Disaster Contracting: FEMA and the Corps of Engineers Have Opportunities to Improve Local Vendor Use

Filed 16h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Miri's Magic Dance

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Jorge Royan · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A GAO review of FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers found both agencies have policies encouraging the use of local vendors after disasters, but neither tracks the data needed to know if it's happening. Contracting officers in some cases couldn't correctly identify what counted as the local disaster area to begin with, despite having received training on the subject.

The Corps also came up short on paperwork: federal rules require documented justification whenever a post-disaster contract goes to a nonlocal vendor, and all the Corps contracts GAO sampled were missing that documentation. GAO issued four recommendations; both agencies said they agreed.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Training people and then watching them get it wrong anyway isn't a paperwork problem, it's a sign the paperwork was never the point. You can hand a contracting officer a map with the disaster zone drawn on it in red marker and they'll still manage to hire the contractor from three states over. Agreeing with a recommendation costs nothing; the disaster area is still waiting on the local hardware store to get the call.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Miri's Magic Dance · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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