The House and Senate versions of the fiscal 2026 defense policy bill seek to replace subjective contractor evaluations in the Department of Defense’s Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System, or CPARS, with a “negative-only” system, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., introduced an amendment to the House Armed Services Committee’s FY 2026 defense bill that would direct DOD contracting officers to “only include negative performance events that have a material impact on contract performance or government interests in CPARS” as part of a push to reduce inconsistency and address subjectivity in contractor assessments.
Contracting Officers to Document Negative Performance Events
According to FNN, contracting officials would categorize each negative event into one of five categories, including failures in innovation, technical development or prototype delivery; failures in software, hardware, cybersecurity or IT systems; and failures in maintenance, logistics or support services.
The amendment to the defense legislation would require contracting officers to document late deliveries, cybersecurity breaches, failure to meet contract requirements, violations of environmental or safety regulations and other negative performance events within 30 days of verifying them.
Standardized Scoring System for Negative Performance Events
The measure would require the Pentagon to establish “a standardized scoring mechanism to normalize negative performance events of a contractor” based on the total value of contracts and the number of transactions such vendors have had.
Under the scoring mechanism, vendors will have the capability to view their scores and underlying data in CPARS and challenge the reported negative events.
The amendment would direct DOD to train contracting officials to identify, report and verify negative performance events and correctly encode data into CPARS for use in generating vendors’ scores.
The Senate version of the defense measure also aims to replace subjective contractor assessments in CPARS with “objective criteria for negative performance events.”
