Iraq and Afghanistan Get an Extra Dose of Oversight

The folks over at Government Executive.com have the scoop [2] on the Commission on Wartime Contracting's (CWC) recent move to open two field offices in Southwest Asia. The Iraq office, which is currently staffed by one expert and awaiting a second, is located in central Baghdad. Two experts staff the Afghanistan office, located at Bagram Air Field, which is roughly 25 miles outside the capital of Kabul.

The article quotes Robert Dickson, the commission's executive director, as stating that the staffers hired for these overseas posts "have decades of experience in construction management, military contracting, development projects, policy analysis, program management, and other work that ties directly to our research areas."

The piece also quotes Dickson as saying that these new offices will allow the commission to "maintain liaison with agencies and commands in theater, fill data requests from stateside staff, directly observe events on the ground, and assist with commissioners' research visits to the region."

It's hard to say to what degree these offices will affect the commission's future work, but my hope is that it will allow the CWC to dig a little deeper into the messes that are our contingency contracting environments in the two theaters of war.

Image by Flickr user The U.S. Army [3] used under a Creative Commons license.