The crowd was rather dispirited at the recent National Contract Management Association World Congress in Long Beach, Calif., wrote Steve Kelman in his Federal Computer Week blog.
“The mood at the events … has been, I guess I would say, put-upon,” said Kelman, a federal procurement expert. “Contracting professionals are not regarding the country’s political leadership, either in Congress or the White House, as an ally or supportive in their efforts to achieve better contracting outcomes,” he said. “Instead, they are seen primarily as the source of politically driven but substantively dubious mandates forced on contracting professionals.”
A big source of resentment is the push by both the administration and Congress for more firm fixed-price contracts, wrote Kelman. “Contracting professionals believe they are being pressured to award contracts as fixed-price in situations where this contract type is inappropriate, either because the work is risky or the requirements are ill-defined.”
