|
By DAVID PHINNEY
Deidre Lee, the Pentagon’s procurement and acquisition policy director, works a crowd with the best of them.
When she gives speeches about defense contracting, Lee walks among audiences with a wireless microphone and
gracefully captures their attention with her folksy, buoyant Oklahoma manner and breezy explorations of defense procurement issues.
As if she were the next-door neighbor sharing household tips over the backyard fence, she talks about purchase card management, getting it right on defense contracts, and the latest arcane tweak in acquisition regulations.
A veteran federal employee with 30 years’ service, Lee began her procurement career with the Air Force in Okinawa, Japan. Today, she runs the Defense Department’s acquisition and procurement policy and is responsible for training its acquisition specialists. But in recent months, she talks more and more about her department’s contracting difficulties at home and in Iraq.
Lee’s disarming smile may seemingly be always with her, but her words caution
that the Pentagon's contracting efforts are in a crisis: Our credibility is in question, she tells them.
Recent contracting problems and the contractors involved have become well known. Headlines, congressional hearings and investigations make sure of that. Halliburton and other companies are being reviewed for possible overcharging for work in Iraq. Technology contracts have been found to spiral away from their original intent, including one held by CACI that was used to hire interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison. Still more have drawn pointed questions about minimal competition.
“It’s not that everything is wrong with Pentagon contracts -- far from it. Much of what’s wrong is a perception, because people aren’t getting the full story,” she said in an interview at her Pentagon office.
“You don’t hear about the 90 percent of the people or the 99.5 percent of the people who are using these things right and properly, getting better services at the right price and doing a good job,” she said with a stern, but friendly voice. “I haven’t seen that article lately.”
Foremost on Lee’s mind these days are Iraq contracts worth billions of dollars. In June, the Government Accountability Office -- formerly the General Accounting Office -- published several reports that found a lack of progress in reconstruction, major task orders going beyond the scope of their original contacts, and loose adherence to the rules and regulations.
The multibillion-dollar contracts held by Halliburton’s subsidiary, Halliburton KBR, also have ignited a partisan firestorm on Capitol Hill. A contract for military support services - trucking convoys, setting up camps, stocking them with food and fuel, and more - is under scrutiny for overcharging. Former KBR employees are preparing to make more accusations of cavalier business practices later this month before Congress.
A second controversial Halliburton KBR agreement for rebuilding the oil infrastructure in southern Iraq is frequently criticized as being awarded without competition. Vice President Richard Cheney headed Houston-based Halliburton for five years before joining the 2000 campaign of President George W. Bush.
Defending Officials
Lee said the headlines undermine the good reputation acquisition professionals deserve. They are working under great pressure to protect U.S. forces and placing contractors in extraordinary circumstances.
Still, Lee acknowledged that there is work to be done, something made visible even to casual observers in April. A technology contract held by CACI was widely reported to be used for the hiring of interrogators in Iraq, and at least one interrogator has been accused of taking part in prisoner abuse.
Originally an agreement with the Army, the CACI task order is managed by the Interior Department off of a General Services Administration (GSA) federal supply schedule contract. At the mention of this contract, Lee rolls her eyes.
“The GSA schedule is for commercial items and services,” she said. “Is that a commercial service?”
The CACI contract and others that apparently were pushed beyond their scope have stirred serious rethinking about how governmentwide contracts should be used to stay within regulatory guidelines. In recent months, Lee’s staff and their GSA counterparts have been crafting what may be significant policy changes in the coming weeks on the use of GSA contract schedules and other governmentwide acquisition contracts.
Communication will also be key, she said. “One of the things we are working on with GSA is to require respective contracting officers to talk to each other.”
Lee’s staff also freshened the contract rulebook, Federal Acquisition Regulation, in mid-June with specific guidelines for non-DoD contract vehicles and blanket purchase agreements that ensure competition and require sole-source contracts to be justified with an explanation.
“We really need to focus on what is the primary purpose of the contract,” she said, mentioning a recent GSA report that found technology contracts offered by the Federal Technology Service were frequently used to direct technology funding to other needs. In several instances, Defense buyers bought computers as well as buildings to house the hardware on the same contract.
“Now, come on,” Lee said with a knowing eye for the obvious. “If the real purpose of the contract was to buy a building, then it was not a technology buy. Now if it was to buy technology equipment, then that is an appropriate use.”
This effort to refocus contracting officers on the appropriate use of contracts is not to dissuade people from using non-DoD contracts, she said. These include federal supply schedules, governmentwide acquisition contracts, and programs known as federal franchise funds in which agencies provide professional services to other agencies for a fee.
“By all means, use the GSA schedule. Use the franchise funds. But use them properly,” she said. “They are good contracting vehicles, but we must use them properly. Be competitive and make them transparent. Make sure you have good statements of work and they are in the scope of the contract when you use them again.
“But these concerns should in no way tarnish the acquisition community across the board, Lee said. Do things go wrong? Yes. Are they being addressed? Of course,” Lee said.
“You hear about the one contract where the order was improper,” she said. “What we don’t tell is that part of the story where people are trying to do the right thing and get excellent support for their customer.”
|
