Communicating Performance with Contractor Self-Assessments A Key Missing Link in the CPARS Process Chain

If you are a federal government contractor you are aware of the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS), the web-based tool used by federal agencies to collect, document, evaluate and track the performance of government contractors. If you are new to federal contracting, you should be aware that most prime contractors will receive a “performance report card” in CPARS that assesses a contractor’s performance record (positive and negative) on most of their contracts over each contract period of performance. These individual performance report cards, called CPARS, are made available to federal contracting officials for use in source selection and stored in the system for at least three years after contract completion. Your CPARS ratings are continuously collected and rolled up to what we call your federal contract performance “FICO” score.

While serving a critical role as the federal government’s primary repository for contractor past performance, CPARS continues to receive a good deal of criticism from both contractors and government contracting officials To get to the root cause of this criticism, and explore ways CPARS may be improved, we gathered government and industry perspectives on what is positive, negative, or missing in the CPARS process. We have identified what we believe is a key missing link that needs to be added to improve CPARS, specifically frequently communicating performance with Contractor Self-Assessments.

Federal Agencies are required by the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) to provide quality and timely reporting of contractors’ past performance information in CPARS. However, if you ask agency acquisition officials (COs and CORs in particular) they tell you that collecting and documenting contractors’ past performance can beatime-consuming and daunting process – adding to additional acquisitionworkforceburdens. Government program and contracting officials can also change, interrupting key performance documentation and communication chains. The unfortunate outcome, evidenced by numerous GAO and agency OIG reports over the last few years, is clear: Many CPARS reports suffer from a lack of timely, accurate, and complete past performance assessment information. Without question, this predicament has a negative impact on both government acquisition and contractor stakeholders

Our recommended solution is simple – periodically communicate and confirm performance on an interim basis with your Government clients using Contractor Self-Assessments. While we urge all contractors to proactively provide self-assessments to their Government customers, unfortunately not all contracting officials welcome them. To address this issue, we had discussions with Office of Federal Procurement Policy and senior federal agency procurement officials and recommended they issue guidance that encourages the use of Contractor Self-Assessments as a federal contracting best practice. We also encourage the use of Contractor SelfAssessments to establish dialogueon the most critical aspects of contract delivery during execution, to lower the burden on government acquisition officials in the CPARS data collection process, and to encourage increased participation by well-performing contractors – especially small and disadvantaged businesses. This will result in an immediate increase in the quality of CPARS data and can be easily and swiftly accomplished through policy guidance. GSA’s Senior Procurement Executive, Jeff Koses, issuance of a recent Acquisition Alert regarding the use of Contractor Self-Assessments serves as an excellent example.

So, close that key missing link in CPARS by establishing a strong communication chain using Contractor SelfAssessments. Once this link in the CPARS process chain is established, and the benefits realized and embraced by both you and your government partners, we’re certain it will spark a positive chain reaction!