[Senate Hearing 113-382]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 113-382
OVERSIGHT OF CONTRACTOR PERFORMANCE INFORMATION
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL AND
CONTRACTING OVERSIGHT
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 6, 2014
__________
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
JON TESTER, Montana RAND PAUL, Kentucky
MARK BEGICH, Alaska MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire
HEIDI HEIKAMP, North Dakota
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
John P. Kilvington, Deputy Staff Director
Keith B. Ashdown, Minority Staff Director
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Lauren Corcoran, Hearing Clerk
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL AND CONTRACTING OVERSIGHT
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
MARK BEGICH, Alaska KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire
TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
Margaret Daum, Majority Staff Director
Rachel Weaver, Minority Staff Director
Kelsey Stroud, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statement:
Page
Senator McCaskill............................................ 1
Senator Johnson.............................................. 3
WITNESSES
Tuesday, March 6, 2014
Captain Brian T. Drapp, Supply Corps, United States Navy,
Commanding Officer, Naval Sea Logistics Center................. 4
Kevin Youel Page, Assistant Commissioner, Integrated Award
Environment, United States General Services Administration..... 6
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Drapp, Captain Brian T.:
Testimony.................................................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 23
Youel Page, Kevin:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 29
APPENDIX
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record:
Mr. Drapp.................................................... 39
Mr. Youel Page............................................... 42
Lockheed Martin Assessment Report................................ 50
OVERSIGHT OF CONTRACTOR PERFORMANCE INFORMATION
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TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2014
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:37 a.m., in
room 342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Claire
McCaskill, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators McCaskill and Johnson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCASKILL
Senator McCaskill. In 2009, I held a hearing in this
Subcommittee on the management of government's dizzying array
of databases for government contracting. At that hearing, I
heard from witnesses representing the government, the
contracting community, and transparency advocates that the
government's contracting databases were cumbersome, difficult
to use, and that the data was incomplete. The witnesses pointed
to the past performance database, the database that tracks
information about contractor performance on previous Federal
contracts, as being particularly problematic.
More than 4 years later, I am here to ask many of the very
same questions again. Today, however, I am going to focus
specifically on the databases that contain information about
contractor performance and integrity. Before the government
awards a contract, the contracting officer is required to
review the contractor's past performance on other contracts.
This review is meant to ensure that the government only awards
new contracts to companies that are able to perform the work.
The contracting officer must also ensure that the contractor
has a satisfactory performance record and a record of integrity
and business ethics.
To ensure that these determinations are meaningful, the
contracting officer needs to be able to access and review
adequate information about the contractor's performance and
integrity. Unfortunately, the system we have today is not
capable of doing that. Information about past performance and
integrity is scanty, and what there is can be scattered across
multiple databases. Reports can be difficult to find or just
plain wrong.
The government has three main databases that contain
information about past performance and integrity: Past
Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS), which
contains past performance evaluations; Federal Awarding
Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS), which
contains adverse actions; and the System for Award Management
(SAM), which contains suspension and debarment information,
among other things. Then there is a fourth database called
Contractor Peformance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS),
which is where contracting officers enter in the past
performance evaluations that are displayed in PPIRS, because
neither system can be used to both collect and search this
information.
In 2014, when most Americans are used to navigating systems
designed to be quick and easy to use, PPIRS and FAPIIS, which
was built as a module within PPIRS, both look and feel
shockingly old and clunky. For example, I learned that the back
link in FAPIIS only seems to work if the user is in Internet
Explorer. Someone using Chrome is just out of luck.
During today's hearing, I plan to demonstrate just how
difficult they can be to use. I also have questions about the
current policies we have regarding what information is
collected, the way the information is collected, and the way
the information is organized. To start, FAPIIS has very little
information, and most of the information in there is self-
reported by contractors with no quality assurance by the
government.
Not surprisingly, there is a great deal of variation in
what contractors interpret as to what is their duty to report.
In addition, these systems are built around the Data Universal
Numbering System (DUNS Number), a numerical tracking system
which the government has bought the rights to use at
substantial cost from Dun & Bradstreet. DUNS Numbers, however
are not unique identifiers. A large contractor can have dozens
or more different DUNS Numbers for each subsidiary.
Lockheed Martin, for example, has more than 80 entries.
When contracting officers look up the DUNS Number for the
contractor in the system, they only see the past performance
for that specific DUNS Number. They do not see anything about
the contractor's parent company, if they have one, or
subsidiaries. They also cannot track a company if it merges or
is acquired or simply changes its name.
The system also does not contain information about
performance on State or local contracts. Since many contractors
who perform work for the Federal Government also perform
similar work for States or municipalities, this kind of work
can be highly relevant. It also appears that the performance
reports in the system may not fully or accurately reflect a
contractor's performance. Take for example a company called CGI
Federal, the contractor primarily responsible for
Healthcare.gov. The most recent past performance record for CGI
Federal's work on Healthcare.gov is an assessment dated June
12, 2013, assessing their performance from June 7, 2012 to June
6, 2013, on which they were ranked exceptional for their
performance in every category. As we know, it turned out not to
be true.
Another example is British Petroleum (BP). You may recall
that after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) suspended BP and its related
subsidiaries from obtaining new Federal contracts. Despite the
catastrophic disaster which caused billions of dollars in
damage and subsequent suspension, there does not appear to be
any record of poor past performance in PPIRS for any of the BP
entities suspended.
These issues raise serious technical and procurement policy
questions, and because the relevant policies in this area are
set by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), I invited
OMB's deputy director for management, or her designee, to
provide testimony at this hearing. I sent the invitation in
early February. After I learned that no one at OMB could
provide testimony during the week that hearing was originally
planned, I moved the hearing, and the Subcommittee again asked
if OMB could provide a witness. Again, OMB refused.
I am disappointed by OMB's apparent lack of interest in
improving government contracting and its willful disregard of
legitimate congressional oversight. On the other hand, I am
very pleased to welcome Captain Brian Drapp from the U.S. Navy,
and Kevin Youel Page from the General Services Administration
(GSA). I thank both witnesses for being here today. I would
also thank you both for your flexibility with starting a little
earlier than we originally planned because of my need to go to
the floor for votes and debate on an important matter dealing
with the military in fact.
So I am pleased you could come early. And now I will turn
it over to Senator Johnson for his statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would also
like to welcome the witnesses and thank them for their
flexibility. I also share your frustration that OMB is not
showing up to give us their insight and their testimony.
Obviously, performance tracking in procurement makes all the
sense in the world. But it is also a very difficult task. I
know in private business we do it all the time, and we are
talking about companies with millions of dollars worth of sales
and millions of dollars worth of contracts, and now we are
talking about a performance tracking system in a Federal
Government entity that spends $3.5 trillion. So this is an
enormously difficult task.
From my standpoint, the most important thing is to get the
current system operating as effectively and efficiently as
possible and as accurately as possible. Unless the information
is accurate, unless it is transparent, you will not be fair to
the supplier base and it will not be usable to the government.
It is just simply not going to work.
I appreciate the testimony. My suggestion is before we try
and add any more requirements--which is generally government's
tendency if something is not working, let's add more layers of
additional information that we are going to request--I would
really suggest we concentrate on getting the systems that are
up in place right now operating correctly, providing accurate
information, transparent information, before we start biting
off even more than we can chew.
So again, I think this is a very good hearing. Appreciate
your dedication to getting to the bottom of this. Just
understand, it is a pretty enormous task for working with small
businesses. It is even a more enormous task for a large Federal
Government trying to get their arms around these types of
procurement tracking information systems.
Thank you.
Senator McCaskill. Thank you. Let me introduce the
witnesses. Captain Brian Drapp is the commanding officer of the
United States Navy Supply Corp, Naval Sea Logistics Center. He
received his Navy commission from Officer Candidate School in
1987, following graduation from the University of South
Florida. He is also a designated Joint Service Officer.
And Kevin Youel Page is an assistant commissioner of the
General Service Administration, Integrated Award Environment
(IAE). In this role, he leads the ongoing maintenance,
operation, development, and governance of mandatory Federal
wide shared services in the IAE. Mr. Youel Page previously
served at the Department of the Treasury as deputy director of
Office of Procurement Executive.
I would like you both to know how much I appreciate you for
being here and your service and for appearing today, especially
with your flexibility. It is the custom of this Subcommittee to
swear in all witnesses, so if you would not mind standing and
taking the following oath.
Do you swear that the testimony that you will give before
this Subcommittee will be the truth and the whole truth so help
you, God?
Mr. Youel Page. I do.
Captain Drapp. I do.
Senator McCaskill. We will use the timing system today. We
would ask you if you could hold your oral testimony to around 5
minutes. We are not picky about that, but about 5 minutes. And
then obviously, we will take all of your written testimony for
the record. Captain Drapp.
TESTIMONY OF CAPTAIN BRIAN T. DRAPP,\1\ SUPPLY CORPS, UNITED
STATES NAVY, COMMANDING OFFICER, NAVAL SEA LOGISTICS CENTER
Captain Drapp. Thank you. Senator McCaskill, Ranking Member
Johnson, and distinguished Members of the Committee, good
morning, and thank you for holding this hearing and affording
me the opportunity to testify about the contractor past
performance database systems that my command operates. I am
honored to be here.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Drapp appears in the Appendix on
page 23.
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I am Captain Brian T. Drapp, Supply Corps, United States
Navy, Commanding Officer of the Naval Sea Logistics Center, in
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. My command is a shore-based
activity that administratively reports to Naval Undersea
Warfare Center, Division Keyport, a field activity of Naval
Undersea Warfare Center headquarters that reports to Naval Sea
Systems Command.
I understand the Navy's Legislative Affairs Office has
provided a copy of my written statement to the Committee and
respectfully request that it be entered into the record.
Senator McCaskill. It will. Thank you.
Captain Drapp. Yes, ma'am. One element of my command's
mission is to serve as the Naval Sea Systems Command technical
agent for maintaining life cycle logistics data systems. This
includes the oversight, management of database operations,
sustainment, configuration, customer support, and training for
three systems, as the chairman previously talked about, first,
Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System, Past
Performance Information Retrieval System, and finally, third,
the Federal Awarding Performance and Integrity Information
System.
Although Naval Sea Logistics Center is a Navy command, our
functions in operating and maintaining contractor past
performance databases are at the direction of our two program
resources sponsors, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense
for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, and the General
Services Administration, Integrated Award Environment.
In our role as operator and maintainer of these systems, my
prepared witness statement for the record addresses one, how
the Federal Government collects, manages, and uses information
about contractor performance and integrity; two, how the
performance systems and FAPIIS have been implemented and used;
and finally, third, how the past performance systems work
together along with upcoming improvements that will be
implemented.
A key responsibility of the Naval Sea Logistics Center's
team sustaining these systems is to properly maintain the
hardware and software and to upgrade them based on requirements
provided by the Integrated Award Environment and the
Configuration Change Board chaired by the General Services
Administration represented by over 25 Federal agencies.
Additionally, Naval Sea Logistics Center provides training on
the use of these performance and integrity information systems
to military and Federal acquisition officials, their support
staffs, and Federal contractors.
We also provide helpdesk support to customers daily via
phone calls and e-mails, the majority of which are answered the
same day. In terms of database systems reliability, CPARS,
PPIRS and FAPIIS, are accessible to customers 99 percent of the
time, with announced outages related to routine and required
maintenance accounting for the remaining 1 percent.
Please be assured the Naval Sea Logistics Center is
committed to the readiness of our systems, the needs of our
thousands of customers, and moreover, to provide a means to
strengthen communications and processes between contractors and
acquisition officials and to enhance the government oversight
and the contracting source selection process.
Senator McCaskill, Ranking Member Johnson, and
distinguished Members of the Committee, I appreciate the
opportunity to discuss the contractor performance and integrity
systems the Naval Sea Logistics Center operates and maintains.
I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Again,
thank you for this opportunity to testify.
TESTIMONY OF KEVIN YOUEL PAGE,\1\ ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER,
INTEGRATED AWARD ENVIRONMENT, UNITED STATES GENERAL SERVICES
ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Youel Page. Good morning, Chairman McCaskill, Ranking
Member Johnson, and the distinguished Members of the Committee.
My name is Kevin Youel Page. I have been the Assistant
Commissioner for the General Services Integrated Award
Environment since July 2013. I am responsible for, among other
things, the Federal Government's shared past performance
systems, and I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today
to discuss GSA's role in managing Federal contractor past
performance systems and information.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Youel Page appears in the
Appendix on page 29.
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Contractor past performance systems are part of a broader
Integrated Award Environment which was created under the E-
government Act of 2002 to streamline and unify the Federal
award process for government and nongovernmental participants
in the loans, grants, and contracting communities. IAE's main
goal is to evolve the existing shared portfolio of 10 systems
into a user-centric open source secure common services platform
that will improve operations for those who award and administer
grants, loans, and contracts.
We undertake this work in concert with the Office of
Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) and the interagency
governance bodies, the Award Committee for E-government. This
governmentwide collaboration enables us to save money, be more
efficient, reduce the burden on the communities we serve, and
provide more transparent Federal award information to
continuously monitor and improve Federal award management.
GSA serves as the executive agent for the management of all
10 governmentwide award systems, three of which are contractor
past performance information systems operated by the United
States Navy. The three systems, as mentioned, are PPIRS, CPARS,
and FAPIIS.
Because PPIRS and CPARS were initially developed and
operated by the Navy, GSA, with its Federal governance, chose
to leverage the Navy's expertise in asking the Navy to continue
to operate all past performance systems governmentwide. Prior
to 2002, agencies maintained their own systems to track past
performance. This was duplicative, inefficient, and gave agency
contracting officers no ability to ensure they had a
comprehensive or a consistent view of a contractor's past
performance.
In 2002, PPIRS was established as the enterprise
application to allow source selection officials to retrieve
contractor performance. Once a single retrieval point was
established, our efforts turned to consolidating systems to
input past performance information. Before 2010, agencies used
nine separate input systems, each with its own contractor
rating criteria, making the comparison of past performance
information and data challenging.
In 2010, CPARS was made the governmentwide system for
inputting the contractor past performance information into
PPIRS, so consolidating to a single input and a single
retrieval system has represented a major improvement over that
period of time. During this improvement, the Duncan-Hunter
National Defense Authorization Act of 2002 mandated the
creation of a new system, FAPIIS, to display information
regarding the integrity and performance of certain entities
awarded Federal contracts and grants. In order to reduce the
cost of this new system, and to reduce the burden on our
government users, FAPIIS was integrated into our existing
systems.
FAPIIS was deployed in March 2010. It displays criminal
convictions, certain civil judgments and administrative
findings of fault, certain compromises or agreements that
settle civil, criminal or administrative proceedings,
ineligibility due to suspension or debarment, administrative
agreements issued in lieu of suspension or debarment, non-
responsibility determinations, contracts and grants terminated
for default, defective pricing determinations, and past
performance evaluations.
The publicly accessible component of FAPIIS was deployed in
April 2011, and it includes all of the above information except
past performance evaluations, which are source selection
sensitive information. Going forward, GSA and the Navy are
committed and are working with the award community to make
further enhancements to the collection and display of
contractor performance information. These enhancements will
further reduce the number of systems, improve user experience,
add search features, and create the capability for users to run
more reports that meet their user needs.
Chairman McCaskill, Ranking Member Johnson, and the members
of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss
IAE's contractor performance systems. I am happy to answer any
questions you may have for me at this time.
Senator McCaskill. Well, first, let me say, the reason we
are having this hearing today is because I think that this is
an area that continues to need a lot of oversight. But I do not
want you to think I do not recognize that there has been some
progress. But we still have a system where we have three
databases with contractor performance information: PPIRS,
FAPIIS and SAM.
I understand that FAPIIS pulls suspension and debarment
from SAM but not all the details, so contracting officers still
have to use all three databases. Isn't that correct?
Mr. Youel Page. Yes, Senator. If they wanted the full
information on the background of a suspension and debarment,
that information is in SAM. But it is true that it is displayed
in FAPIIS to enable that further research, if needed.
Senator McCaskill. And so now we are integrating it, so
this will be in fact a one-stop shop.
Mr. Youel Page. Yes, ma'am.
Senator McCaskill. And when do you think this integration
will be complete?
Mr. Youel Page. We are working on a series of incremental
developments to do small and agile development across the 10
platforms. We have scheduled the entire environment to be put
into a more user-centric format by the fiscal year (FY) 2018,
but with phased improvements between now and then in some
increments, beginning with some of the work in FedBizOps (FBO)
and making our Federal opportunities available to small
companies.
Senator McCaskill. Is there anything you need to make that
go faster that we could help you with? I was told at the
hearing in 2009 that the process of integrating PPIRS would be
done by 2013, at that hearing, and clearly that has not
happened. So what I am worried about is that we are not really
talking about 2018; that we are really talking about a long way
away, when both of you will be probably in different
assignments, I am willing to bet.
Mr. Youel Page. Your question is, is there anything that
you could provide or help to make this go faster. I think that
we have been working very diligently with the administrator to
make sure that the resources are available to keep to this
plan. We have, of course, suffered our own missteps along the
way of creating this Integrated Award Environment and we are
working diligently to learn those lessons and move forward
using the new 21st Century architectural principles and the
right kind of development approaches to minimize risk and to
continue developing these systems the way we all want them to
be developed and expect them to be developed.
Senator McCaskill. In 2009, Vivek Kundra, the Federal chief
information officer and the administrator for Electronic
Government and Information Technology at OMB, said the
following, ``Part one of this contract, what GSA is asking, is
to make sure that there is requirements gathering, there is a
broad array of people that are consulted ahead of time, that
there is actually profiles created on the different types of
users.''
It sounds like we are still stuck there 4 years later. Is
that accurate?
Mr. Youel Page. I think we are looking at the profiles of
individual users and we are attempting to use that user-centric
design technique to put ourselves very much in the shoes of an
end user, whether it is a Senate staffer, a contractor, or a
small grantee operating out of a university, to understand how
they are going to experience the system and make the best use
of their role in the system.
So we have developed profiles and are continuing that
process and are beginning, now that we have finished the work,
stabilizing the system for award management to use these
profiles to tackle different aspects of functionality across
the Integrated Award Environment.
Senator McCaskill. I want to talk a little bit why FAPIIS
has so little information. My staff reviewed FAPIIS and found
around 1,500 government-entered records and about 650 vendor-
entered records. Considering that we have thousands of Federal
contractors and the amount of data going into PPIRS since 2011,
this is nothing.
Now, it is my understanding this problem is caused by the
fact that all the past performance evaluations in PPIRS are
labeled source selection sensitive, and therefore, not
transferred to FAPIIS. Is that right?
Mr. Youel Page. To the public version of FAPIIS, the
individual contracting performance assessment reports are not
available to the public because they are source selection
sensitive. But the other eight categories of administrative
agreement and adverse action are available to the public
through FAPIIS.
Senator McCaskill. So are past performance evaluations
available to the public or are they source selection sensitive?
Mr. Youel Page. The evaluations that are completed in CPARS
by contracting officers are not available to the public. They
are deemed to be source selection sensitive information.
Senator McCaskill. And who deemed that?
Mr. Youel Page. That is how I understand the law to be
written and how I understand the regulation to have been
implemented.
Senator McCaskill. OK. So you think that is statutory
language that is dictating that?
Mr. Youel Page. I believe so, yes, ma'am.
Senator McCaskill. OK. Let's look at this source selection
sensitive limitation and what seems to be an arbitrary length
for protection, which is 3 years. Let's look at it on a case-
by-case basis. Is it decided on a case-by-case basis?
Mr. Youel Page. I am sorry. Is what decided?
Senator McCaskill. OK. All the evaluations in PPIRS, the
performance evaluations, if it is source selection sensitive,
OK, is that true for all the evaluations in PPIRS, that they
are deemed source selection sensitive?
Mr. Youel Page. All of the CPARS records are deemed source
selection sensitive. All of the records entered by contracting
officers related to performance on government contracts that
they manage and oversee are considered source selection
sensitive. The information on administrative agreements and
other determinations for default, that information is public
and is not deemed source selection sensitive.
Senator McCaskill. I am looking at my notes here and it
says that the rule for the time period that you protect this
information as source sensitive says at least 3 years. So what
is being done in terms of how long it is protected? Is it
protected for 3 years, or is it decided on a case-by-case
basis?
Mr. Youel Page. I am sorry. I believe that this is a
question of how long a past performance record is relevant. I
think that the policy is that 3 years is considered the period
of relevance. These records are maintained for 5 years in the
system, are archived afterwards. They are considered Federal
records.
Senator McCaskill. OK. So they are archived, but I am
asking how long the source selection sensitive limitation stays
in place. Three years?
Mr. Youel Page. I am not certain of the answer to that. I
believe it is indefinite, but I would have to get back to you
with a concrete answer.
Senator McCaskill. It is hard for me to imagine that the
vast majority of the past performance evaluations are even the
slightest bit sensitive. It seems to me that it is not in the
interest of transparency to put evaluations behind a veil
because we are not maybe sorting out the very few that might
have some sensitive information.
I know it is simpler, but I think it is something we need
to take a look at--and we will take a look at it because I know
it is rule-based--and figure out how we could put more
transparency into this source selection sensitive limitation.
OK. I would like now to actually take a look, all of us
together, how the databases actually work. The first issue
actually arises before you even get to either PPIRS or FAPIIS.
When you navigate to either PPIRS or FAPIIS, you get an ominous
security certificate warning. Now, I think most contracting
officers know to click continue despite the warning, but I am
curious why there would be a security certificate warning for
two official government databases.
Anybody know?
Captain Drapp. I do not have an answer for that. We will
have to take that for action, ma'am.
Senator McCaskill. OK. I think it is troubling. There are
lots of places that I think security warnings are appropriate,
but I think we need to track down why we are getting a security
warning for these particular databases that are run by the U.S.
Government. So let's take a look at that.
I would also love to talk about why OFPP just issued a rule
that said for the few things FAPIIS is allowed to display,
namely just adverse actions, that it would only be allowed to
include information from when it went live in April 2011. I
wish we could have a discussion about whether or not we should
change that rule to include information before April 2011.
OFPP declined to send anyone to this hearing, so I don't
have an opportunity to ask them, but I will followup with OMB
to figure out why they are doing that. I do have questions
about suspensions and debarments. We are going to search for a
company that we know has an exclusion in SAM, and that is a B&J
corporation.
With this DUNS Number, we see that FAPIIS shows suspension
debarment information for this company pulled from SAM. When we
click on the link within FAPIIS to see suspensions and
debarments from SAM, we see the two debarments pulled from SAM
but no information on exclusion type or description of the
exclusion, only the date of the exclusion.
So in order to see more, a contracting officer would then
have to go into SAM and search again by the DUNS Number. In
SAM, you see the two debarments, and if you click into them,
you see a lot more detail in SAM than in the FAPIIS entry that
supposedly pulled that information from SAM.
Why does FAPIIS not include all the suspension and
debarment details from SAM? Why is there a requirement that you
only get cursory information and then you have to go into SAM
specifically to get more detail?
Captain Drapp. I do not have an answer for you. We will
have to get back to you on that, ma'am.
Mr. Youel Page. I guess I will try to answer this way. We
certainly could bring more information in from SAM. As a
practical matter, a source selection official who identifies a
company as being suspended or debarred may be curious as to
deeper reasons why that is the case. But most will, at least in
my experience, act fairly immediately to cease considering that
company for further consideration for award without--they may
search the system to confirm that this is accurate, contact
their own policy and suspension and debarment officials to
ensure that they are making a proper decision, but they will
not in general need much more than to know that this is a
suspended or debarred firm.
Senator McCaskill. Well, what would be helpful for us to
know, the Committee to understand, is that if this decision is
being made, for the reasons that you indicate, Mr. Youel Page,
and that is efficiency, then all somebody needs to know, that
there is a suspension or a debarment, then that would be good
news. But it appears that it is just clunky interface.
Mr. Youel Page. It is something if we were--I have not
heard the feedback that this is something that is of great
concern to the contracting officers, but it is certainly
something if we were hearing it through our change control
board, through our interagency governance that it was something
they wanted more in the system. It would be something that we
would put on our list for incremental improvement over time.
Senator McCaskill. OK. Now I want to illustrate a basic
difficulty with searching for a contractor's information.
Because there are so many Federal contractors, many of which
have similar names, my understanding is that the Data Universal
Numbering System--or DUNS Numbers--are the way that we
accurately search for the entity one is looking for.
The problem with that is contractors have different DUNS
Numbers for different parts of their organizations and the DUNS
system does not illustrate in any way the relationship between
a parent company and a subsidiary; therefore, the result is
that FAPIIS does not track contractors as a whole organization,
and contracting officials miss important information about the
big picture.
If a contracting officer were to do a name search in an
effort not to miss the big picture, it can render the system
nearly impossible to navigate. I want to illustrate how
problematic this is with a common example--Lockheed Martin. If
we search for Lockheed Martin by name in an effort to get a big
picture sense of the company's past performance, instead of a
particular subsidiary, we get a list of over 80 entries.
We prepared a marked-up handbook that illustrates for you
what the screen is showing when we search for Lockheed
Martin.\1\ As you can see, it is riddled with confusing names,
some of which with bad typos. Each group of the same color
arrows illustrates a variation on the same name, and some of
them can be quite silly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The Assessement Report appears in the Appendix on page 50.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For instance, we have Lockheed Martin Corporation, which
apparently is different from Lockheed Martin Corp, without a
period; Lockheed Martin Corp., with a period; Lockheed Martin
Corporation; Lockheed Mar. I think you get the idea. We also
have Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, without a comma;
Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, with a comma; and another
identically named Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, but the
two have different DUNS Numbers so they are listed separately.
And one has 346 evaluations under it and the other one with the
exact same name, right down to the comma at the end, only has
one evaluation under it.
I realize these might not be all the Lockheed Martin, or
even related to it, but most of them are. The point is if you
have a DUNS Number for one small part of Lockheed, you are
missing all the other subsidiaries and parent corporations
which could shed light on the corporation's behavior. But if
you do not have a DUNS Number and try to search by name, this
is what you have to deal with.
I am not sure how the contracting officer is supposed to
handle this. Can you give me some reaction to this? How can we
fix this? And I am a little worried that we are captured by the
DUNS Numbers since we do not even own them. We are paying a
bunch of money for them. Has there been any thought or any
effort to making this a little bit more accurate as to
subsidiaries in like names and DUNS Numbers?
Mr. Youel Page. Senator, yes, indeed. And you are very much
focused in this question on something that we are well aware of
and share your concern. Some of the nuance behind the reason we
are here has to do with PPIRS being a collection point for
historically a number of different entry points, and so there
are data standards, mismatches between those legacy systems and
what is in PPIRS.
It is a known problem that we are seriously trying to
grapple with as we consolidate the systems and do a better job
as a Federal Government managing data standards more broadly
across the acquisition world.
We do have efforts in place. There is a Federal Acquisition
Regulation (FAR) case that is moving forward to establish the
CAGE Code, the Department of Defense (DOD) CAGE Code, as a
mechanism for doing a better job of capturing the parent/child
relationship among entities in the system, and so that is one
effort underway to do a better job to address the entity
management problem. And we have been looking and continuing to
scan the environment for other ways beyond Dun & Bradstreet and
DUNS Numbers to manage entity management, things like, for
example, the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) being pursued by the
G-8 and the G-20, and some of our--I believe the Federal
Reserve is managing that on behalf of U.S. Government.
So this is a byproduct of years of going it separately that
we need to do the hard work on data standards and management
and migration to improve, and is in fact on our path.
Senator McCaskill. Well that is good, because I think some
of this is--I know there is a hesitation to give up all the
legacy information. But at some point in time, you have to pull
the band-aid off and begin a system that makes more sense.
Because you could not expect a contracting officer to navigate
something like this and get accurate information; it is just
impossible.
Let me also talk about the evaluations. When there are
hundreds of evaluations, I think it is almost impossible to
draw conclusions from them. It makes it very difficult, I
think, for a contracting officer, especially if you cannot view
all the information that is contained in them.
Have there been discussions about aggregating the ratings
and the evaluations?
Mr. Youel Page. Yes, ma'am. We have been in discussions
with OMB and with the interagency community on what it would
take to do that, and a step precedent to being able to
aggregate is to get to common standards for definitions of past
performance so that we are in common definitions as to what a
rating means.
And we are very far along in managing that problem, and so
I think we are closer to being able to do better analytics on
the large numbers of past performance reports in the system,
and to do different kinds of analytics. Because this is a
nuanced problem. On the one hand, we do want to see every
relevant piece of past performance for parent/child/sibling
part of the entity. On the other hand, the CO may judge that
some of that past performance is more relevant and wish to
narrow down their search on relevant parts rather than parts
that may not be as relevant.
A large company like the one you have brought forward here
by necessity has operating units that operate quite
independently and certainly with different staff, different
past performance histories, and we would not necessarily want
to lose the opportunity to do business with the greatest vendor
on earth in one area because they happen not to be as
responsive in another area.
So it is a nuance and complicated decisionmaking process
for the CO, and the system, we agree, needs to do a better job
enabling the kind of analytics that would enable that
sophisticated decision----
Senator McCaskill. It seems a numerical analytic would make
more sense in terms of being able to aggregate accurate
information, the satisfactory and--I think that makes it much
harder. We will continue to followup on that, but I am glad
that you are addressing that, because I think it really is a
problem.
It appears that the CGI Group--which this is a really big-
time public failure, the contract with CGI for Healthcare.gov.
I do not know that we have had a bigger one that got more
attention, that more people understood that it was a complete
failure. It appears that CGI Group purchased a company called
American Management Systems (AMS) that had a number of pretty
high contracting failures, some on the State level that
resulted in millions in penalties and widely reported failure
on the Federal level for the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), the
retirement savings plan for Federal employees.
CGI Group then renamed AMS to CGI Federal. And as we all
know, the newly renamed CGI Federal, which was still made up of
the AMS management and employees, won the contract for
Healthcare.gov together. It seems that the CMS contracting
officers in this case may not have realized that CGI Federal,
which has a clean past performance record under its new name,
was essentially the same company of the not so clean former
AMS, which illustrates a major problem in our contracting
process.
Are there any safeguards in place? Can you recommend
safeguards that should be put in place for a situation like
this where we have an acquisition and a name change? Sometimes
it is just as simple as a name change. And negative performance
information that would have been vital in this situation was
never even obtained or known about.
Mr. Youel Page. We do. Through the System for Award
Management, I have information from Dun & Bradstreet that helps
us understand the nature of relationships between novated
companies, parent and child companies, and so I believe there
are ways that we could use that information that we currently
have rights to do a better job in managing that kind of
business problem.
But I say that with some trepidation. The whole issue of
corporate control and governances is very complicated. It was
not in this case, but it can be very complicated and difficult
to manage for all companies trying to grapple with the question
of what is an entity, when is an entity substantially the same
as an entity last year. These become, again, difficult.
Senator McCaskill. Shouldn't there be some kind of trigger
when you have a company that is new? I would think if we were
CGI Federal is a relatively--I mean, this was clearly not
something that had been around for decades. This is something
that had happened.
The AMS failure with the Federal Thrift Savings Plan is
still all over the web, if you search it, and it resulted in a
Senate hearing. But the past performance database-PPIRS--does
not contain a single record of it. Now, I assume that is
because it happened back in the late 1990s and early part of
this decade. Is that----
Mr. Youel Page. I am not sure I could answer that question.
I am sorry, Senator. I do not know the specifics of this case
or the record that we are talking about.
Senator McCaskill. Well, it is a great example of where the
databases are not serving the contracting officers as
effectively as they need to. I guarantee you; everybody at CMS
who made that contracting decision would have loved to have
known this before they did. It might have avoided a huge black
eye for this administration and for the healthcare reform
program.
Another issue is assessing the self-reported information
from contractors. FAPIIS pulls self-reported information from
SAM. For example, Honeywell self-reported that it answered yes
to both questions about contracts and at-fault proceedings
below, but the only answer is yes. And there is no information
about these proceedings. The yes answer to such a question is
pretty useless on its own. We need to be able to access the
details of these proceedings.
Have you considered changes to require additional audits or
oversight of contractors reporting into the database?
Mr. Youel Page. I am sorry. I am watching the website
trying to understand why the administrative agreement is not
contained in the record. It ought to be. Is the suggestion that
there is no detailed information in this record?
Senator McCaskill. Correct. There is no information about
the proceedings; they just answered yes. And I guess the issue
here, Mr. Youel Page, is that we are relying on the contractors
to self-report, but I do not think we are ever going back and
checking----
Mr. Youel Page. That they are reporting.
Senator McCaskill. That they are reporting accurately,
completely, or if they are reporting at all.
Mr. Youel Page. My understanding is that to the extent that
they are reporting, the self-reporting is happening through
their certifications and representations in SAM. My
understanding is that when those two questions are answered in
the affirmative, yes, I have a contract of this value, and yes,
I have a proceeding, that the system will require an upload of
a copy of some information related to that proceeding, and that
is contained and available.
So I will look into this case where that apparently is not
the case. But my understanding has been that this is----
Senator McCaskill. If you would followup, because my
understanding is that based on the research that my staff has
done, that this is not always occurring. And the question is
what mechanism is there to check when it is not occurring?
Mr. Youel Page. No, it is a very fair question and I will
look into that. I believe there is a check and we will make
sure the check is working the way it is supposed to.
Senator McCaskill. OK. My staff has also found several
technical issues with FAPIIS, including issues as simple as the
back button not working. In FAPIIS, both the public website and
the module within PPIRS, the back link to go back to search
results only works in Internet Explorer but not in any other
browser.
Is there any work being done to ensure that people have the
ability, regardless of what browser you are using, to utilize
the back link, something pretty basic in 2014?
Captain Drapp. I will look into that. I am not aware of
that, ma'am.
Senator McCaskill. OK. If we do a search for past
performance in PPIRS and then want to see the adverse actions
in FAPIIS for the same company DUNS Number, you have to switch
applications. It is now not possible to be signed into both
PPIRS and FAPIIS module at the same time. Now, while it is not
difficult to switch from PPIRS to FAPIIS and vice versa, what
happens when you switch is that you lose whatever search you
were doing in the database you switched from.
You follow me?
Captain Drapp. Yes, ma'am.
Senator McCaskill. So in addition to whatever technical
glitches, is these little things that make a contractor
officer's job more difficult and can easily lead to overlooking
information. I do not think it is unreasonable to expect these
databases to not have these technical blocks that make it much
more difficult to do this basic research.
And if you could, Captain Drapp, if you could followup
about those technical issues that we discovered in trying to
utilize these databases in an effective way.
Captain Drapp. Yes, ma'am.
Senator McCaskill. Right now contractors are self-reporting
whether they have been subject to any criminal, civil or
administrative procedure in connection with a Federal award
that has resulted in a finding of fault. Shouldn't the
contractors report their involvement in any litigation, or
should we just limit it to those where they had resulted in a
finding of fault?
My concern is that a contractor could settle a lawsuit
without admitting fault. And by the way, that is more common
than anything else, that there is a settlement of a lawsuit and
the reason that the company settles is because they are worried
that they are going to be found at fault.
There is no motivation to settle unless you got liability.
So a settlement always means that there is some liability on
the part of the company. In some instances, it may be they want
to settle to avoid legal costs. I get that. But typically,
those are de minimis cases because, you do not want to settle
for legal costs--if it is a de minimis settlement then it would
be just for legal costs.
But if I were a contractor, I would seek to make sure that
happens so as not to impact any future business I did with the
U.S. Government. That would be a motivation to settle, because
if I settle and do not admit fault, I never have to report it.
So is it not a good idea at least to ask the contractors to
delineate litigation that they have been involved in and then
if the contracting officer has other things that they are
asking questions about, it gives them the ability to inquire?
Mr. Youel Page. It is an excellent question. It is a very
deeply policy-weighted question and I think there are probably
great arguments on the pro and the con side of that question
that I am not sure I am the right person or well-equipped to
give to you right now, Senator McCaskill, but I do think it is
a good question.
Senator McCaskill. I understand that there could be some
arguments that you want to--it is not fair to the companies,
that they have to report all of this, because there could be a
frivolous lawsuit and settled for a minimal amount, but they
always have the ability to report that. It is not as if they
cannot explain it, if that is in fact the case.
So I would love to debate someone who--because I am sitting
on the side that I want the government to have as much
information as possible, because I do not want the government
to be spending public money with a company that it should not
be spending public money with. So if it is a close argument,
then they should lose, because the government is the one that
is giving them money to perform a service or to provide
products, and we have the right as the customer to demand
certain standards. And if they do not want to have those
standards, then they are not required to do business with us.
Nobody is putting a gun to the head of these contractors and
saying you must do business with the Federal Government.
So if it is a close argument, I think this one should go to
the government for more information, and I would appreciate if
you would followup and see what would be the objections to, and
by the way, if you get the cite of the case in this day and
age, all you would have to do is get the pleading and the court
filing and in about 2 seconds you can look up the lawsuit. You
can look up what the facts of the lawsuit were. You can look up
the pleading. You can learn whether or not this on its face is
something that would cause us concern or whether on its face it
is something that we do not need to bother with.
And maybe this is not the kind of deep research that would
need to be done on every contract, but it certainly would be
done on some, especially those that are of high security
matters that we have contracts with all the time.
What are the obstacles to requiring contractors to report
labor or human rights violations? If there is a labor violation
that they have had or a human rights violation they have had,
is there any mechanism now that requires them to report that?
And are there obstacles to that?
Mr. Youel Page. It is my understanding right now that the
regulation is set so that the self-reporting is self-reporting
of these administrative matters in relation to a Federal
contract. So I think at the moment the regulation is set in
such a way that other violations or other civil actions not in
conjunction with a Federal contract are not required to be
reported.
Senator McCaskill. So what we would probably have to do is
have the FAR clarify that business integrity would include
compliance with labor and other human rights laws such as those
regarding trafficking?
Mr. Youel Page. I believe that I would answer that, yes.
Senator McCaskill. It is currently not defined, business
integrity. Although it is mentioned many times in FAR, we
cannot find a definition for it.
OK. We have spent some time talking about how we can make
the databases work better, but as they are working now, I have
some concerns as to whether they are informing contractor
officers the way they should be. For example, although CMS has
decided not to renew CGI Federal's work on Healthcare.gov and
has instead given it to Accenture, CMS has nevertheless given
CGI Federal additional work on other projects.
Is there a policy in place that there is some kind of
warning that goes out across the system? I mean, what worries
me is that someplace else in the Federal Government they would
be contracting with this company after this massive failure to
provide a basic website that worked on a very important date.
I mean, what happens if a contractor overlooks relevant
past performances, contracting officer? Is there something
built in that there is some kind of disciplinary action or does
anybody even notice? Is there some kind of oversight in that
regard that you can speak to, either one of you?
Mr. Youel Page. I can say for certain that contracting
officers are required to look at FAPIIS and at PPIRS before
they make an award. They are required to look and do an
evaluation of past performance on any purchase over the micro
purchase threshold. So each CO has to engage--each source
selection official engages in that analysis under their own
management structures and oversight and quality assurance.
And it is our job to make sure that the system, as we have
been talking about today, gives them raw material to work with
to help them form their opinion about past performance as part
of an overall source selection decision, as one component of
the source selection decision, in order, exactly as you pointed
out, to mitigate the risks to government of entering into
business with a vendor that is not capable or less capable of
doing the work and perhaps should be not considered for that
work.
Senator McCaskill. It just worries me that they overlook it
and then there is nothing that happens. That is my biggest
concern.
I am almost to the end here. Another problem with assessing
past performance is the information contained in them does not
always reflect the contractor's performance. For example, the
most recent past performance for CGI Federal's work on
Healthcare.gov is an assessment dated June 12, 2013, because it
was an annual for the previous year. They were ranked
exceptional for their performance in every category.
As we pulled up on the screen, and you can see, this was a
period of time during which the Administration was
acknowledging that there would be issues with the rollout. As
early as March 2013, Henry Chao, deputy chief information
officer at CMS, said at an insurance industry meeting that he
was ``Pretty nervous,'' about the exchanges being ready October
1, and adding, ``Let's just make sure it is not a Third World
experience.''
And on June 19, 2013, GAO said the health insurance
exchanges might not open on time because they had missed
deadlines and were behind schedule, including on testing the
system. But on the PPIRS assessment dated a week before, CGI
was not just ranked as OK on their contract but ranked
exceptional in every category.
Another example is BP. You might recall after Deepwater,
the EPA suspended BP and its related subsidiaries from
obtaining new contracts, a suspension that BP and the British
Government are actively fighting. Despite the catastrophic
disaster which caused billions of dollars in damage, there
doesn't appear to be any record of poor past performance in
PPIRS for any of the BP entities suspended. My staff did a
search for every single DUNS Number that is listed as a
suspended BP entity in SAM and in PPIRS. Only pulled up a
handful of past performance evaluations that BP did overseas
for the U.S. Government and all the evaluations were rated
satisfactory or higher.
It is weird to me that a contracting officer using a non-
public database would have less complete information about a
contractor's performance than somebody who just googled them.
What can we do to ensure that past performance reports actually
include negative information? It is like there is this thing
out there--and I found this with contracting oversight that I
have been working on now for 7 years. There is such a
reluctance of people evaluating these contractors putting
negative information down. I mean, I can tell you horror
stories--and you are probably aware of them--of the contracting
and contingencies overseas where we not only were giving them
excellent ratings when they were ripping us off and doing
substandard work, we were giving them performance bonuses for
doing great work at the same time they were electrocuting our
soldiers in showers because they had wired them faulty.
So what can we do about getting negative information that
is accurate that is available to anybody if they just do a web
search of the company included in PPIRS? What steps need to be
taken?
Mr. Youel Page. I think we have been in receipt of several
memos from OMB asking the Federal agencies to take a very close
look at how they're managing past performance records, whether
they are doing factual and accurate assessments on an annual
basis as they are required to do. They have been promoting
fuller compliance with evaluating each of the contracts
required to be evaluated so that the information could be in
the system, and I think they have been working on aspects of
the training of the acquisition community as to how to do a
better job evaluating past performance and doing it in a more
comprehensive and fact-based way.
At the end of the day, this entire system is made up of
people, processes, policies, and technology, and each of them
need to be doing their part to make the entire system evolve
and get to those better answers.
Senator McCaskill. It is really a hard question to answer,
and I know it is. I guess what I wonder about, are the
contracting officers, or more importantly, the contract
evaluators, are they given enough training about--I mean, first
of all, if there is negative information that comes up, you
should not wait a year. CGI Federal should have had entries on
October 1st in PPIRS. Major screw up. That is probably all you
need to put in there.
But it is almost like if a contracting evaluation gives
negative information, they know they are going to get blowback
from the contractor, right? And it is just easier not to. I
mean, that is part of my sense of this is that, you do not want
to fight the battle that if you put negative information down
that there is--we are going to sue you or that is not true or
you are not being fair.
I think it is true throughout the Federal Government
frankly. We let things slide because it is just too hard to
fight it. And I think in this area, past performance, that is
what is going on. I mean the notion that there is not negative
information about CGI Federal or the subsidiaries of BP in
PPIRS is embarrassing, that we're responsible for that. And I
would love someone--and I do not know who was in charge of
doing this, but someone needs to find out why that stuff has
not been entered. Is it because it is not on an annual basis
and that is the only time you do it?
Anybody?
Mr. Youel Page. They are required to do it on an annual
basis or at the end of the contract performance.
Senator McCaskill. Are they allowed to do it midstream?
Mr. Youel Page. Yes.
Senator McCaskill. They can do it at any time?
Mr. Youel Page. That is right.
Senator McCaskill. OK. Well, somebody needs to ask some
tough questions about why this is not occurring, because it is
clearly not, and I think there are a lot of contractors that
are skating by on substandard performances that are not getting
noted because it is just easier to say satisfactory than it is
to give them negative information knowing that that is now
going to be a contentious situation.
It is the same thing with evaluating employees, the saying
in the Federal Government that it is hard to get a job there,
but once you do, do not worry, which is not fair to most
Federal employees because they are terrific and they work hard
and they are dedicated and they make less money than they would
in the private sector.
But there are from time to time problem employees, and it
is very difficult sometimes to remove them because it has not
been documented. And this is a kissing cousin of the same
problem, that it is just easier to let it slide.
So if you have some sense that you need to improve
reporting into CPARS and PPIRS, which I know you do, are you
implementing programs to improve the quality and frequency of
reporting? Are there actually programs that are in place that
are doing that? And I know PPIRS is not 100 percent yet. Where
are you at reporting and how do you feel about the quality and
frequency in terms of improvement? Do you really feel like you
have turned a corner or do you still see that there are other
programs that we can implement that would make it even better?
Mr. Youel Page. For our part on the system side, we have
been working with the community to give them management reports
that would help them identify areas where they need to improve
their compliance with the past performance requirements. I
think that OMB has been focused on this issue in a couple of
memos that they have issued. And I know just in past roles
where I have been responsible for ensuring compliance with the
FAR that it is an issue taken seriously and it is on report
cards and performance evaluations, at least in places I have
worked.
I can't say that is happening throughout the Federal
Government, but I suspect it is. And so I think that there are
known improvements that are underway in terms of getting the
quality and the time limits of reports up, and no doubt miles
to go.
Senator McCaskill. Has there been any discussion about
trying to include contracting at the State or local level, or
is that just a bridge too far at this point with all the
challenges that you face?
Mr. Youel Page. I am not sure I have been party to that
discussion, but I would not necessarily be in the policy
discussions where that would come up routinely.
Senator McCaskill. Well, I think it is important with AMS,
the predecessor to CGI. There was a littered history of
disastrous contract work they did for States besides the Thrift
Savings Plan debacle, that fairly easy to find if you just
googled that company. And I know that we have not gotten our
act completely together just getting the information from
Federal contracts yet, but I do think in some of the cross-
agency groups you have that talk about this, I think it needs
to get on the agenda for discussion, especially with everything
being so technically available now by computers.
Most of these State databases are available to the public,
and, I mean, we are getting to the point that integration is
not rustling the main frame any more. It is much simpler and
much easier with the technology that we have now today compared
to even just a few years ago. So I do think it would be elegant
and seamless and important if we could have a complete picture
of a contractor in terms of their government contracting and
one that was not just limited to the Federal Government.
Well, I hope you can leave this hearing knowing that there
is one person in Congress that actually cares about this stuff.
It is complicated and hard, but it is really important. And I
want you both to know that you probably--you try to explain to
people what you do, I am sure their eyes glaze over before you
can get to the second sentence.
At least you know that my eyes are not glazing over and
that there are folks that are looking very carefully at what
you are doing and how you are doing, because we believe it is
very important. We will continue to followup in these areas,
and I just wanted to have this hearing. And my staff has done a
terrific job of doing some of the research to see how this is
actually working now.
I hope to have a hearing in a few years to congratulate you
on a more integrated system with more information that is
immediately transparent to anyone who wants to see it, that is
accurate and complete, and makes the job of contracting the
Federal Government's money much more effective and efficient.
And if you would provide the answers to the questions that you
took for the record to the Committee, and we may have a few
others as followup questions for the record before we close the
record on his hearing.
And I bet you guys will not be back when I have the next
hearing, but please tell the people that take your jobs when
you leave that they can expect another hearing like this in the
coming years. And we probably will not wait four or five this
time. We will probably do another one in a couple years to see
if we are continuing to make progress.
Thank you both very much for being here.
Captain Drapp. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 10:44 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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