Searching Hidden Links: Inferring Undisclosed Subcontractors From Public Contract Records and Employment Data
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Authors
Tudorneau, M. Eduard
Franklin, Keith
Rego, Arnold
Wu, Ninging
Wang, Richard
Subjects
Advisors
Date of Issue
2018-04-30
Date
04/30/18
Publisher
Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School
Language
Abstract
Many prime contractors use subcontractors to meet the DoD requirements for Small Business Utilization, to incorporate specialized skills and to perform tasks that are not the prime contractors' core business. Some of these subcontractors are not explicitly made public for a variety of reasons, including security or competitive advantage. In such cases, because the involvement of these subcontractors in certain aspects of acquisition is not known, they can pose the risk of becoming a weak, stress point despite careful planning by the DoD. This paper examines whether such undisclosed contractors can be inferred through a combined analysis of both the published purchasing data (Federal Procurement Data Systems;Next Gen) and of additional pieces of information freely available on the web. In particular, this paper investigates employment data in an attempt to correlate changes in employment with negative modifications to contracts. It is possible that, when a contract is cut, the prime contractor may terminate a subcontract, resulting in layoffs of the subcontractor's employees. Employment numbers are published regularly and broken down to county and industry codes. This paper provides a preliminary analysis showing that drops in employment occur when small contractors have relatively large reductions in DoD contracts.
Type
Report
Description
Series/Report No
Department
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
SYM-AM-18-103
Sponsors
Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program
Funding
Format
Citation
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.