to use SPOT to track information on contracts and the personnel working on them in Iraq and Afghanistan. In January 2007, DOD designated SPOT as its primary system for collecting data on contractor personnel deployed with U.S. forces and directed contractor firms to enter personnel data for contracts performed in Iraq and Afghanistan. State started systematically entering information for both Iraq and Afghanistan into SPOT in November 2008. In January 2009, USAID began requiring contractors in Iraq to enter personnel data into SPOT. However, USAID has not yet imposed a similar requirement on its contractors in Afghanistan and has no time frame for doing so. In implementing SPOT, DOD’s, State’s, and USAID’s criteria for determining which contractor personnel are entered into SPOT varied and were not consistent with those contained in the MOU, as the following illustrate. Regarding contractor personnel in Iraq, DOD, State, and USAID officials stated that the primary factor for deciding to enter contractor personnel into SPOT was whether a contractor needed a SPOT-generated letter of authorization (LOA). Contractor personnel need SPOT-generated LOAs to, among other things, enter Iraq, receive military identification cards, travel on U.S. military aircraft, or, for security contractors, receive approval to carry weapons. However, not all contractor personnel, particularly local nationals, in Iraq need LOAs and agency officials informed us that such personnel were not being entered into SPOT. In contrast, DOD officials informed us that individuals needing LOAs were entered into SPOT even if their contracts did not meet the MOU’s 14-day or $100,000 thresholds. For Afghanistan, DOD offices varied in their treatment of which contractor personnel should be entered into SPOT. Officials with one contracting office stated that the need for an LOA determined whether someone was entered into SPOT. As in Iraq, since local nationals generally do not need LOAs, they are not being entered into SPOT. In contrast, DOD officials with another contracting office stated that they follow DOD’s 2007 guidance on the use of SPOT. According to the guidance, contractor personnel working on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan with more than 30 days of performance and valued over $25,000 are to be entered into SPOT—as opposed to the MOU threshold of 14 days of performance or valued over $100,000. Agency officials have raised questions about the need to enter detailed information into SPOT on all contractor personnel. Some DOD officials we spoke with questioned the need to individually track all contractor personnel as opposed to their total numbers given the cost of collecting these detailed data compared to the benefit of having this information. Similarly, USAID officials questioned the need to enter detailed information as agreed to because personnel working on its contracts in Afghanistan generally do not live or work in close proximity to U.S. government personnel and typically do not receive support services from the U.S. government. USAID officials also cited security concerns as one factor affecting their decision on who should be entered into SPOT. USAID officials explained that they have held off entering Iraqi or Afghan nationals into SPOT because identifying local nationals who work with the U.S. government by name could put those individuals in danger should the system be compromised. To help address this concern, DOD officials said that they have begun developing a classified version of SPOT. However, USAID officials told us the agency would most likely not be able to use a classified system due to limited access to classified computers. Because of the varying criteria on who should be entered into the system, the information in SPOT does not present an accurate picture of the total number of contractor personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, officials from all three agencies expressed confidence that the SPOT data were relatively complete for contractor personnel who need an LOA in Iraq. Conversely, agency officials acknowledged that SPOT does not fully reflect the number of local nationals working on their contracts. Agency officials further explained that ensuring that information on local nationals is in SPOT is challenging because their numbers tend to fluctuate due to the use of day laborers and because local firms do not always keep track of the individuals working on their projects. DOD officials also explained that they have had to develop workarounds to deal with the fact that SPOT requires a first and last name to be entered for each individual along with a birth date and unique identification number. The officials noted that many Afghan laborers have only one name, do not know their birth dates, and lack identification numbers. SPOT currently lacks the capability to track all of the contract data elements as agreed to in the MOU. While the MOU specifies that contract values, competition information, and descriptions of the services being provided would be pulled into SPOT from FPDS-NG, this capability is not expected to be available until 2010. In the interim, the DOD officials overseeing SPOT’s development told us that SPOT users can manually enter competition information and descriptions, but there is no requirement for them to do so. Since SPOT is not designed to let users enter contract dollar values, the DOD officials stated that SPOT and FPDS- NG are being periodically merged to identify contract values. Even when the direct link is established, pulling FPDS-NG data into SPOT may present challenges because of how data are entered into SPOT. First, information from the two systems can only be merged if the contract has been entered into SPOT. If no contractor personnel working on a particular contract have been entered, then the contract will not appear in SPOT and its information cannot be linked with the information in FPDS- NG. Second, while contract numbers are the unique identifiers that will be used to match records in SPOT to those in FPDS-NG, SPOT users are not required to enter contract numbers in a standardized manner. In our review of SPOT data, we determined that at least 12 percent of the contracts had invalid contract numbers and, therefore, could not be matched to records in FPDS-NG. Additionally, contract numbers may not be sufficient to identify unique contracts. Specific orders placed on task order contracts are identified through a combination of the contract number and task order number. However, SPOT users are not required to enter task order numbers. For example, one SPOT entry only contained the contract number without an order number. In reviewing FPDS-NG data, we determined that DOD had placed 12 different orders—ranging from a few thousand dollars to over $129 million—against that contract. Based on the information in SPOT, DOD would not be able to determine which order’s value and competition information should be imported from FPDS-NG.