The vast majority of United States Federal government evaluations are conducted by contractors, so policies and issues related to effective practices for government evaluation contracting are critical. This panel presentation summarized earlier AEA sessions (#Eval12, #Eval13, #Eval15) that addressed challenges in evaluation contracting and proposed specific, useful solutions. Topics include legal and regulatory obstacles; question and answer processes; influence of government cost and time frame estimates; contractor bid/no bid decisions; and performance-based contracting. Solutions to obstacles were organized around: