'You Nickel And Dime Congress To Death': Keith Self Warns Against IDIQ Contracts

4 months ago

During a House Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing earlier this month, Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) spoke about Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity Contracts.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you very much. Representative Self. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We've talked a

00:06lot about this services contract. This is an IDIQ contract. Yes, sir. That scares me to

00:12death because this is what gets out of hand. And we're 34 trillion dollars in

00:19debt. My colleague, Mr. Crane, is not here today but always makes the point that

00:25dollars are going to be really scarce in the future. I think we just need to

00:29realize that. And an IDIQ, even if you got all of your validation down and you

00:37were confident going forward, IDIQ scares me to death going forward. I don't

00:45understand the chain of command. Would you just, for just three organizations, VHA

00:51is the SCM executive agency. Then you've got Valor underneath the VHA, I believe.

00:58And then you've got the Enterprise Supply Chain Board. Is the Enterprise

01:03Supply Chain Board the senior organization in this chain of command? No,

01:09sir. And if I can go back to your comment about IDIQs, I think the

01:13greatness of the IDIQ is we do these actual obligation of funds based on task

01:18orders. And so we're not committing billions of dollars up front. We're only

01:21committing a little bit up front. Yeah, but this is where it gets out of hand

01:24because you nibble, you nickel-and-dime Congress to death. That's, that's what I

01:30have, that's the problem I have with an IDIQ. Because long history with

01:34IDIQ, that's what happens, is once you establish the program and you start

01:40these task orders, they just start rolling. So I'm very concerned about that.

01:45I think Congress needs to take a hard look at the IDIQ nature of this contract

01:50because I want to know how you're going to cap this thing. I don't care if it's

01:54twelve billion or one billion, how are you going to cap this IDIQ? That's

01:59exactly through that governance structure you're asking about. So I'll

02:01start from there, sir, is we designated the Valor office as part of VHA as the

02:07executive agent. And then the Enterprise Supply Chain Board is an enterprise

02:11across the entity with all stakeholders involved. And that's

02:16co-chaired by my deputy along with Dr. Miller. And that reports up to it. The

02:21operational aspect of supply chain is on that VHA side. I am the program

02:25decision authority from the acquisition decisions, if you will, for getting

02:29through the milestones. The next level up above ESCB, not as a senior authority, is

02:33our is our VAOB, which is our VA operating board, which is chaired by the

02:36deputy secretary. And from there it goes to the VAEB, which is chaired by our

02:40secretary. So you're the CAO. Yes, sir. Because I didn't understand that. So

02:45you're the actual CAO that you reference here. Yes, sir. So go through the chain of

02:49command again. I've got a couple of minutes. We've got time to do this

02:52because I want to understand. Sure. So at the operational level, it's the

02:55Valor office. So that's the day-to-day cost schedule performance effort. From a

03:00supply chain management beyond just the contract, the management structure, it's

03:05the ESCB, which is the Enterprise Supply Chain Board. And that board consists of

03:08the functional members from each of the different

03:12organizations. Including cemeteries? Including cemeteries, yes, sir. Okay. Which I

03:16hospital, everyone else. Question, but okay, go ahead. They're at the

03:20table, along with OIT and the lawyers and otherwise. From an

03:23acquisition standpoint, this is where I am the decision authority from an

03:26acquisition component. ESCB also then goes up to, both of us then go to the VAOB,

03:32which is led by our deputy secretary Bratcher. And then above the VAOB is the

03:38secretary, who is the ultimate decision authority, the VAEB, the executive board,

03:41operating board, executive board. So that's how it flows up. But day-to-day

03:45operations is with Dr. Miller. Okay, that helps my understanding. And you may be

03:54about to address this, Mr. Chairman, but I think we need to

'You Nickel And Dime Congress To Death': Keith Self Warns Against IDIQ Contracts

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