The U.S. government’s system for assessing contractor performance is in the midst of a badly needed rethink. The challenges apply across a broad range of federal agencies, but some experts say the effort to address them could have specific implications for companies that work with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting Systems is supposed to provide government agencies a way to evaluate companies on how well they implement projects, and then to use those evaluations to inform future award decisions. Contracting experts and government watchdogs say the system has flaws that result in arbitrary scores, as well as a tendency to rate a growing number of contractors as “satisfactory,” which limits the usefulness of a comparative rating system.
“The value sort of has been diminishing, particularly in the last few years,” said Stephanie Kostro, executive vice president at the Professional Services Council, a trade group for government contractors.