intimate significant reforms took i think it's important to note that the reforms appear to have worked in this case. . . the commission identified a number of specific concerns related to private security contractors as a result of our visit to afghanistan.

in afghanistan, the armed contractor oversight division or what's referred to as acog is the office that oversees private contractors, licenses them, vets them and make sure they comply with contracts and conditions and such and it's a very large role. at the present, there's such a large role for a contractor, a security contractor to support that, that raises issues of conflicts of interest. the post of deputy director, the number two person, the person that briefed us when we were there, is occupied by a senior aegis private security official. the director position, an 06 military-level equivalent to a colonel -- while it's been approved to date, it has not been filled, identified and authorized and so even in contractor terms, for example, sir, if there's a use of force incident and there's mandatory coordination with the government of afghanistan, it's identified

that the contractor, aegis will do that representative for the united states government. that's the current process. the commission's trip to afghanistan in 2009 underlined already acute contracting problems in reconstruction, another area where we're going to be focused intensely during the next year. serious shortages of u.s. government civilians are all too likely to trigger heavy reliance on contractors, for example, the vital provincial reconstruction teams. >> thank you. >> i can't imagine -- you must have one minute and 30 seconds and mr. green, go ahead. >> actually, it's just the two of us, sir. >> oh, is it really? >> we have joint statements and we split it up. there are experts going to answer the questions. they're here for the tough questions. >> it will be back in the service. >> distinct chapter 5 on the

agenda provides a summary of activities, the commission has in progress or slated for study in the near future. there are over 30 bullet items including a number of complex and far-reaching studies. the commission encourages examination of the full list on pages 92 to 94. and i'd like to just highlight -- we'd just like to highlight a few. assess methods of remedying understaffing of contract oversight and audit functions and assess the effectiveness of current efforts to estimate the optimum numbers and types of acquisition personnel, access what shortcomings in government knowledge and information systems undermine the accomplishment of the iraq drawdown and the buildup in afghanistan. consider what processes and controls should be in place to manage decisions and assess risks of outsourcing logistic and security support services that may be considered inherently governmental

functions. consider how best to improve the accountability and contingency contractor performance. including affirmative consideration of performance and source selection awarded fee determinations and contractor performance evaluation. that was under management, under logistics, assess potential alternates to logistics contractor support including the possible installment of a management command to manage facilities once a contingency operation stabilizes. identify the reasons for the slow transition from logcap 3 to 4 under security examine the efficiency of current recruitment processes, background checks and training to ensure the employment of possible psc personnel, private security personnel. examine the potential use of civilian employees of the departments of defense and state

in lieu of contract personnel and security roles including the use of temporary appointments and reserve components. under reconstruction evaluate the reeffectiveness of compatibility-building reconstruction projects and determine the extent to which stakeholder collaboration is an intrical part of acquisition planning, contract performance and projects sustainability. assess the feasibility of establishing an interdepartmental entity for planning and coordination reconstruction projects and contingency operations. let me just end by talking about a few activities, a full description of the commission's milestones is in the report's appendix beef and members were named by july, 2008, the commission selected a professional administrative staff approaching 40 by january, 2009. during september and october of 2008, commissioners received briefings from more than 25 key

organizations and programs. they also met with leading scholars and writers on contracting issues and with contractors. on february 2nd, 2009, the commission held its first public hearing, there was testimony from the inspector general, for iraq reconstruction, including the two-yearbook link study released that day hard lessons, the iraq reconstruction experience. on may 4th, 2009, the commission's second hearing focused on the multibillion dollar logcap contract for logistic-support services. commissioners and staff have made two trips to iraq and afghanistan to inspect work sites, review documents, conduct interviews and receive briefings from officials on the ground. the first trip took place in early december '08 with an itinerary that included agency briefings in baghdad and kabul as well as reviews of construction of the baghdad police college and task orders for reconstruction -- excuse me, for construction, repair of the

bagram air force base in afghanistan. a study comprised a 15-person group of commissioners and staff that broke into three teams, one team worked in iraq, the other two in afghanistan. they conducted more than 125 meetings with employees of the departments of defense and state, usaid and the military and employees of contractors working on a range of projects. the commission continues to develop tasks for research and investigation to extend and deepen its knowledge and to cope with new or changing issues. our plans include many or trips to theaters of operation, additional hearings involving government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, academics and members of the contracting community and continued liaison with congress. before we conclude, we'd like to say a few words about the commission's staff. virtually all of the commission staff are federal employees, some are detailed from agencies and services including the army, the air force, the departments

of state and defense, u.s. agency for international development, the defense contract management agency, the defense contract audit agency and the u.s. army corps of engineers. some have served one or more tours in duty in theater including working for the special inspector general for iraq, reconstruction or as senior contracting officers supporting the joint contracting command in afghanistan. others have served on congressional staff in work gao, state and held important positions in the commercial industries which are the focus of our study. they bring hundreds of years of combined experience and education in many fields to bear on our mission and have performed valuable work for their country. in conclusion the commission and staff of the commission on wartime contracting in iraq and afghanistan take very seriously the tasks that congress has assigned to us. we appreciate how important these tasks are to improve support for our war fighters and

our diplomatic employees. we sincerely thank you for the opportunity to describe our work to you today and pledge our best efforts to provide information, recommendations that will help you make good decisions on contingency operations. mr. chairman, we thank you for your support of this commission but also as well your critical review. we know that this committee as well as the senate will be looking at everything we do to help us do a better job and to make sure we do a good job. >> thank you. i thank both of you and the other witnesseses as well. this is all about working together and criticism and obviously you've been at this only a few months and you've developed your staff, got your office sprays, tried to get your plan together and i think you've done a remarkable job in many respects. and i appreciate the interim report. i have a number of questions. i'm going to start with some procedural things as we go to a couple of rounds we'll get to some other issues on that. but one comment mr. thibeault made there was a significant

number of reports and recommendations coming from those reports many of which have not been implemented. now, that should disturb us all. and you also said later on, however, that there were a lot of issues outstanding that weren't getting enough attention. you indicated that in the context of oversight was working in some respects with the security incidents being significantly down. so in the context of your plan, are you planning on reporting to congress at some point how we might best utilize those investigative sources that are out there the government accountability offices and the inspectors general departments, how that ought to be coordinated so all the issues are covered and then i know you already said on the second part of that you do intend to investigate why some of these suggestions are not being implemented. that will be important for us to know whether legislative action or inaction and we're not having enough hearings tuned on that and whether it's all departmental there. >> yes, sir. you know, we intend to take those 1200-plus recommendations

out of those 537 reports and we intend to trace each one to find out the status. there's a direct tie-in of problems that we have observed and others have reported in the past. it's interesting to note -- one thing i might share and it's something that we're going to talk about and try to evaluate. when we were out in the field at ford bases and camp victory in afghanistan and the joint task force 101, universally, they were supportive. but universally they said if there's anything this commission can do relative to the fact that we have so many -- i cited 11 organizations so that it can be coordinated better because it seems like we're collecting information and then turning around and collecting the same information two months later.

it's just two months updated for a different organization. each of these oversight organizations has a vital job to do. but contingency environment is unique from an oversight because it's so distance orient and you have to place some people onsite and people going back and forth. that's a worthy area to look at. >> and i'll ask some questions later on about just how we go about doing that and the personnel shortages -- i think some of the capacity issues is serious. but does the commission feel that it has enough in-country presence over in the theaters that you're investigating? >> the commission is debating right now whether we should have permanent representation in afghanistan and iraq and then, obviously, our commissioners will and our staff will be going repeatedly and so that's something that we'll be able to get back to you very quickly on. but we know that we need to be there in both countries. >> thank you.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. i have some of the same concerns about -- is your mic on? >> i'm sorry, my voice is a little horse. you had 1200 recommendations you said that have been put forward. is that from your group or from -- >> no, sir. we went through all 537. we sorted them, we cross-referenced them because we were tasked to build upon that work, not to recreate that work. >> so some of those 1200 come from the other investigative bodies that have put forward recommendations? >> all of the 1200 that i referenced come from those organizations. >> and what remedy is there if these aren't implemented? what are we to do or what are other bodies to do if they aren't implemented? >> i think that's -- that point is spot-on in terms of the emphasis and it fits this subject of accountability. you know, if someone says they're going to correct a major

problem and they're going to correct it within a certain time period and they don't, one of the things we run into, for example, because of turnover of staff as well the aging so i didn't really understand that, you know, i've just picked up that responsibility. but there's an absence of, first of all, recording what is being done with that. some organizations -- some of the ig organizations do a good follow-up. but the actions just aren't getting accomplished to the extent that organizations, government organizations, have agreed to do. >> we in talking with a lot of the agencies on some other issues -- we're often told we have a process by which we can't offer sole source contracts. we have to bid every contract out. yet, you hear -- you mentioned kbr who had a sole source contract for certain activities there. could that contract have been bid out?

isn't there a process that the department of defense has to go through if they don't bid a contract out? there's a j & a that has to be issued or something. why are they able to still have these contracts sole sourced? >> mr. flake, that's an excellent question. it has been some years that the department of defense has tried to have a later contract in which there would be three -- later version, later iteration of logcap in which there would be three competitors and they -- i think the talk about that goes back at least two years. they are now slowly phasing in that successor arrangement and that's an activity that we're going to be following in theater but it is still not been activated in iraq. each task order still has only

one vendor, kbr, and there has been some concern voiced that phasing-in of a competitive arrangement has been going too slow. >> i know your jurisdiction covers just wartime, you know, in theater, but it seems that that problem goes beyond. as i mentioned, i've been trying for months to get access of some of these j & as to justify why some of these contracts aren't bid out. and i haven't been able to get them yet. so i think -- are some of these problems that you see in theater, do you think they go beyond that or is it justified just because of the circumstances inherent in wartime? >> i'm not at all surprised that you're seeing similar problems back in the united states and in domestic context. there's no special exception in the competition contracting act

for wartime sole sourcing. and the same exceptions that have been used in the past and used to date in iraq have been used in the domestic united states. you would run to the same problems. >> are you as part of your activities asking for these j & as to see what justification was given for sole source? >> we do look not just at the justification and authority, the j & a for these contracts but at the subsequent documentation and we have been going through following up. the j & a is often very superficial, well, it's the exception for exigent circumstances or it's the exception as this is the only available contractor and we have followed those up to see whether it really has to be done without competition. >> i might sir add a point that this was a very unique contract

in the sense and you could maybe think about whether it was dysfunctional in terms of the way it was established. but there was competition, but it's a 10-year contract, cost-type dollar for dollar ten-year contract. once a year it can be rolled over. so you're talking about a contracting action with a sole supplier that dates back to the 2003 i believe time frame. and it's still in place because 10 years haven't passed so there is no competition anymore. and that's why we're encouraged by the action to go to logcap 4 where there's at least three vendors that will bid on every task order who are discouraged by the pace in which it's being implemented. there's tremendous opportunities. we saw an example where the same type of work that was bid in kuwait using logcap 3 had priced out at $120 million. it was $55 million less after

competition came in. so competition is a good thing in the environment and there's nothing unique about a wartime zone where you can't usually employ competition. >> if i could, mr. flake -- go on. >> if i might add to what commissioner thibeault said earlier and some of your concerns about the 1200 recommendations that have come from other oversight organizations to which we will certainly add a number of our own observations and recommendations, where we have a challenge, i believe, and that is when we go away, have we come up with procedures to permit, which will encourage follow-up? all of you have seen dozens and

dozens and dozens of studies, as i have, with some very valid recommendations that collect dust. so one of the challenges we have and a challenge that you may have is how do we force some of these actionable recommendations forward as we, you know, turn out the lights? and that's a problem that we face or a challenge that we face, which is not much different than every other commission and oversight organization faces. >> well, i think you've hit right on something that the three of us now have -- if i look at the panel collectively, phone in right on this so we're going to really rely on the commission to give us some direction at least as to what you think ought to be done, whose responsibility would it be

to follow up? would it be the department, or congress or whatever and it's going to come upon us to try to put that legislation, if necessary, if it's not legislation, then set up some series of hearings where we put the spotlight on whoever is responsible and keep moving on that to get it done because it is ridiculous. you keep having all of these hearings go out there and stuff. thank you. mr. foster, you're recognized for five minutes. >> i was interested in whether you think we'll be in a position to make some type of retrospective analysis of the decision to contract out, the decision to sole source or multisource the contracts. whether that really -- you know, at the end of this we'll be able to step back and set up the general principles that tell us whether it's a good idea to contract out a class of work or not. >> i'd love to just make a comment that when we talk about logcap 3, that was a contract that was given to kbr before we

went into iraq. no one anticipated that we would be spending incredible -- over $30 billion to one contractor. when we went to logcap 4, which we bid out -- three contractors have it and they will bid internally among the three, none of them getting more than i believe $5 billion a year. and so we're talking over 10 years, $150 billion potentially so we have introduced -- the government has introduced a form of competition there. but when we went into iraq, there was one person who had -- one company that had in a sense won the contract. in terms of the whole -- the number of recommendations that had been made and the 500 reports and so on, our task is to categorize every one of them to be able to come back which ones have been implemented,

which ones haven't and why they have been implemented and why they haven't and our recommendations of what could and should be done. so the value -- so when you see us looking at those past reports, it's not to rework them. it's just to know what's done and to make sure you know what's been done and hasn't been done. >> and, sir, to your point about are we going to look at the contracting mechanisms, there's an absolute obligation to look at it, and the type of contracts, whether competition has been used and makes sense, i'll make a couple of observations. in fairness to the record, there are significant efforts to use competition in certain parts of contracting by the military and by state, but one of the areas we highlighted that we're really going to focus on in terms of the type of contracts is subcontracting. for example, in the logcap program it's cost-type contract, it's dollar for dollar. all the subcontracts are fixed

price. so the prime gets dollar for dollar on the fixed price and all of their labor but it's a fixed price. so it kind of begs the question what -- how good of a job is being done with that, there are foreign firms that are involved with that, what kind of data analysis and records are we going to be evaluated? that's the frustration you see in the report and that's the obligation of the prime contractor but we're going to be looking at the prime contractor system to be sure that they're fulfilling their contractual requirements. >> well, that sort of analysis look at the inhouse versus contractor accounts there were mess sergeants which is better for the taxpayers turn up the soldiers salaries if necessary. and similarly, are there rules of thumb evolving or maybe already existing in terms of the amount of contracting oversight

per dollar of spent, you know, that as a rule of thumb you want one person on the ground overseeing every $20 million of money spent or something like that? >> well, what i saw in afghanistan personally is the defense contract management agency went through and identified several thousands of tasks that needed to be done and drew it down to 537 individuals, theater-wide, that needed to go out and look at that work being done. the unfortunate part was the number was either 160-something or 180-something but it was only 36% of those positions were filled. so about 2 out of 3 positions -- there's nobody looking at the contractor. so they'd done a good analysis but they hadn't done the work. >> yeah so what's the nature of the training that's missing? >> that's also a very good question because defense acquisition university has developed a couple of courses -- but i would tell you -- my example at tenth mountain division when we brought these individuals in, the military the

great americans said what about training? they had none. so there's a course and then they told medium well, we got this online eight-hour, 16-hour course and one of them looked at me and said, right, and he said because of connectivity problems, i spent 30 days trying to take this eight-hour course and off and on 'cause i kept getting cut off i finally said the heckú[y of this i can't fin this course i'm going to do the best they can and they are not equipped with the training so there's training that's been developed but if they don't get it before they go -- >> i think another -- another point is as chairman thibault mentioned in addition to the shortage of oversight personnel, whether it's 160 or 180, many of them are miscast and we reference a few examples in the report where you've got a combat

medic overseeing the security operations out of ford operating base. we've got other instances where one contract -- contract officer representative has overseen 15 different contracts in addition to performing their principal duty, which is unrelated to any of the contracts that person has overseen so there's a shortage, there's a training problem and there is a casting problem of applying the right kind of skills to the contract oversight. and in many cases we don't have those skills within the army. >> and if i could just add one other quick point, a number of these say the contracting officer representatives of these course, they may come in and

leave and the contractor is still there so, you know, they don't have the institutional knowledge and they don't stay long enough. so that's another part of the problem. >> thank you. thank you, mr. foster. mr. duncan, you're recognized for five minutes. >> well, thank you very much, mr. chairman. and let me first of all say that i think the work you're doing is very, very important and i hope that it doesn't just gather dust and i'm very pleased that our former colleague, congressman shays is on the panel because i thought chairman shays was one of the finest members that this committee ever had. >> joe, could you pull that microphone a little closer to you. thank you. >> i have been tremendously concerned about the horrendous waste that's been going on in the defense department and especially so after a year, year and a half ago when the gao came

out with a report that said we have $250 billion cost overruns in our weapons systems. and it seems to me that anybody who considers himself or herself to be fiscally conservative should have been extremely upset or horrified by that. yet, it didn't seem that many people were. it looks as though both parties are trying to prove how patriotic they are. or concerned somebody is not patriotic that they don't give the defense department every penny that they want and then some. and now we're ramping up in afghanistan and spending an unbelievable amount of money there. and then i read in your testimony, commissioner thibault, that ye