More than 90 percent of the Department of Energy’s $26 billion budget is contracted out to a host of firms, large and small. DOE has been working hard over the past several years to improve how it reports, records and tracks contractor performance—a laudable goal, considering how much money is on the line. But there’s just one problem: the system that DOE, DoD and much of the federal government is using—the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting (CPAR) system—can only be accessed by a handful of federal staff in each agency.
The General Services Administration, which maintains the CPAR system, says CPAR scores and information are not releasable because it is “privileged source selection information” that is used to “support ongoing source selections and contains sensitive data concerning a contractor and its performance. In this regard, CPAR has the unique characteristic of always being pre-decisional in nature.”
The justification for keeping the information secret—that the ratings are used in evaluations for future contracts and are therefore procurement sensitive—is weak and shortsighted. The taxpayers, Congressional staff, investors in publicly traded companies, and anyone else who is interested should be able to access performance ratings for government contractors.
This is virtually the same argument that the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy were using in recent years as a justification for not releasing the Performance Evaluation Reports and fee determinations for its contractors. What happened? The agency was forced to reverse course, changing its policies to allow for the timely release of such information in the face of mounting public pressure that culminated in language in the FY 2013 Defense Authorization Act directing that the information be made available to the public.
So why is the CPAR information needed in addition to Department’s own fee determinations? Because DOE has made it clear that the fee determinations should not be viewed as absolute indicators of performance. As DOE spokesman Geoff Tyree told WC Monitor last year in reference to a question on the fee determination for Hanford contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company, “Our role in the Department is to validate whether or not work is completed that the contractor has reported as completed, and if it has been completed, then the Department pays the contractor fee. It’s an objective determination. It’s not a subjective determination. It’s not meant to be a performance report on the contractor. The fee determination for this contractor is not meant to be a report card. It is an assessment of the work completed, a validation of whether or not the work has been completed, and if so, a determination of fee.”
As Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition and Project Management Jack Surash explained in a 2012 interview with WC Monitor: CPAR ratings are “the official record from us documenting performance of our contractors.”
Fair enough. But if fee determinations aren’t a clear indicator of performance and CPAR ratings are, then that information should not be kept secret. It’s not a stretch of logic that the people who are funding this work—the taxpayer—should be able to see for themselves whether fee determinations match CPAR ratings and assess for themselves how well the government is doing as stewards of the billions of dollars being spent on these important missions.
Last year’s contractor performance is not “predecisional” and the evaluations shouldn’t be either. The work is too important for the public to be kept in the dark.
Martin Schneider
CEO, ExchangeMonitor Publications
10/17/2014
