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barking_iguanahttp://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/05/05_401.html
Long publicly available, a database detailing federal contracts has been outsourced ... to a federal contractor.There's much more in that article.
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Established by an act of Congress in 1979, the Federal Procurement Data System was a rare island of public information, the only complete record of federal contracts. Using the database, journalists, auditors and federal investigators could review the million or so agreements with corporations Uncle Sam signed each year. They could find the companies reaping the largest awards, track the rise in no-bid deals, and measure the recent drive to replace federal employees with corporate employees. But under a new contract, the General Services Administration has now turned over responsibility for collecting and distributing information on government contracts to a beltway company called Global Computer Enterprises, Inc.
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With the compiled database under private control, journalists, corporate consultants, and even federal agencies will be barred from independently searching copies of it. Instead, GCE has pledged only to produce a set of public reports required by the government, and to provide limited access to the entire database for a yet-to-be-determined fee.
"It seems that something quite inappropriate has been done here," says Angela Styles, who served until last year as President Bush's chief procurement official, noting that Congress requires the government to compile and share this information. "They have ceded their responsibility."
