COMMENTARY


HIGH-STAKES CHOICES


Army Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville receives a brief before a V-280 Valor flight demonstration in Arlington, Texas, on Oct. 28. The need to improve how the Army evaluates its contracting work and uses that data is an issue that has come to the forefront with the importance of the Army’s modernization strategy. (Photo by Luke J. Allen, Army Futures Command)


lowest bidder (possibly out of fear of protest). How often are the new 2019 National Defense Authorization Act acquisition authorities being used? Tese are just potential pre-award areas to measure. Tere are many others.


On a related note, one measure the Army currently uses to deter- mine the size of the contracting workforce is how many dollars an organization puts on contract and how many contract actions they execute. Tis method not only fails to track the labor-hours type tasks, such as time spent inputting data into the Synchro- nized Predeployment and Operational Tracker, Trusted Associate Sponsorship System and Joint Contingency Contracting System


—a measure independent of “dollars and actions”— it also could create an incentive for individual contracting employees and orga- nizations to prioritize the number of contracts they award over the number of high-quality contracts they award (i.e., quantity over quality). We cannot analyze whether, or to what extent, there is an exchange of contract quantity for contract quality unless we develop and evaluate the quality metrics.


METRICS NEVER TELL THE WHOLE STORY A true culture change in Army contracting would require us to acknowledge what can be measured or streamlined and what cannot. A prime example: Te work of a contracting officer (KO)


https://asc.ar my.mil 149


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