Measuring the Effects of Federal Budget Dysfunction: Impacts of Continuing Resolutions on Public Procurement

Symposium PresentationApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

An Assessment of the Impact of Federal Continuing Resolutions on the Pre-Approval Stage of Defense Acquisitions

Acquisition Management / Faculty ReportAcquisition Research Program Sponsored Report SeriesSponsored Acquisition Research & Technical ReportsThis study is an analysis of the impact of federal continuing resolutions on defense acquisitions. It focuses on the early stage of the acquisitions lifecycle when purchase requests are prepared and submitted to the acquisitions system. The research objective is to quantify the impacts of continuing resolutions on the number of purchase requests created, the processing period for acceptance of purchase requests into the acquisition system, and the total dollar amount of purchase requests. The analysis used data taken from the USMC Purchase Request Builder system, a database for purchase order creation prior to a requests acceptance into the acquisitions system. The sample obtained describes over 1,000 unique purchase requests generated between FY16 through FY19. The results of the analysis revealed strong impacts of CRs on the number of purchase requests initiated per week and on the total price of individual purchase requests. The results show that the weekly average number of requests generated is reduced by nearly half during a continuing resolution. The regressions using the count of purchase requests per week also revealed strong impacts purchase requests for both goods and services, though the impact may be greater on service requests. The estimates of the impact of Continuing Resolutions on the total price of individual requests revealed a significant impact on service requests. The results showed that the lack of budget authority is associated with a reduction in the size of individual requests and that this effect disproportionately effects service requests. All of the estimations described in this report made special care to separate the effects of CRs from the underlying seasonal trend in government purchasing that is often aligned with “use it or lose it” behaviors. Both the count of purchase request initiation and the Total Purchase Price effects persisted after including these seasonal controls. Our analysis of PRALT length, the time required for a request to advance from initial creation to acceptance in the procurement system, was initially significant, but ultimately could not be distinguished from the seasonal trends. Overall, this study is one of the few empirical exercises to date that measure the impact of continuing resolutions on defense procurement. The estimates generated from this analysis identify clear impacts on procurement activity that results from the uncertainty and increased administrative burden that is triggered by the lack of full budget authority.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Exploring the Sub-State Intergovernmental Game

Draft: Do not cite without author permissionThe (draft) article of record as published may be found at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3562735Cooperative budgeting arrangements between state and local governments jointly fund local programs. The mix of state and local revenues contributed to these arrangements can change as budget priorities shift over time. This study examines the strategic choices public officials make as they determine their contributions to jointly-funded programs. Using a game theory model known as the “Diner’s Dilemma”, the analysis explores how each level of government considers how much revenue to contribute and whether it can induce its partner to increase their level of support. This analysis applies primarily to local programs with regional externalities. The model illustrates how local efforts to aggressively try to shift costs to the state government can backfire, particularly during periods of state fiscal stress

The Schick Reaction and Diphtheria Prophylactic Immunisation With Toxin -Antitoxin Mixture.

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Impact of high-cost drugs for individual patient use

To document and describe the individual patient use (IPU) scheme at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney in terms of submissions and approvals and assess the financial impact of the scheme on the hospital drug expenditure. Method: All submissions for IPU approvals received between January 1997 and December 2001 were reviewed. Submissions were collected on a calendar year basis. Data collection and analysis included identification of approved medication and indication, off- label or approved indication, prescriber, ward, outcome of therapy, person deciding the approval, approval date duration and expiry, amount of medication dispensed and the cost of therapy. The annual cost and proportion of overall drug expenditure for each approval was calculated. Results: The number of approvals had a trend to increase each year. 67.1% of the IPU approvals were for off-label indications. Requested feedback on clinical outcomes was provided only in 18% of cases. The drug acquisition cost of the IPU scheme more than doubled in the period between 1999 and 2001. Similarly the proportion of the drug expenditure on IPU drugs increased significantly (p<0.001) from 1.6% in 1999 to 3.6% in 2001. Conclusion: The results indicated that the number of approvals and submissions for IPU had a tendency to increase. The financial impact of the IPU scheme increased over the years reviewed

Measuring the Effects of Federal Budget Dysfunction: Impacts of Continuing Resolutions on Public Procurement

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Acquisition Research SymposiumThis study measures the behavioral effects of continuing resolutions by examining their impact on federal procurement activities. The restrictions imposed by continuing resolutions are explored as an example of political control over a public organization. The analysis employs a dataset describing the timing of U.S. Marine Corps purchase orders for goods and services. Individual purchase orders were sampled over a four-year period (2016−2019) that endured continuing resolutions of different lengths. The analysis examines the impact of continuing resolutions on the number of purchase orders initiated, the duration of their review period, and the dollar amount per request. The results depict multiple impacts that appear to concentrate on requests for services rather than commodities. These findings help quantify the magnitude of the disruptions caused by federal budgetary dysfunction.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

A Parallel and Distributed Analysis Pipeline for Performance Tree Evaluation

Performance Trees are a unifying framework for the specification of performance queries involving measures and requirements. This paper describes an evaluation environment for Performance Trees comprising a client-side Performance Query Editor, incorporated as a module of the PIPE2 Petri net tool, and a cluster-based server-side evaluation engine. The latter combines the capabilities of a number of parallel and distributed analysis tools

Performance Trees: Implementation And Distributed Evaluation

In this paper, we describe the first realisation of an evaluation environment for Performance Trees, a recently proposed formalism for the specification of performance properties and measures. In particular, we present details of the architecture and implementation of this environment that comprises a client-side model and performance query specification tool, and a server-side distributed evaluation engine, supported by a dedicated computing cluster. The evaluation engine combines the analytic capabilities of a number of distributed tools for steady-state, passage time and transient analysis, and also incorporates a caching mechanism to avoid redundant calculations. We demonstrate in the context of a case study how this analysis pipeline allows remote users to design their models and performance queries in a sophisticated yet easy to use framework, and subsequently evaluate them by harnessing the computing power of a Grid cluster back-end.Accepted versio

The Timing of Managerial Responses to Fiscal Stress

17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under temporary embargo.Using 34 years of data from Florida counties, we examine the effect of multiple fiscal stressors on expenditures over time to test theoretical propositions in Charles Levine's seminal study on cutback management. We demonstrate support for Levine's stages model and his claims on linkages between the causes of fiscal stress and managerial responses. Specifically, unemployment levels produce differential effects by service area (e.g., human services bear the most significant share of the reductions), especially in relation to the persistence of the stressor. We cannot support the stages model with other stressor measures. We expand the literature to include county governments, enhancing the contemporary literature on local government fiscal stress.U.S. Government affiliation is unstated in article text