GAO Finds Handling Of Intelligence Contractors Just As Screwed Up As Everything Else It's Investigated

from the a-regular-Snowden-breeding-ground dept

Tue, Feb 18th 2014 1:48pm — Tim Cushing

The NSA's problem with contractors surfaced in the most internationally spectacular way when one of them made his way to Hong Kong with a drive full of agency documents. Other failures were less spectacular, but didn't go completely unnoticed. A recent investigation uncovered years of fraudulent behavior by a government contractor charged with vetting potential hires for various agencies, including the NSA. The contractor was accused of (among many things) interviewing dead people and falsifying a massive number of background checks.

So, the release of a GAO report on intelligence contractors is perfectly timed. Like every GAO report, there's a dearth of good news. What's been uncovered by the GAO is another bureaucratic web that makes just tracking contractor information nearly impossible.

Limitations in the intelligence community’s (IC) inventory of contract personnel hinder the ability to determine the extent to which the eight civilian IC elements—the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and six components within the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, State, and the Treasury—use these personnel. The IC Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO) conducts an annual inventory of core contract personnel that includes information on the number and costs of these personnel. However, GAO identified a number of limitations in the inventory that collectively limit the comparability, accuracy, and consistency of the information reported by the civilian IC elements as a whole. For example, changes to the definition of core contract personnel and data shortcomings limit the comparability of the information over time. In addition, the civilian IC elements used various methods to calculate the number of contract personnel and did not maintain documentation to validate the number of personnel reported for 37 percent of the 287 records GAO reviewed. Further, IC CHCO did not fully disclose the effects of such limitations when reporting contract personnel and cost information to Congress, which limits its transparency and usefulness.

Bad data brings bad results (not to mention the attendant detrimental effect on accountability) and there were plenty of bad results to report, including the fact that contractors might be abusing this broken system to push the government around.

Further, the elements’ ability to use the core contract personnel inventory as a strategic planning tool is hindered because the inventory does not provide insight into the functions performed by contractors, in particular those that could inappropriately influence the government’s control over its decisions.

The GAO attempted to audit IC records dating from 2007 to 2011, but immediately ran into problems.

[W]e could not conduct a reliability assessment of the data for fiscal years 2007 through 2009 due to a variety of factors. These factors include civilian IC element officials’ stating that they could not locate records of certain years’ submissions or that obtaining the relevant documentation would require an unreasonable amount of time.

Amazing. The government stonewalls the government. This isn't people waving FOIA requests. This is the Government Accountability Office carrying out an order from Congress and yet, the responding office claims it would take too long to find these documents, if they can actually be found at all.

As the report goes on, it becomes clear the GAO never had a chance to compile anything comprehensive. First, it was informed that some contractors not previously designated as such were arbitrarily given that designation at some point in 2010. Then the CHCO informed the GAO that it had made significant changes to its contract management system in 2011, making most of what had been gathered prior useless for year-to-year comparisons.

Then there were problems stemming from the civilian contractors themselves, who also altered their data reporting during the same time frame, further complicating any attempts to compare year-to-year data.

In the end, the GAO settled for sampling 287 records from 2010-2011 to generate this report. Even with this limited sample set, there were issues.

We found that the civilian IC elements either under- or over-reported the amount of obligations by more than 10 percent for approximately one-fifth of the records. In addition, the civilian IC elements could not provide complete documentation to validate the information reported for 17 percent of the records we reviewed. Overall, we were able to validate the amount of reported obligations for approximately 43 to 77 percent of the records we reviewed at any one element.

So, only 43-77% of the records were deemed "verifiable" by the GAO. But this same unreliable data was used by the CHCO to report costs and set budgets.

However, IC CHCO used the core contract personnel inventory information to report fiscal years 2010 and 2011 contract costs for the eight civilian IC elements in our review…

IC CHCO’s guidance for the fiscal years 2010 and 2011 inventories generally requires IC elements to report on the total amount of funds obligated to contracts during the fiscal year. However, the guidance also indicates that reporting on a snapshot of active contracts on September 30 is an acceptable method for the large elements. This practice may lead to elements not fully accounting for the amount of obligations within a fiscal year on contracts…

But that's OK, because there's apparently no way to hold the IC CHCO accountable.

Officials acknowledged that in some cases, obligations may not be reported as a result of the exclusion of inactive contracts or contract option periods. However, IC CHCO does not disclose this methodology or its effects on the information it reports to Congress.

Not surprisingly, given this lack of direct accountability, the IC CHCO's methodology and controls have not improved over the past half-decade despite the constant generation of faulty info and the misplacement of IC records. The GAO recommends several changes to the current system (of course), but the past tells us these will be ignored by both the head office and the agencies under its "control."

Gao 14 204 (PDF)Gao 14 204 (Text)

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Filed Under: gao, intelligence community, nsa, privacy

20 Comments

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TheResidentSkeptic (profile), 18 Feb 2014 @ 1:26pm

So to fix all these problems
The best and easiest way is to just disband the GAO.

That will make it all better.

/sarc
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AricTheRed (profile), 18 Feb 2014 @ 1:56pm

... I'd fire 'em all...
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sehlat (profile), 18 Feb 2014 @ 2:22pm

Paging Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale
Your background checks for top-secret NSA employment are ready. You passed with flying colors.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2014 @ 2:24pm

The contractor was accused of (among many things) interviewing dead people

It is nice to know they have found a way to resurrect dead people in order to interview them.

Does that mean that they have found a formula that will permanently bring the dead back to life or is the time duration of their resurrection such that they return to the dead after the interview?

Upon resurrection do the formerly dead move straight into a zombie state or not?

Has anyone resurrected Mayor Daley and informed him and his Democrat cohorts in Chicago of this development?
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2014 @ 2:26pm

The GAO finds more black holes than NASA or Stephen Hawking could have ever dreamed existed.
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Internet Zen Master (profile), 18 Feb 2014 @ 2:28pm

Majority of US Gov. is Corrupt and/or Incompetent
In other news, water is wet.
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 18 Feb 2014 @ 2:31pm

Re: So to fix all these problems
Non-sarcastically, that might actually be a good idea. If "there's a dearth of good news" is what we've come to expect from GAO reports, that means that the Government Accountability Office is every bit as mis-named as the "intelligence" agencies it's reporting on that keep doing mind-numbingly stupid things.

Any report like this should contain at least this minimal piece of good news: "and therefore, seeing as how things are a complete mess here, we, the Accountability Office, are holding the decision-makers accountable and [describe disciplinary action/firings/criminal charges being levied here]."

In the absence of any such holding-accountable, they are no Accountability Office at all, and don't serve much of any purpose as far as I can tell.
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zip, 18 Feb 2014 @ 2:35pm

the Security-Industrial complex
Despite the massive security breaches and other grim news, the NSA's use of private contracting firms is not likely to lessen. That's because so many of these companies are founded, owned and/or run by same people who once occupied top-level positions in the government and military. They quite naturally maintained connections after 'retiring' to a company that earns its money by --what else-- seeking government contracts by lobbying the same government agency or department that these people were once in charge of (and could even some day go back to work for again).

This 'revolving door' between government and for-profit private corporations spins so fast and strong that the two supposedly-separate entities have essentially merged into a single unit with a single purpose -- a purpose that is completely at odds with both the interests of US national security as well as the interests of taxpayers.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2014 @ 2:37pm

Good for them!
After all, we can't have organizations we know deal with terrorists given national security information!
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2014 @ 2:54pm

how could changes be implemented? if they were, people would be out of jobs, company heads would role, businesses would fail! how can a government that has the best interests of the people at heart, ever forgive itself if it did this and got contractors to clean up their acts?
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2014 @ 3:00pm

"We have very strict oversight", they said.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2014 @ 3:04pm

And what was it the NSA wanted us to belive? 100% accountability or some sort of BS like that?
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2014 @ 4:38pm

It must be soul-crushing to work for the GAO.
You get good grades and graduate from college. You want to make the world a better place, so you decide to work at the Government Accountability Office. You spend months compiling a report documenting waste, corruption, abuses of power, and suggesting common sense reforms and improvements. You publish it.

The government collectively shrugs and goes back to playing politics.

And then you start on the next report. Very Sisyphean.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2014 @ 7:49pm

more waste of taxpayer dollars
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goldmagic, 18 Feb 2014 @ 10:43pm

good old gigo, garbage in, garbage out
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Feb 2014 @ 1:49am

To solve this problem requires new politicians, but people are scared that the pirate parties will create an anarchy. However the totalitarians currently in power are doing a very good job of creating an anarchy, by ignoring laws, trampling on anyone who gets in their way, and letting government agencies go rogue.
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Pragmatic, 19 Feb 2014 @ 5:57am

Re: Re: So to fix all these problems
While I agree with your sentiments, Mason, I think it might be worthwhile examining their options at this point. They're a paper tiger providing what can best be described as accountability theater. If and when they actually try to do their job, they get stonewalled by people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Follow the money. The people responsible for putting this in place have no doubt been paid handsomely to keep the money flowing. If they can't be impeached or recalled, we should be able to vote them out in the next election after we've identified them and their roles in this.

Isn't failure to be accountable or do the job specified a breach of contract? Why, then, do they still have the contract? If a subcontractor can't be held accountable, it needs to be replaced by one that can. And that means getting rid of the sugar daddies that got them the job in the first place.
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Pragmatic, 19 Feb 2014 @ 6:03am

Re:
The Pirates are generally small L libertarians, not anarchists. There was a strain of anarchists who got involved with the movement when it first started up but they attached themselves to the Occupy groups instead.

I think the Pirate Parties would do an excellent job if given a chance. They can't be worse than anything we've got now.
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John Fenderson (profile), 19 Feb 2014 @ 9:21am

Re: Re: So to fix all these problems
The GAO serves a vitally important function -- but it's not enforcement (and was never meant to be -- it's "accountability" is the "accounting" sense).

The GAO is one of the very few means we have of getting a reasonably fair and unbiased accounting of how the government is handling our money. If they didn't exist, the amount of misbehavior that is possible would go up by quite a lot, purely because there's no way that the public would know of it in a way that is authoritative, well-informed, and comprehensively analyzed.

We need the GAO, perhaps more than any other single government agency.
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John Fenderson (profile), 19 Feb 2014 @ 9:24am

Re:
"people are scared that the pirate parties will create an anarchy"

People are stupid, then. Anarchists, by definition, do not form political parties.
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