ABSTRACT
An approach to rating contractor proposals used by numerous state and several large city governments would, if adopted by federal government contracting offices, significantly improve the federal government procurement process. State and local government agencies (such as counties, cities, school boards, public universities, etc.) do not benefit from a single definitive set of regulations, such as the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), that directs federal contracting professionals in performing their work. Despite the myriad of diverse regulations controlling procurement practices of state and local government agencies, certain processes implemented by states eclipse federal acquisition practices. Standardized federal government acquisition rules facilitate the design and implementation of large-scale nationwide procurement training and the ability of personnel trained in contracting processes by one federal agency to contribute immediately upon transitioning to another federal agency. Federal government contractors conduct their contracting and subcontracting operations according to the FAR. Standardized contracting rules provide for trained federal acquisition military or civilian personnel to immediately become effective contributors to federal government contractors in their contracting and subcontracting efforts. Just as with computer software problems that can potentially cause large-scale wide-ranging consequences, however, the implementation of dysfunctional federal acquisition uniform practices is likely to result in widespread, grave consequences throughout the behemoth federal government. As an example of how a process might be corrupted on a wide-scale basis, consider the director of Defense 146Procurement and Acquisition Policy memorandum discussed in the previous chapter. That memorandum prohibits all DOD activities involved in the evaluation of proposals for selecting the best-value contractor from using numerical scoring when rating proposals. This prohibition was implemented throughout the DOD. The DOD, having the largest acquisition budget in the federal government by a large measure, prohibits numerical rating of proposals despite FAR provisions permitting this practice. The most severe consequence of this loss of accessibility to benefits garnered through numerical proposal ratings is the failure to identify the contractor offering the best value to the government.
