One More Level of Oversight

The problem is that it’s another fox guarding the fox who is guarding the chicken coop. The Department of Defense, in its superior wisdom, has contracted with Serco, a British-American company, to perform DOD’s oversight function of contractors in Iraq. Serco is responsible for "analyzing performance contractors' costs," "working with the Army to measure contractor performance" and "recommending process improvements."

How this will affect GAO’s auditing is a question, as everything between the government and the contractors (Fluor, KBR and DynCorp) goes between Serco and the GAO. When GAO decides to audit one of the contractors, Serco gets the documents from the contractor, summarizes them and then gives them to the GAO. The GAO has previously said that such a situation creates the “potential for conflicts of interest". I’m sure that Serco will be a good overseer of our money.