Publishing a rule to expand competition for information technology service contracts, as the Defense Department is doing to activate the Section 803 procurement reform, is only the first step in putting the regulation into effect. After all, if no one gets to read it, or understands what it means when they do, what's the point of writing it?

That's where marketing and training come in. DOD and the General Services Administration are planning major assaults in both areas to try to quickly bring military procurement officers and their agents up to speed on Section 803's implications.

The need is not lost on either agency. While officials in each organization say previous training and education programs stressed the requirement to compete IT service contracts, some contracting officers obviously did not get the message.

In a November 2000 report to Congress on DOD's use of GSA's Federal Supply Service (FSS) to buy IT services, the General Accounting Office found that most DOD contracting officers did not follow GSA's procedures for ensuring fair and reasonable prices. Instead, they often relied on a comparison of vendors' labor rates listed in the FSS, and they generally ended up placing orders with incumbent contractors.

Contracting officers were not deliberately circumventing the rules. The main reason procedures were not followed, GAO concluded, was that "many contracting officers were not even aware of the GSA's requirement to seek competitive quotes."

Likewise, in a September 2001 audit of multiple-award services contracts, DOD's Office of the Inspector General (IG) took military procurement organizations to task for not adequately competing multiple-award task orders. Of the 423 it reviewed, only 119 were competed and only 82 of those orders received multiple bids.

In addition, some procurement officers apparently have complied with the competition requirements, though their idea of competition didn't match up with what DOD executives believe the term means. Deidre Lee, director of Defense procurement and acquisition policy, told a conference in Washington, D.C., this year that putting out a solicitation for a services contract on a Friday night and looking for a response the following Monday morning "is unprofessional and unacceptable."

Larry Allen, executive vice president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, a Washington, D.C.-based industry group, said some of his organization's members have reported that some contracting officers have asked them to be the third company in a contract competition simply to make up Section 803's three-bid requirement, understanding that their company had no chance of winning the award.

If that report is true, it also is unacceptable, Lee said. "It's unfair to contractors since the whole point of the ruling is to increase competition and to be fair about the whole process," she said. "We don't want any more of this 'wink, wink' attitude."