POGO has updated its Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD) with a new top 100 ranking based on the fiscal year 2009 data of USAspending.gov.

Here's the good news: for 27 of the top 100 recipients of federal contract dollars, POGO did not find any instances of misconduct. And an additional 11 contractors in the top 100 have only one known instance, showing that more than one-third of the companies in the database do not show a pattern of misconduct. As POGO investigator Neil Gordon said in a statement, "The fact that over a quarter of the top 100 contractors have no known instances of misconduct is further evidence that we should not accept contractor misconduct as a cost of doing business."

On the other hand, 63 contractors did have multiple instances of misconduct.

Once again Lockheed Martin tops the ranking with 50 instances of civil, criminal, or administrative misconduct since 1995. In FY 2009, Lockheed Martin received almost $40 billion in federal contract awards.

POGO of course can only do so much to identify misconduct by government contractors. Undisclosed settlement outcomes or financial settlements that are not public may escape our notice, and records for contractors based overseas can prove to be particularly elusive.

Interestingly, the list of newcomers to the top 100 includes several such contractors. Italian defense and aeronautics giant Finmeccanica, S.p.A. made this year's rankings, as did the Bahrain National Oil Company (BANOCO), Dutch foodservice logistics provider Supreme Group Holding SARL, German construction and engineering firm Hochtief AG and Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Novartis AG. These contractors, however, are not the first non-US firms to appear on the list.

The FCMD update follows the government's launch of its own contractor responsibility database — the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) — which was based on POGO's database and sadly will not be publicly accessible.

The top 100 contractors received over $296 billion in contracts in FY 2009, accounting for 56 percent of the $524 billion in contracts the government awarded that year. As of today, these 100 contractors have accumulated 642 misconduct instances and over $18.7 billion in monetary penalties since 1995. Counting previous years, the FCMD now includes information on 151 federal contractors and 1,049 resolved and pending misconduct instances.

Visit POGO's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database here.

-- Bryan Rahija

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