Contract Administration and Stakeholder Communication

This paper presents general thoughts and lessons learned gathered from interviews of individuals that have played one of the various key roles in procuring, administering or executing Contract Operations services agreements. The author conducted interviews with procurement advisors, contract administrators, compliance auditors, clients, and services providers. Additional interviews were conducted with consultants that specialize in developing effective business communications and that work with public-sector clients and private sector services providers to develop partnering agreements. Nearly everyone agrees that good communication is essential, however, the author found broad differences of opinion on how that is accomplished and the level of specificity required in the services agreements. This paper presents the findings of that investigation and recommendations for creating a communication plan. An annotated bibliography that contains the author's interview notes is included in the paper.