Contract Monitoring: Importance, Benefits and Best Practices

Contract monitoring is beneficial since it ensures that the government can fulfill its commitment to its citizens. The government, through contractors, can provide products and offerings demanded by the citizens. Contract monitoring ensures that the contractors perform to the contract's standards in meeting the citizens' needs on behalf of the government (Shick, 2015). It is also beneficial since it enables the government to minimize costs while providing basic offerings to citizens. The performance of the contractor is likely to be poor if the contract monitoring process is poorly designed. In addition, contract monitoring is time-consuming and may yield incorrect outcomes if the monitoring process is not appropriate to the contract's nature. Random sampling is advantageous since it is simple to perform. A test sample is selected randomly and tested according to contractually specified tests. Random sampling ensures that the findings of the contractually specified tests can apply to the entire shipment population. Random sampling is subject to sample selection bias, which may occur when a non-random sample is selected. In this case, the contractually specified test will yield incorrect findings. In addition, random sampling is suitable only for contracts that focus on output measurement. Unlike 100 percent inspection, periodic inspection saves time since only some parts of the products and offerings being monitored are inspected. The variable nature of the periodic inspection costs allows inspectors to manage limited resources effectively. Compared to random sampling, periodic inspection offers a less strong statistical means of comparing general performance and the contractor's performance level. Customer input is a highly reliable method of contract monitoring, given that customers have a distinct stake in the quality of the contractor's work. The process of obtaining feedback from the customers may be time-consuming if he or she is unavailable. It may be costly, especially if the feedback is to be solicited from various customers. 

Reference 

Shick, R. A. (2015). Government contracting: A public solutions handbook. Routledge.