DOD Seeks Less Favoritism for Incumbents The Defense Department will restructure some contracts to encourage more competition with incumbent contractors. As DOD officials defended their cost-cutting plans before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 28, Ashton Carter, undersecretary for acquisition technology and logistics, said $55 billion worth of contracts that were put out for bid last year attracted only a single bidder, usually the incumbent. That was nearly 14% of the department’s total procurement spending. “Simple changes in how we structure evaluations and work with industry have been shown to reduce by 50% the incidence of single bids from incumbents,” he testified. He said such changes could include evaluating bids using the down-select model. The contracting initiatives are designed to save $100 billion in spending on overhead during the next five years. Among other things, Secretary Robert Gates has ordered that spending on support services contracts be reduced by 10% in each of the next three years. The department also plans to create a preferred supplier program, offering top-performing contractors rewards such as more favorable progress payments. Senators generally endorsed the cost-cutting plans, but pushed back against Secretary Gates’s recommendation to shut down the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, VA. The command employs about 3,000 military and civilian workers and roughly the same number of contractors, with a $1 billion annual budget. Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, complained that the decision was reached without consulting Congress or providing a justification. He said he was notified of the shutdown only 15 minutes before it was publicly announced, and has been “stonewalled” when he asked for an explanation of why JFCOM is being eliminated. The command’s home-state senator was not alone in objecting. Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-MI, said he wants to know which portions of JFCOM’s mission are unnecessary and who will take over the other portions. Webb and Virginia’s other Democratic senator, Mark Warner, have introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would require the secretary to provide a justification to Congress before closing any combatant command.