The Way to Better Contracts

One of the most frustrating things about my almost 20-year involvement in the efforts to improve the quality of government contracting is the slow progress in moving toward performance-based contracting for services. There has been a push for it for a long time now. It began under Al Burman, my predecessor as administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy during George H.W. Bush's administration. That push continued while I was OFPP administrator from 1993 to 1997 and has remained a focus since. The government has made some progress, but it has been excruciatingly slow.