To some people, Bureaucratic Competence and Procurement Outcomes may sound like the first draft of a Dilbert punchline, but it’s actually a new working paper that considers how competence varies within government, even when quality is generally high with little variation. The authors find,
if all federal bureaus were to obtain NASA’s high level of competence (corresponding to the top 10 percent of competence), delays in contract execution would decline by 7.2 million days and price renegotiations would drop by $13.5 billion over the 2010-2015 period analyzed.
The authors conclude with thoughts on the level of trust in government agencies, how “more competent buyers improve procurement outcomes,” and the applicability of their findings to hospitals and other organizations. They offer one “simple policy prescription to help low-performing bureaus to improve: infuse relatively young, competent and well paid managers.” They do not offer a way for hiring managers to actually do this.
