Services Acquisition in the Department of Defense: Analysis of Operational and Performance Data to Identify Drivers of Success

Abstract

The Department of Defense (DoD) acquires billions of dollars of supplies and services every year. In fiscal year (FY) 2013, the DoD obligated over $258 billion for military-unique weapon systems as well as commercial supplies and services. An integral part of the DoD's contract management process is the source selection phase when offerors proposals are evaluated and the contract award decision is made. A critical aspect of the source selection phase is the evaluation of contractor past performance information as part of the overall proposal evaluation process. The DoD uses the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS), which consists of contractor report cards extracted from the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS). In this research we examine the value of CPARS report card narratives for service contracts as they relate to their associated objective scores. Our primary focus in this research is to examine if the CPARS report card written narrative section provides value to the contractor performance evaluation process. Our data analysis includes sentiment and statistical analysis, as well as interviews with government agency contracting professionals. Using CPARS data, narrative analyses, and interviews, we answer the following research questions: (1) To what degree are government contracting professionals submitting to CPARS contractor performance narratives in accordance with the guidelines provided in the CPARS user's manual? (2) What is the added value of the contractor performance narratives beyond the value of the objective scores for performance? (3) What is the statistical relationship between the sentiment contained in the narratives and the objective scores for contractor evaluations? The research revealed that there are a variety of opportunities to improve the contracting process specifically related to the narrative portion of past performance assessment reports.