Schooner & Kelman on Procurement Reform

Those of us who working in the government contracting arena during the Reagan Administration remember it as an era when large amounts of new procurement money was accompanied by large numbers of new contract auditors — which resulted in lots of scandals but not much improvement in the process.

George Washington’s Steven L. Schooner (left) and Steven Kelman (Harvard-Kennedy School) seem to see much the same thing happening today, when procurement officers are simultaneously slammed for acting too quickly and not quickly enough in dealing with issues like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.  In Scandal or Solution? they suggest we focus less on the former and more on the latter.

[Frank Snyder]