DOD orders steps to verify procurement data.

The Defense Department has issued a detailed roadmap for improving the accuracy of its procurement data.

The 10-step plan was developed in response to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy's call for all agencies to verify and validate procurement information they send to the official database, the Federal Procurement Data System. A number of investigations have found the official data is often wrong, especially in identifying small businesses.

The DOD plan was distributed to the military services and other defense activities on July 25 by Shay Assad, director of defense procurement, acquisition policy and strategic sourcing. The DOD components were instructed to verify and validate a random sample of their contract actions, with a goal of 95% accuracy for each of 46 data elements that are submitted to FPDS. When errors are discovered, the verifiers must determine how the error occurred and how to keep it from happening again.

In May the Office of Federal Procurement Policy told agency chief acquisition officers to develop a plan for verifying and validating their procurement data. The CAOs must certify the accuracy of their agency's reports to FPDS.

Many independent assessments have found widespread inaccuracies in FPDS data. In 2006 the Democratic staff of the House Small Business Committee found that 15% of the contract dollars credited to small businesses actually went to large companies or nonprofits.

SBA has blamed most of the mistakes on data-entry errors, but critics charge that some large companies are masquerading as small ones to take advantage of set-asides. (SAA, 7/11)

The push for accurate data became more urgent with the creation last year of www.usaspending.gov, a website that makes federal contract and grant data easily accessible to the public.