Mayor Adrian Fenty on Thursday nominated a contracting expert with nearly 30 years’ experience in the public and private sectors to run the D.C. Office on Contracting and Procurement, one of the District’s most criticized agencies.
With the D.C. Council’s approval, David Gragan will take over as the District’s chief procurement officer. Gragan most recently served as director of CGI Spend Management Solutions, an information technology and management consulting firm. He previously managed government procurement affairs for Accenture and Oracle, and served as director of procurement operations for Indiana and Texas.
“I’m absolutely passionate about this business, government contracting done right,” Gragan said during a news conference at the Trinidad Recreation Center in Northeast.
A D.C. Council task force, the D.C. Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Government Accountability Office have singled out the contracting office, which procures roughly $3.75 billion annually, as particularly troubled. The agency wastes millions of dollars in overpayments and inefficiencies through contracts awarded in direct violation of the rules, in many cases the result of negligence or poor staff training, according to various audits and reports.
Gragan said he’ll apply the best practices from other governments to his job in D.C. But he could not offer any specifics reform plans.
“It’s very premature for me to presume that I know enough about the way the District’s contracting and procurement is done today,” he said.
Fenty announced three other Cabinet nominees: Natasha Campbell as director of the Office of Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining; Mercedes Lemp as director of the Office of Latino Affairs; and Leon Swain Jr. as chairman of the D.C. Taxicab Commission.
Swain is a Ward 8 resident, a rare appointment from east of the Anacostia River for Fenty.
“I’d like to thank the mayor for this nomination,” Ward 8 D.C. Council Member Marion Barry said. “I’m waiting on some others.”
