GAO Cites Problems at DoD

At a hearing, GAO testified that government-wide spending on contractors has more than doubled in the last 10 years and that government auditors and others have expressed concerns about relying on contractors to perform agency missions—in particular, DoD’s use of contractors to support deployed military forces and to perform maintenance and other support for weapons systems. It said DoD has experienced problems "including failure to follow planning guidance, an inadequate number of contract oversight personnel, failure to systematically capture and distribute lessons learned, and a lack of comprehensive training for military commanders and contract oversight personnel." DoD similarly has struggled to "resolve questions about how much depot maintenance and other logistics work needs to be performed in-house and to what extent outsourcing for DoD logistics has been cost-effective." And, "although increased contractor reliance for maintenance and other logistics activities was justified by DoD based on the assumption that there would be significant cost savings, it is uncertain to what extent cost savings have occurred or will occur," GAO said. DoD officials said the Pentagon follows the "FAIR Act" standards for determining what work is inherently governmental and that oversight of contracts is being strengthened. However, they said there appear to be some acquisition-related functions where contractors are doing inherently governmental work and that they are addressing those instances.