Summary: The Department of Defense (DOD), the federal government’s largest purchaser of contractor-provided services, reported that it obligated about $187 billion—more than half of its total contract obligations—on service contracts in fiscal year 2012.
Section 2330a of title 10 of the U.S. Code requires DOD to annually compile and, for the military services and defense agencies to review, an inventory of services contracted for or on behalf of DOD during the preceding fiscal year, in part, to help provide better insight into the number of contractor full-time equivalents (FTE) providing services to the department.
DOD has taken additional steps to implement its November 2011 plan to establish a common data system to meet inventory requirements, but various challenges may hinder DOD’s efforts to meet its goal of having the system and standardized business processes fully in place to support its annual inventory submission beginning with the fiscal year 2016 inventory.
