Case in Point: Creation of a Single Entry Point for Past Performance Information across the Department

Just two years ago, DoD had several disparate systems deployed across the Department to collect contractor performance information. With the migration of key support systems to the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS), the Department now has a "best of breed" application that saves $1.1M annually and provides 24,000 users worldwide with many new conveniences. CPARS-generated contractor performance information is one of the tools used to communicate contractor strengths and weaknesses to source selection officials and Contracting Officers.

On June 14, 2007, the Army and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) completed the transition from the Army's legacy Past Performance Information Management System (PPIMS) to CPARS, creating one DoD feeder system for the federal Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS). PPIMS was the third legacy system retired over the past two years, to make CPARS the authoritative master data source for DoD vendor report card information.

The consolidation of contractor performance systems provides for more efficient operations by the Department's vendor community, which is no longer required to access a myriad of reporting systems to view their contractor performance assessments. CPARS improves the business process for vendors because it creates a single interface to retrieve and provide comments on their respective performance information regardless of which DoD Component they are doing business with.

The move to CPARS as the single centralized location for collection of contractor performance data benefits the Department by increasing operational efficiency and supporting improved capabilities for the DoD Acquisition decision makers. CPARS now provides DoD contracting officials with the ability to auto-register their contracts in CPARS through an interface with the federal-wide contract reporting system, FPDS-NG. This interface reduces manual workload and improves data accuracy for contracting officials and has been greeted with much enthusiasm. It also allows contracting officials to easily track the progress of contracts from registration through completion to ensure performance reporting requirements are being met and tracked consistently throughout the Department.

As an added benefit, by eliminating all legacy report card systems, CPARS allows for a centralized online approach to training new users and a centralized helpdesk which provides a cost effective method for reaching over 24,000 users, worldwide.