By: Mike Allen
December 21, 2009 10:23 AM EST

Ahead of remarks Monday by President Barack Obama about making government more efficient and effective, the White House Office of Management and Budget released details of the administration’s drive to tighten the government’s contracting practices.

“This is a situation that would never exist in a business,” Jeff Zients, federal chief performance officer and OMB deputy director for management, told reporters on a conference call. “A business that had these kind of practices would have been out of business a long time ago. I believe we’re off to a really fast start here. There’s a lot of work to be done. And we’re going to clean up the situation and make sure there’s no waste, and we save as much money as possible.”

Asked how much of the effort was a response to Bush administration policies, and how much was a response to endemic waste and mismanagement, Zients replied: “Across the last six years of the prior administration, contracting doubled. At the same time, the work force remained relatively flat. And I believe that in that doubling process, there was such a rush to outsource that there inevitably has been a marked increase in the reliance on high-risk contracting vehicles like the cost reimbursement. There’s been an underuse of competition. There are … too many contracts that are sole source. So we have a lot of work to do to save money here and … bring best practices to contracting in the government.”

This spring, the administration plans to roll out an “online dashboard” that will allow the public to see the savings plans for agencies and how they’re doing against their targets.

A White House fact sheet reports that Obama “has charged federal departments and agencies with saving $40 billion annually by Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 through terminating unnecessary contracts, strengthening acquisition management, ending the overreliance on contractors, and reducing the use of high-risk contracts across government. … In the first year of this effort, agencies have identified more than $19 billion of savings in Fiscal Year 2010 — on track to meet the $40 billion target. …

“These acquisition improvements — strengthening accountability, eliminating waste, improving performance, and targeting fraud and mismanagement — are significant components of a government that places the taxpayers’ best interests at the forefront of its actions.”

See the fact sheet here.

In a 13-page report titled “Acquisition and Contracting Improvement Plans and Pilots Saving Money and Improving Government,” OMB reports: “Agencies are on track to cut contracting costs by 3.5 percent in Fiscal Year 2010. … Agencies are taking aggressive steps to improve accountability and management oversight. Agencies are working to reduce their reliance on high-risk contracting by 10 percent. Agencies are piloting new tools to determine the best mix of skills and workforce size for their organizations. …

“Contractors’ past performance is being scrutinized more closely. For too long, contractor performance data was inconsistent and, often, inaccessible, and there was no easy way to track performance across agencies. Now, agencies are required to submit an electronic review to centralized federal database, allowing contracting officers to assess a firm’s track record before signing a new agreement. These assessments should lower the chances that the government repeatedly does business with underperforming contractors, which should, in turn, decrease inefficiency and waste of taxpayer resources. Compliance and quality assessments of agencies’ contractor performance evaluations will begin in February 2010.”

(Click HERE for original article)

If you would like to share your experiences while working for some of these contractors here is the link to contact the White House.  Keep it short, to the point and use spell check   Who knows maybe your information will be the missing piece to a puzzle that investigators need before they can take action.

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