The Army awards and administers contracts much like the rest of the federal government, adhering in broad terms to a generic contracting life cycle and the Federal Acquisition Regulation. Figure 1 depicts the contracting life cycle. Throughout the contracting life cycle, three key groups have a role in meeting the Army’s needs: requirements generators, contracting professionals, and contractors themselves. Requirements generators are often located in PEOs or LCMCs. PEOs are responsible for large acquisition efforts involving major weapon systems, while LCMCs are responsible for sustaining many of these systems once they have been deployed. Within their respective areas of responsibility, both define requirements in documents such as statements of work, conduct market research, develop cost estimates, and produce written acquisition plans, as necessary. An Army official told us they can also participate in the source selection process and can serve as contracting officers’ representatives, monitoring contractors’ performance on behalf of the government. Contracting professionals such as contracting officers use information submitted by requirements generators to determine the type of contract the Army should award and how best to meet competition requirements. They also develop and publish solicitations requesting proposals from contractors, and, after receiving these proposals, they negotiate with contractors, as appropriate, and lead the source selection process. After contract award, contracting professionals ensure contractors comply with contractual quality assurance requirements and submit required reports in a timely manner, among other things. They also closeout the contract, which involves verifying that products and services were provided and making final payments to contractors. Contractors are responsible for delivering products and services to the Army in accordance with the terms of the contract. These products and services can include major weapon systems, complex research and development activities, and day-to-day administrative support, among other things. This report primarily focuses on management of contracting professionals, but it is important to note that they alone cannot ensure contractors provide the products and services the Army needs, and that all three groups, along with senior leadership, play key roles in the efficient and effective delivery of products and services. The Army’s contracting professionals are led by several senior executives who are responsible for overseeing the department’s contracting functions, delegating contracting authority, and minimizing the risk that contracting officers will perform improper acts. These contracting leaders include the following: The Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) (ASA(ALT)) is the department’s Senior Procurement Executive. In this role, Army policy establishes for the ASA(ALT) the responsibility to oversee the department’s contracting operations, designating contracting activities, and delegating contracting authority. The Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Procurement) (DASA(P)) supports the ASA(ALT)’s efforts to meet Senior Procurement Executive responsibilities involving policies and procedures. The DASA(P) also oversees and evaluates the Army’s contracting operations. Heads of Contracting Activity (HCA) are responsible for establishing criteria and procedures to ensure that only contracting officers with adequate knowledge and experience award and administer contracts. Additionally, the Army’s HCAs personally approve contracting decisions that reach a certain dollar amount or are particularly complex. The ASA(ALT) has delegated HCA authority to four senior contracting professionals at the following commands: AMC, NGB, USACE, and MEDCOM. Principal Assistants Responsible for Contracting (PARC) are the senior contracting officials within their respective contracting organizations. They are generally expected to report directly to their respective HCAs and are responsible for carrying out authorities HCAs delegate to them. Among other things, PARCs can select, appoint, train, and terminate contracting officers; approve acquisition plans; and waive certain contract requirements. They are also required to minimize the potential for contracting officers to be subjected to undue influence and to protect them from internal or external pressure to perform improper acts. The Army’s four HCAs have appointed a total of 24 PARCs. The Army’s contracting leaders, contracting professionals, and requirements generators reside in different Army organizations. Figure 2 depicts the relationship between some of these individuals within the larger context of the Army’s organizational structure. The Army’s PARCs often develop relationships with particular requirements generators over time. For example, one PARC at MEDCOM tends to work with requirements generators from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. However, the requirements generators do not always reside within the PARCs’ respective organizations. For example, requirements generators at PEO Aviation report to the ASA(ALT), but they are supported by the PARC at Redstone Arsenal— one of the 18 PARCs that reports to the ACC commander, who serves as the AMC HCA. In another example, in fiscal year 2015, 45 percent of the funds obligated by the Aberdeen Proving Ground contracting center were intended to meet the requirements of ASA(ALT) organizations, as opposed to 32 percent intended to meet AMC requirements. Nonetheless, the PARC at Aberdeen Proving Ground reports to the AMC HCA. In recent years, contracting professionals at AMC have executed the bulk of Army contracts, measured by both dollars obligated and actions executed. Figure 3 depicts the dollars obligated and actions executed by each of the four HCA organizations from 2011 to 2015. Appropriated funds, including those appropriated to the Army, can be classified various ways, including by duration of availability. The most common type of appropriation is available for obligation only during one specific fiscal year. Other types of appropriations are available for obligation for a definite period of time in excess of one fiscal year, while others are available for obligation for an indefinite period. At the end of the period of availability for an appropriation available for one fiscal year or for a definite period in excess of one fiscal year, the appropriation expires and is no longer available for incurring new obligations. The obligated and unobligated balance (if any) remain in an expired account for a period of 5 fiscal years, at which point any remaining unexpended balances are canceled and returned to the general fund of the Treasury. Since 2012, the ASA(ALT) and DASA(P) have used quarterly reviews in an effort to assess the overall health of Army contracting and drive improvements in contracting operations. However, they have not used these reviews to consistently evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the department’s contracting operations. Instead, several senior Army officials indicated that ensuring funds are obligated before they expire is the key measure for determining contracting success. In 2014, one of the Army’s key strategic planning documents established that contracting operations should adhere to schedule, cost, and performance objectives, but the ASA(ALT) and DASA(P) have not established the timeliness, cost savings, and contractor quality metrics needed to evaluate contracting operations against such objectives. Additionally, the ASA(ALT) has not established the metrics needed to effectively evaluate the size of the department’s contracting workforce. Further, the DASA(P) office has not consistently implemented the program it established to improve the department’s compliance with acquisition policies and regulations. Since 2012, successive ASA(ALT)s have taken intermittent steps to improve evaluations of the Army’s contracting operations, but we found that they have not sustained these efforts. In 2012, recognizing that the Army’s contracting organizations lacked alignment on priorities and metrics, the ASA(ALT) and DASA(P) initiated quarterly Contracting Enterprise Reviews (CER) in an effort to increase enterprise-wide coordination, assess the overall health of Army contracting, and drive improvements in contracting operations. According to officials in the DASA(P) office, the intent of the CERs is to establish Army-wide contracting metrics and benchmarks, and provide opportunities for leadership to make recommendations to improve contracting procedures and increase efficiencies. The ASA(ALT) coordinated with the DASA(P) office to develop the CER metrics, which include the following information that DASA(P) officials collect about each HCA: obligation rates, contract actions, competition rates, and small business participation. The CERs also include self-reported information from the Army’s PARCs. This information is organized by the department’s four contracting organizations—ACC, MEDCOM, NGB, and USACE—and highlights the PARCs’ successes, such as important contract awards, and challenges, such as high attrition rates. In February 2017, 5 years after the ASA(ALT) and DASA(P) initiated the CERs, personnel in the DASA(P) office told us they now consider the CER the best mechanism to communicate contracting information to senior leadership. However, we found that the Army had not taken some basic steps that would help improve contracting procedures and contracting health assessments. For example, we found that DASA(P) lacked documentation of action items coming out of any of the CERs except the one chaired by the ASA(ALT) for the second quarter of fiscal year 2016. Now that the CER is recognized as a key communication tool, DASA(P) officials told us they are working to address such shortcomings. Specifically, they are working to formally define CER policies and procedures and intend to do so by the end of fiscal year 2017. Among other things, they plan to formalize the process for tracking CER action items. DASA(P) representatives acknowledged that there have been inconsistencies in how they detailed the results of prior CER briefings. In addition, they stated that CER briefings had been treated as individual events and not viewed as part of an ongoing process to improve contracting operations across the Army. They explained that the forthcoming CER policies are intended to address these issues. Army officials also plan to take steps in fiscal year 2017 to improve the reliability of the data presented in the CER briefings. We found several discrepancies with the data.