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Contracting Rush For Security Led To Waste, Abuse
Radiation-detection machines screen trucks and cargo containers at ports and borders. The machines have trouble distinguishing between highly enriched uranium and common household products.
(By Bob Mack -- Florida Times-union Via Associated Press)
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John Ely, executive director for procurement at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said he was confident that the money could be tracked.
"Don't think because we don't know what that is, we couldn't find out," Ely said on March 31.
Ely said he needed to triple his contracting staff. "There's not enough of us," he said.
Agency officials last week blamed the confusion about the spending on the integration of a new computer system and chronic data-entry mistakes that will be fixed.
Contracting specialists say the push on homeland security came at a time when the government was engaged in a broad effort to turn over key functions to corporations. The trend, begun during the Clinton administration to streamline government, included deep cuts to the federal workforce responsible for contracting and oversight.
Today, government officials often refer to corporations as "partners" rather than contractors. In some cases, companies are even hired to oversee the work of other companies.
"We have allowed the contractors to totally take over the process, and as a result, the costs are getting totally inflated," said D. Kent Goodger, a federal contracting official for 38 years who now teaches federal procurement courses for the Agriculture Department and other agencies. "Right now, it's out of control."
Three years ago, the man whose department was then responsible for leading the efforts to secure the nation's airports questioned whether it was wise to attempt so much in so little time.
"Well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out you're not going to get from here to there given that kind of production scheme," Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said in a television interview.
He was roundly criticized for those remarks by the White House and Congress. The deadlines came with consequences.
"Because of the congressional deadlines, it cost a lot more money," said corporate lawyer Angela B. Styles, chief of the OMB's procurement division under President Bush from 2001 to 2003.
"If you had an infrastructure in place with people who knew how to do things quickly, like people from the Department of Defense, you would have had more success," she said. "With the deadlines and the poor acquisition workforce and the public pressure, it was a recipe for disaster from the very beginning."
