A bill recently introduced by U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) – the Improving Contracting Outcomes Act of 2024 – aims to shore up federal oversight of taxpayer funds produced by requiring each agency to track their returns on investment.
The bill would create a pilot program dedicated to tracking the returns on contracts awarded for goods and services sought by individual federal agencies. Said agencies are the largest purchases of goods and services, but despite this fact, they lack a consistent process for tracking whether or not they get good deals for the public funds they spend. Changing this would, according to Peters, shift the focus onto guaranteeing the outcome of contracts.
“The federal government purchases a wide array of goods, from aircraft carriers to office supplies, but federal agencies are not consistently measuring whether they are getting high quality products and good deals for Americans,” Peters said. “My bipartisan legislation will create a program to track contracting outcomes to ensure taxpayer dollars are being used efficiently and effectively.”
The Improving Contracting Outcomes Act would include such requirements as analyzing the performance of contracting officers, identifying what does and does not work, and improving the overall return from taxpayer funds spent.
A major focus for the pilot would be senior contracting leaders, to get them to demonstrate how they can identify and use outcome-oriented approaches. To start, four federal agencies will participate for two years. Their efforts – which will include measurements of cost reduction, delivery timeliness, quality of delivered products and end user satisfaction – will be assessed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Throughout, the OMB will issue interim and final reports identifying the participants’ outcome-oriented metrics and the possibilities for implementing such metrics throughout the government.