John Farenish, former Defense Contract Audit Agency general counsel, has joined the Venable law firm’s government contracts group in Washington, D.C., the firm announced Friday. Farenish spent the last 13 years at DCAA, which audits the financial records of government contractors, litigates cases involving contractors and is also responsible for suspension and debarment proceedings against contractors. Prior to DCAA, Farenish served as counsel in the Navy’s Procurement Integrity Office, held criminal investigations posts for the Defense Department Inspector General and Army Criminal Investigation Command, and prosecuted cases during active duty with the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps. “Our contractor clients will benefit…
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UPDATE: Full story now on FederalTimes.com. Click here. Embattled Defense Contract Audit Agency director April Stephenson was removed from her post earlier today, the Defense Department has announced. Stephenson, who was spent her entire career at DCAA, was reassigned to the staff of DoD Comptroller Robert Hale. Hale, who oversees DCAA, replaced her with Army Auditor General Patrick Fitzgerald, said Navy Cmdr. Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesman. Fitzgerald takes over Nov. 9. The move was announced during an internal teleconference at 2 p.m. today. Following the teleconference DCAA staff was notified via email, James said. Fitzgerald was chosen to take…
Earlier today I previewed reports the Government Accountability Office and the Defense Department Inspector General will release tomorrow highlighting the depth of auditing problems at the Defense Contract Audit Agency. But these watchdogs are not the only ones with concerns about DCAA’s audit management. The Wartime Contracting Commission — a bipartisan, congressionally chartered panel tasked with making recommendations to improve contingency contracting — released this report today calling on DCAA to abandon the all-or-nothing approach it takes when rendering opinions on contractor business systems. In December, DCAA scrapped its opinion that allowed business systems with minor deficiencies to be deemed…
Reforming the Defense Contract Audit Agency will be the topic at a Sept. 23 Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing. The hearing will examine who is responsible for reforming the DCAA, which lawmakers have discussed relocating to ensure independence from the Defense Department’s comptroller. In a recent report, the Government Accountability Office found that DCAA managers pressured field auditors to change audit results to favor contractors and ignored basic auditing standards to expedite work and meet rigid performance standards. The hearing will be 10 a.m. in Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., and the Federal Times will…
KBR was treated unfairly at a hearing last week discussing the contractor’s performance under the Army’s key logistics contract, a top company official wrote the Wartime Contracting Commission on May 12. William Bodie, KBR’s interim president for government and infrastructure, wrote in the letter obtained by Federal Times: At no time during the May 4 hearing was there discussion or reference as to how to evaluate contractor performance in a wartime environment, nor were there any questions probing these issues which are fundamental to the Commission’s mission. Instead the Commission set aside policy debate in favor of judgmental and biased statements…
The Defense Contract Audit Agency  has issued new guidelines for reporting fraud found during contract audits. In this Feb. 9 memo first reported by the Center for Public Integrity, DCAA’s assistant director for operations, Karen Cash, said if an auditor finds potential fraud– such as repeated over billing, false labor charges, improper transfers or bribes—the auditor can refer those cases to the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, even if the auditor cannot prove those questioned costs are fraudulent. “There is no requirement for the auditor to prove the existence of fraud or other contractor irregularities†before referring suspected cases to the Defense investigators,…