Need For and Plans To Strengthen Procurement and Property Management Controls at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Laboratories

GAO reviewed the procedures and controls designed to prevent fraud, abuse, and waste in selected procurement and property management operations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

GAO found a serious lack of adherence to procedures and controls prescribed by Federal Procurement and Property Management Regulations. At the National Severe Storms Laboratory, deficiencies existed in approving purchase requests, ordering and receiving goods and services, and soliciting competitive prices. This lack of adherence to prescribed procedures could leave the small purchase system vulnerable to abuse and contributed to the laboratory's overspending its allocated funds. At the NOAA Procurement Office, deficiencies existed in preparing contract solicitations, performing price or cost analyses, preparing memorandums of contract negotiations, requiring timely audits of contractor costs, controlling contractor-purchased Government property, and using contracts having illegal cost-plus-a-percentage-of-cost type features.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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