13 ways the Defense Department needs to tighten its oversight of other transaction agreements

If you’re curious about exactly where DoD is spending its money on other transaction agreements (OTAs), you won’t find satisfying answers in any public spending databases. When the military services award OTAs through third party consortiums, as they often do, the actual records of which contractors are receiving the awards are stored on spreadsheets in contracting offices across the country. Because of that, not even the Pentagon itself has a clear picture of the billions of dollars it’s spending on OTAs each year, or what it’s getting for its investments. Those are among the findings of a new audit by the DoD Inspector General’s office. Assistant Inspector General Theresa Hull, who led the audit, is Jared Serbu’s guest on this week’s edition of On DoD.