This article is going to sound very Department of Defense (DoD)–centric, because my acquisition experience is comprised of 12 years of contracting and program management service in the US Army and Defense Contract Management Agency, with some joint contingency contracting sprinkled in there.  However, the principles underlying the points I am about to make are universal to the federal acquisition environment.  So, when I use terms like “command authority,” that’s merely the DoD term for the statutory and regulatory authority vested in agency directors at all levels.  In military terms, it’s “command,” and in civilian terms it is the same type of authority, except for that it is not military command authority.

Okay, enough caveats, on to the point.  In the realm of contracting, there is a difference between the mission authority held by a director and the contracting authority delegated to contracting officers to manage the procurements that are created in support of that mission.  Agency supervisors, managers, and directors possess authority inherent to their position that enables them to accomplish a given mission.  On the other hand, the procurement authority delegated to contracting officers typically comes from the Head of the Contracting Activity (HCA), who holds the authority to issue warrants to COs that enable them to obligate funds to procure essential goods and services. As you can see, in the case where the CO works for a director within an organization, a bifurcated chain of authority develops, with the CO caught in the middle. Their supervisor’s authority directly impacts their job and professional standing, but their contracting authority is delegated based on their knowledge, training and experience.

Clearly, potential hazards arise when an agency director or subordinate director, lacking actual contracting expertise, may deliberately or inadvertently attempt to use their authority to influence the contracting officer to improperly execute the procurement.  Naturally, no one would not want to be the contracting officer in that case, caught in the difficult position of having to defy their boss to maintain the integrity of the procurement.

I cannot speak for all federal departments, but most Department of Defense agencies and commands have structured their procurement organizations in such a manner as to prevent that conflict of interest. In most cases, the contracting activity is at least a stovepipe organization, if not separate completely, from the customer agencies it supports, so that contracting officers work for a contracting professional boss instead of the beneficiaries of their contracting efforts.  This removes the “command authority” as an influence on the contracting officer, and lets them focus on executing the procurement in the soundest way possible.  Of course, as the customer, that agency director is still going to have plenty of influence on the CO, but they should not have direct authority to “order” the CO to do the procurement a certain way.  This is just another example of the checks and balances that are built into an effective procurement system, dedicated to fair and impartial acquisitions that provide the best possible service at the best possible price.