Tomorrow, according to the Associated Press, the Commission on Wartime Contracting will present a bleak assessment of how tens of billions of dollars have been spent since 2001. The 111-page report, according to AP, documents poor management, weak oversight, and a failure to learn from past mistakes as recurring themes in wartime contracting.

The commission’s report is scheduled to be made public Wednesday at a hearing held by the House Oversight and Government Reform’s national security subcommittee.

While this is hardly the first report to document failings of oversight on private contractors it is nevertheless significant, as supposedly the U.S. government has taken significant steps in the past couple of years to improve its management of contractors. Yet apparently, to paraphrase the poet Robert Frost, contractors have numerous promises to keep and the government has years to go before it can sleep comfortably.

Having written a book on this subject I’m sure that much of what the commission will report will sound familiar. U.S. reliance on private sector employees has grown to “unprecedented proportions,” yet the government has no central database of who all these contractors are, what they do or how much they’re paid, the bipartisan commission found.

That is ironic, to say the least, considering the government has devoted much effort the past few years trying to do exactly that. It even created the Synchronized Pre-deployment and Operational Tracker database to track contractors. I know, I know; I’m picturing a government auditor calling, “Here SPOT, here boy.”

Humor aside though this is grim news. Regardless of what one thinks about the pros and cons of using private contractors on the battlefields and in conflict zones one thing is clear, they are not going away.

The Obama administration seems to recognize that contractors are now the American Express card; one does not go to war or do “contingency operations,” to use the favored government euphemism, without them. And if it doesn’t, it will certainly realize it as it conducts its own surge of U.S. military forces to Afghanistan.

This is why the Obama administration is worth watching. It has launched a campaign to change government contracting. In February it introduced a set of “reforms” designed to reduce state spending on private-sector providers of military security, intelligence and other critical services and return certain outsourced work back to government.

It also pledged to improve the quality of the acquisition workforce — the government employees who are supposed to be supervising and auditing the billions of dollars spent monthly on the contracts. If there is one single thing that is needed to make contracting work, that is it.

On the other hand, the White House has also promised to decide what work should stay in government and what’s acceptable to outsource. The introduction to Obama’s budget for 2010 noted, “The administration also will clarify what is inherently a governmental function and what is a commercial one; critical government functions will not be performed by the private sector for purely ideological reasons.”

Good luck with that. Many others have tried and failed.

It is just a fact of life that up until the past few years the U.S. government simply was not prepared–and in some cases, not particularly interested — in doing oversight and holding contractors accountable. The numerous inefficiencies, especially in contract oversight, management and transparency, in the U.S. contracting process have been known for many years. Yet, even though the U.S. government has taken significant steps — such as implementing the Gansler Commission recommendations, expanding the jurisdiction of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), establishing the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, requiring coordination between the Pentagon, State Department, and the U. S. Agency for International Development on matters relating to contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and requiring the Comptroller General to review annually all contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan and report to Congress — there is room for improvement.

A report by the Government Accountability Office found that while contractor personnel are a key segment of its total acquisition workforce, DOD lacks critical department wide information on the use and skill sets of these personnel. DOD also does not track why contractor personnel are used, which limits its ability to determine whether the use of contractors to supplement the in-house acquisition workforce is appropriate. DOD also lacks key pieces of information that limit its ability to determine gaps in the acquisition workforce it needs to meet its missions and lacks complete information on the skill sets of its in-house personnel. DOD also lacks information on the acquisition workforce it needs to meet its mission.

A report by the SIGIR reviewed incident reporting procedures put into place after the shootings of Iraqis by Blackwater in September 2007 and found that the two main databases CONOC (Contractor Operations Cells) and RSO (Regional Security Office) did not capture all reported serious incidents and did not present a complete picture of the serious incidents they are tasked to track.

Another SIGIR report also identified vulnerabilities in the government’s oversight. The most significant was that the experience and training of the contracting officer representatives (COR) were limited, and the time they will have available to devote to their oversight responsibilities for these contracts was insufficient. The report found that the US military lacks the capacity to manage its contractors in a contingency environment. Selecting CORs with limited or no direct contract management experience, providing them on the job training and then assigning them other principal duties, increases the government’s vulnerability.

We very much need to look at this differently. Although there are officially three branches of government, — executive, legislative, and judicial other institutions play a crucial role. It is time now to fully recognize another important component of government, namely, its reliance on private sector contractors, especially its reliance on private military contractors (PMCs).

If that is so then what should we do in terms of oversight? Here are a few quick thoughts.

First, reverse the reductions of the 1990s. The number of military members who are well qualified in contracting regulations must be increased. If the U.S. military is going to continue to rely so heavily on PMCs, having personnel who are highly qualified in contract management is vital.

But increasing numbers is not enough. An increased workforce requires updated training, and not the kind used for procuring weaponry. Training should include federal acquisition regulations, customer contract requirements, execution and closure. Training should be done in schools, not on the job. The government also needs to incorporate training into the mid-and senior-level leadership and senior non-commissioned officer schools.

Better planning is also crucial. If the government is going to rely on PMCs it must bring them into the planning process. Military staffs should establish contracting planning cells to determine what is contracted and establish the proper command authority before contracts are written, much less before contractors arrive in the field.

Classifying service providers, although difficult is also necessary. Classification aids the planning process; who, what, when, and how.

The government also needs to take steps to better enforce existing laws. The best way to accomplish this is to target PMC bottom lines. If a for-profit company loses money as a result of its employees’ behavior they will have more incentive to ensure their employees perform according to contractual and legal standards.

But the most important question still remains unaddressed. The use of PMCs reflects important underlying questions regarding the U.S. role in the world, which the public has chosen not to face, namely the mismatch between U.S. geopolitical ambitions and the resources provided for them. Putting aside all the arguments about presumed cost-effectiveness or organizational flexibility of the private sector, it seems likely that if a nation can’t summon public support for its policies, strategies and goals, it probably should not be doing them. If people want to argue about the use of contractors they should start with that inescapable reality.

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