This study examines contracting trends at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). It relies on empirical analysis of DoD contracting transaction data from the open-source Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). The authors seek to identify and study emergent trends in the contracting data and marry that analysis with discussion of changing goals and methods for the larger acquisition system.

Jesse Ellman is a research associate, Andrew P. Hunter the director, Rhys McCormick a research assistant, and Gregory Sanders a fellow, with the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at CSIS.