Poor contract management wastes billions

The US risks wasting as much as $2.5 billion in federal funds paid to DynCorp International to train Iraqi police because of weak contract management, says Bloomberg.

Stuart Bowen, the special inspector for Iraq reconstruction, says: “The State Department must strengthen its contract and programme oversight capabilities and capacities. Our continuing reviews and investigations will help reveal the scope of abuse that occurred.”

DynCorp spokesman Douglas Ebner says the company has implemented processes to strengthen its IT systems.

Contract management solutions provider I-many has appointed Gaurav Verma as its vice-president of solutions marketing, states Earth Times.

Verma will assume the responsibility for I-many's global marketing strategy and will drive the company's expansion into other markets.

Prior to I-Many, Verma led the global technology product marketing for SAS and has also held the position of financial services industry marketing director for Cognos.

Analysts claim the economic downturn is still providing strong incentive for CIOs to practice vendor contract management, reports Search CIO.

CIOs are looking to consolidate vendor contracts and software licences across business units to cut costs and eliminate contract redundancies.

"There are companies cancelling support altogether with major enterprise resource planning vendors or switching those support contracts away from the original equipment manufacturers to third parties to reduce costs," says Gartner analyst, Bill Snyder. "Both situations can carry with it a lot of risk, but customers are making dramatic cuts in that area."