HASC to ask GAO to investigate protests

May 19, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: Congress, Contract Awards, Editorial, Federal Budget Process, GAO, Protest 

As part of their work on the defense budget the HASC is going to ask the GAO to investigate whether there are too many protests. See the story here. As we have previously discussed ad nauseum there is little disincentive for a losing contractor to protest. At the best they win, and the worst they lose but it takes little time and money to cut the necessary legal documents and fax them in. With the number of large contracts declining, and their worth growing, there will continue to be protests as the various contracts awarded. It has not just been for large development and procurement contracts, there have been protests of service ones as well. The GAO dismisses most of the protests as it takes a really big screw up by the acquisition and contract people to uphold them, but the delay the programs and cost the winner and the government time and money. Since the right to protest is pretty much part of Federal contract law it will be hard to change the number without changing that, unless the Congress wants to start punishing for frivolous protests. That is not common in American legal tradition, but we will see.

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Congress states the obvious

April 29, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: Congress, Department of Defense, Federal Budget Process, development program, production program 

In response to this GAO report a while back Congress had some hearings to bash DoD acquisition programs. The article is here. The title is a little unfair in that “wastes” is a strong word. Few programs are terminated or canceled outright and those that do usually have some technology spill over. Developing, testing and producing major weapon and IT systems is hard. The system often does underestimate time and costs at the beginning, but it takes only one failed test to blow a schedule and millions of dollars. This is especially true of missile systems where your test assets are expensive enough and get expended in the test. Software development is often much more complicated and costly then originally thought, even though DoD has several decades of experience in this kind of matters. That doesn’t mean there is not room for improvement, but the only way to severely reduce time and money is to allow only incremental steps in capability. It is the never ending paradigm of weapon acquisition.

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Shockingly weapon systems tend to be late and more expensive then originally planned

April 1, 2008 by Dagpotter · 2 Comments
Filed under: Department of Defense, Federal Budget Process, GAO, development program 

In their regular annual review of weapon system acquisition the GAO figured out the current programs are on average 2 years behind schedule and a few billion over initial budget estimates. See the story here. Shocking!! This has always been the trend with these large systems. The initial cost estimates and schedules are optimistic and are based on the requirement set that exists when the contract is awarded. As the program develops and requirements change it takes time and money to fix the issues as they develop. Testing, which usually doesn’t happen until later in the program, reveals issues that take time to fix and then adds additional tests. All of these factors have been consistent for years. The only way that this is not going to happen is if everything goes perfectly, which is a little unrealistic expectation.

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