Reporting Competition in Defense Procurements

Recent Changes Are Misleading Gao ID: PLRD-82-45 March 8, 1982

A review was undertaken because of ongoing congressional concern about competition and because of the lack of consistency in Department of Defense (DOD) reports on the extent of competition for contracts.

GAO found that DOD procurement statistics were revised to include certain highly competitive nonmilitary awards and to exclude certain noncompetitive military awards. In the opinion of GAO, the DOD presentation of, and changes to, its statistics could decrease the credibility of the statistics and could even lead to a real decline in competition. Furthermore, GAO realizes DOD has undertaken management initiatives to increase competition. GAO is concerned that changes in the reporting of competitive and noncompetitive statistics will distort the historical base and make it difficult to measure improvements in competitive buying.

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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