Peters Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Save Taxpayer Dollars and Improve Federal Contracts
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Gary Peters (MI), Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced bipartisan legislation to help ensure federal agencies are buying high-quality products and saving taxpayer dollars. The senator’s bill creates a pilot program requiring federal agencies to consistently track whether they are getting a good return on investment when awarding contracts for these goods and services.
“The federal government purchases a wide array of goods, from aircraft carriers to office supplies, but federal agencies are not consistently measuring whether they are getting high quality products and good deals for Americans,” said Senator Peters. “My bipartisan legislation will create a program to track contracting outcomes to ensure taxpayer dollars are being used efficiently and effectively.”
The federal government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the world, however there is currently no process in place to track the extent to which federal agencies are getting good deals for the American taxpayer. The bipartisan Improving Contracting Outcomes Act of 2024 would ensure agencies are focusing on the outcomes of contracts, including assessing the performance of contracting offices, identifying what works and what does not, and improving the return on taxpayer dollars.
The bill would establish a pilot program to demonstrate how senior contracting leaders can identify and use outcome-oriented metrics by measuring cost reduction, timeliness of deliveries, quality of deliverables, and end user satisfaction. The program will include four federal agencies, with at least one military department, and will span the course of two years. Throughout the pilot program, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will issue interim and final reports identifying the four agencies’ outcome-oriented metrics and the potential to implement outcome-oriented metrics government-wide.
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