Allegations of Improper Procedures and Waste in Air Force Flight Simulator Operation and Maintenance Contracts

A review was made of alleged improper procedures and waste in flight simulator operation and maintenance at the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory. The Laboratory is operated under sole-source, non-personal services engineering maintenance contracts. Shortly after initiating its work, GAO learned that an Air Force review of the same allegations had been completed. The review was therefore limited to an analysis of the Air Force report and information obtained during two visits to the Laboratory.

The Air Force report adequately addressed all the allegations except one. The report concluded that, although the technical data package for one contract was adequate for competitive bidding, the packages for two of the contracts were not. The Air Force did not address the question of whether the Laboratory should take steps to improve the technical data packages for the two non-competitive efforts. Although the Laboratory synopsized future years' expected requirements in Commerce Business Daily with the intent of promoting competition by informing potential sources of the planned procurements, GAO questioned whether competition could be obtained on the two non-competitive efforts in view of the lack of adequate technical data.

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.

Director: No director on record Team: No team on record Phone: No phone on record