GAO: A fresh pair of eyes can bring risk into view

If a management support service has slowly shifted too close to supporting an inherently governmental function, the Government Accountability Office says a fresh pair of eyes can bring the risk into view.

“We found that concerns were generally raised by officials who were new to a program office or contracting officials who had assumed responsibilities for an existing contract,” GAO wrote in a report on the risks associated with support services. The report was released Jan.6.

For instance, a senior official in the Transportation Department’s Airline Information Office raised concerns about a lack of government employee expertise to oversee IT duties. Contractors had developed and also exclusively operated the duties for several years.

The contracting officer and contracting officer’s representative in the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Sudan Mission had concerns about interaction among federal employees and contractor staff in a newly established mission office. They feared that security and logistic challenges had left the government overly reliant on contractors’ expertise.

GAO was reviewing the increased in spending on professional and management support services since fiscal 2005. The services pose risks contractors knowing more about an agency’s operations than the agency’s own employees. Some services can easily bring contractors very close to supporting inherently governmental functions and the federal employees doing them.

Posted by Matthew Weigelt on Jan 09, 2012 at 2:15 PM