Part of the problem is that the federal government has no central database to assess the record of prospective contractors. When DHS checks out its contract bidders, Elaine Duke, the department's chief procurement officer, told the committee, there's no file containing reports on contractors from the various departments' inspectors general or Congress's Government Accountability Office. If the companies have been indicted or involved in civil action over their performance, contract officers such as Duke are, like the rest of us, reliant on Google to discover what's out there.
Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who represents Manhattan's East Side, has introduced legislation to create a central database that would enable officials at one department to know when a contractor has screwed up at another. Maloney's bill, if enacted, would be only a small step toward bringing accountability to our newly privatized government, but it would at least keep procurement officers from flying blind and might just make our Department of Homeland Security more secure.