全球智库信息集成服务系统

• Automated tools can be created to ingest, aggregate, and analyze data that could focus managers' limited resources on early indicators of performance issues and potential risk indicators buried in large, diverse data; this could help inform mitigating actions by management based on effectiveness, program relevance, and risk tolerance.
• Some data that are important for assessing relative contractor risks are very difficult to obtain—even for DAF officials and federally funded research and development centers.
• Despite the limitations of this research prototype, this approach is more sophisticated in some ways (e.g., through company-level metrics, such as financial health or supply chain risks and predictive indicators of future performance) than other available systems and might point to features or concepts that could be added to DAF or U.S. Department of Defense systems that assess potential contractor risks.
• A taxonomy of potential risk measures beyond those traditionally examined in program management and that use relative performance against their peers or fixed thresholds could highlight risk indicator outliers to government acquisition professionals.

Getting early indication of potential contractor performance risks and contract execution issues is critical for proactive acquisition management. When contractors are in danger of not meeting contractual performance goals, Department of the Air Force (DAF) acquisition management may not be fully aware of the shortfall until, for example, a schedule deadline is missed, government testing indicates poor system's technical performance, or costs exceed expectations.

Concerns continue to be raised about cost and schedule growth in acquisition and experts postulate about a lack of knowledge about the status of acquisition programs. In this report, the authors focus on metrics to identify emerging execution problems earlier than traditional acquisition oversight systems to enable more-proactive risk and performance management. They summarize their findings, which include a taxonomy of contractor relative risks, leading indicators of performance, relevant data sources, risk measures and equations, and a prototype that implements some of these findings using real data sources. This research should be of interest to acquisition professionals and leadership who are searching for ways to improve acquisition performance through early identification of potential relative contractor risks and execution problems to inform active program management and mitigation of risks. The prototype should be of interest to acquisition officials (from program managers to milestone decision authorities) to help them access more data in an easy-to-understand way so they can focus their limited time on areas that require increased management attention. This approach should be useful during any phase of the acquisition process.

• Chapter One

  The Challenge: Early Identification of Contractor Execution Problems in Acquisition

• Chapter Two

  Indicators of Performance

• Chapter Three

  Prototype Structure and Approach

• Chapter Four

  Insights, Conclusions, and Next Steps

• Appendix A

  Sentiment Modeling and Analysis and Modeling of Free-Text Assessments and Associated Ratings

• Appendix B

  Assessing Final Cost and Schedule Using a Rayleigh Function