War And Money Redux
Several readers offered tart observations about my posting, "War And Money." You will see there's some smart stuff here, particularly the suggestions that the structural problems are far more important than the instances of outright corruption among contractors and government employees.
I agree that a lack of training, overwhelming workloads, poor planning and the desire for speed in contracting -- not to mention the "Hail Mary" efforts to find silver bullet systems -- have led to many more problems than someone simply wiring money to offshore banks. That's the gist of a posting by an irritated reader calling himself JoeyR:
"Mr. O'Harrow is a moron who thinks that most contractors and civil servants are either too stupid to do the right thing or corrupt. I think you need to experience the poor staffing levels, difficult technical challenges, and financial/schedules constraints that these folks have to overcome on a daily basis."
For the record, I have always considered myself at least occasionally intelligent. As for the staffing levels, challenges and constraints faced by government officials, there seems to be no question that this has had an impact on their ability to do as good a job as stewards as they would like. You'll be seeing more about this here and in the paper.
Michael Lent, the editor and publisher of Government Services Insider newsletter, suggested that Government Inc. focus more on incompetence. Again, a worthy thought, based on the evidence that I have seen. As far as I'm concerned, he's right in this too:
"That said, it would be a rare government services contractor executive or manager who does not want to see the incompetent and corrupt ones held accountable. The bad ones make it convenient for the uninformed to smear an entire industry. Ditto for government employees.
"Finally, there's always room for new facts and investigative reporting. Perhaps on the frequency of poor contract performance and who is responsible--government, the contractor, or both. You'd be following in many footsteps, but why not give it a try?"
Someone named DCLawyer wrote this pithy response:
"A much bigger problem than the occassional corrupt official or contractor (which will NEVER be eliminated no how "tight" Congress makes the laws) is the much more mundane one of poor planning and management of contracts as opposed to the award. We're all obsessed with who got what, but never bother to ask about the planning or how it was overseen once awarded.
"Get those "little" and boring questions right, and much of the headlines go away."
One point I'd like to make. To my mind, DCLawyer made a classic, cynical misjudgement when he wrote, "Of course, that's not too good for newspaper sales, which is why you focus on scandal and failure, which are endemic in any system where $400B is spent annually."
Like it or not, newspapers are supposed to be mechanisms for accountability. As you all know, there are people and institutions -- probably not enough -- that properly extol the virtues of government contract workers. The industry has proud executives who regularly tout their companies' successes, not to mention legions of lobbyists who get paid to undersocore their clients' virtues.
My job is a little different. And if you think that I or any reporter writes about contracting primarily to "sell newspapers," you're dealing in tired cliches, not reality. Think about it: How many readers rush out to buy stories about procurement?
By Robert O'Harrow |
August 3, 2007; 5:41 AM ET
Readers Write
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Posted by: DCLawyer | August 3, 2007 8:52 AM
Thanks for another exciting blog entry quoting somebody else.
I would suggest that you reevaluate your role. There are lots of mechanisms for accountability in the government, many of which you've blogged about - including the IG, congress, elections, the courts, protests, etc. These official channels of accountability must be working, because they're the source of all of your posts, with the exception of you mandated open ended question suggesting that the process doesn't work because of corruption or incompetence.
It is unfair of you to criticize somebody's belief that you are attempting to be sensational in your postings to create a demand for yourself or your paper. It is my suspicion that you have made a career of snarky semi-journalistic articles, essays, and panel appearances. If you reported on new information, moved forward the debate in any way other than simply duplicating others, or bothered to ask/research why projects fail/succeed perhaps people would feel different. You constantly attempt to make procurement to be incredibly complicated and dull, but you have made no attempt to uncomplicate it. You're goal appears to be little more than to report what happened as opposed to why it happened. That's where the heart of the story is and that's where you may be right - it is boring to readers with a 2 paragraph at best attention span (those who haven't read this far).
My suggestion: get with it and educate or fold.
Posted by: JoeyR | August 3, 2007 8:54 AM
DCLawyer makes a great point concerning the $600 hammer and your reporting, as it relates to my earlier post. You report the hammer like everybody else does, what we need and would be of value is to explain why the hammer cost $600. That's a good story that the public needs to know - the good and the bad.
Posted by: JoeyR | August 3, 2007 9:16 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
VERY few rush out to buy newspapers with stories about procurement staffing, program management, training, etc.
$600 hammers, conflicts of interest, corruption, etc. is what sells.
That's why newspapers like to take stories fundamentally about the former and make them into the latter. I think your post makes that very point - they leave it to corporate PR to tout what works and only cover the small # of failures.
BTW: I think this Government Inc. blog is a commendable exception to how papers cover procurement in that it attempts to get to the boring nitty gritty that the Post and other papers generally ignore.