Time for me to rant about contracting again, but the BLUF here is "this won't change for years, if at all."
I contracted for almost 17 years before crossing over to the .gov side last year. Regardless, my views on contracting have not changed, views which are favorable and "less than favorable" on contracting as a whole.
I know @BloodStripe is far better versed on the admin/legal/contract side than I ever will be, so he can maybe correct me on this. A thing exists, and I've heard a few terms used, I'll run with what I know, the Contractor Performance and Assessment Reporting System or CPARS; I've also heard it referred to by the form name of CPAR or just PAR. Anywho, this documents exactly that: how well a contractor performs its job, what it is paid to do. You also have a COR, Contracting Officer's Representative. The COR is the government's local (supposed to be at least) eyes and ears monitoring the contractor's performance.
Here's where it shits the bed.
Maybe the COR is honest and doing their job, but more likely the COR is buddy-buddy with the contractors and doesn't drop a PAR on bad performance. Failure 1. When a PAR is written, companies tend to "lawyer up" with their response. A sort of fatigue sets in and eventually the gov't develops "learned helplessness" which to simplify is a mindset of taking a beating until you give up. Thus, the only time a PAR becomes relevant, if at all, is during a contract rebid. Failure 2. The gov't can use PARs as a reason to reject a contractor's rebid proposal, and even that will see the company lawyer up. Some (all of my overseas in this case, but not stateside) contracts are for 5 years with a 1 year "approval"; in theory this gives the gov't an early out for poor performance. The problem is this is very, very rare in my experience. Failure 3. Individual contractors can be total shitbirds and the .mil will rarely press to have them fired and the company is typically only paid if that slot is filled, so there's no incentive to fire said shitbird. Failure 4. There's a lot more to this, but I'm tired of typing and most of you have stopped reading.
Mechanisms exist to "fix" a bad contract, but those mechanisms are only as good as the gov't reps involved. I'm not even remotely religious and even I think this situation is wrong, just flat wrong. Religion is very, very important in the lives of many, so stripping away a religious connection, especially in this context, is very harmful to the patients. At a time when mental health is at an all time low, a positive source of treatment is taken away? That is as wrong as the Dalai Lama around schoolchildren (nod to current events). This CAN be fixed though, there are ways to make the contractor fulfill its contract or tell them to hit the bricks. We just won't do it and it would not matter who is in the WH, once the genie is out of the bottle it is very difficult to return to the "days of old." As much as I support contracting and contractors, the above needs to be fixed but it won't because of lawyers and money. Thus, a very positive tool or method is corrupted with taxpayers and servicemembers paying the price.
Follow me for more hot takes on contracting.
