Acquisition Requirements and Root Cause Analysis: A Data-Centric Perspective with Data Governance, Data Analytics, and Data Quality

Abstract

There is a cyclical relationship between the acquisition community and contractors that does not function in the same manner as the free market, where pressures self-regulate supply and demand. Fluctuations do not exist in the same manner in this closed acquisition environment. However, this closed system does interact with external systems that are part of the free market, such as the labor market. This research analyzes data from employment and Federal contracts and provides a characterization of how acquisition contracts affect local employment. Employment variations can potentially be used to infer undisclosed subcontractors participating in multiple awards. Such subcontractors should be accounted for by Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) during the development of more accurate Integrated Master Plans (IMPs). Many Federal and DoD contracts are performed by a team of contracting entities, where some prime contractors rely on subcontractors to execute specific parts of the contract. For many reasons, including national security, privacy, or competitive advantage, some of these subcontractors are not publicly disclosed. A large-data analysis process for understanding the boost to local employment that the start of a large contract may provide is presented in detail. The results show that locations of large Navy awards rank above 70% of other locations in the country in terms of the magnitude of employment increases. A secondary analysis of negative contract modifications revealed that drops in employment occur when small contractors have relatively large reductions in DoD contracts.