About 600 GSA contract specialists would be temporarily detailed to oversee Defense Department contracts under a provision of the House-passed Defense Appropriations bill.

The one-year assignments are one of several initiatives to improve DOD contract management and oversight.

The bill would place new restrictions on the payment of award fees to contractors and increase funding for the Defense Contract Management Agency and the Defense Contract Audit Agency. It also calls for a study of how to improve DOD’s acquisition workforce.

The House passed the bill Aug. 5. The Senate is due to consider it after the August recess.

GSA Administrator Lurita Doan remains on the job, two months after the government’s special counsel recommended that President Bush discipline and possibly fire her for violations of the Hatch Act.

Robert O’Harrow of Washingtonpost.com reports the White House continues to decline comment on the case.

In a June 8 letter to the president, Special Counsel J. Scott Bloch accused Doan of “engaging in the most pernicious of political activity” when she took part in a political briefing for presidential appointees at GSA last January. Several people who were present remembered her asking how the GSA personnel could help “our candidates.”

Doan’s lawyer said there was no evidence that she asked her employees to engage in partisan political activity.

A group of 22 senators proposed creation of a congressional commission to attack wasteful or inefficient federal programs.

The Commission on Budgetary Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies could recommend killing or realigning agencies or programs it finds to be wasteful, duplicative, inefficient or ineffective.