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The White House announcement of its intent to nominate Paul Denett to head the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) presents an opportunity for a thorough and much-needed overhaul of both the government’s procurement process and its oversight of private contractors. I would hope that Mr. Denett, if he is confirmed by the Senate, would undertake a significant rewrite of OMB’s Circular A-76, which governs federal contracting, in order to level the playing field for federal workers in the competition to keep their jobs—and to generate the best possible results for taxpayers. Mr. Denett also will have to ensure that federal agencies have stronger and more clear guidelines for overseeing contractors and that agencies be prodded to step up their lax examination of opportunities to bring federal work back in house. One good place for a new OFPP director to start would be to ensure that government contractors are compliant with their tax obligations. We should expect that those companies awarded taxpayer dollars are held to the same standard of responsibility as the rest of the country. The fact that far too many government contractors aren’t compliant has thus far failed to generate anything more than minor hand-wringing within the administration, and this has to end.