The Challenges of Contracting and Accountability Across the Federal System: From Ambulances to Space Shuttles

This article focuses on two questions related lo governmentcontracting and accountability. How are key components of contractingsimilar or different for city, state, and federal governmentsin the United States? To what extent do the three levels ofgovernment share the widely recognized challenges of contractdesign and contract management? To address these questions,we compared and contrasted six contracting cases, two each forlocal, state, and the federal governments. We found that forall governments in the U.S. federal system, the public managementfunctions of contracting are remarkably similar, and that contractmanagement and the achievement of accountability are "weak links"in the contracting process. Our findings do not support thehypothesis that contract management is more effective in localgovernment relative to state and federal governments.