Air Force Teleprocessing Services Procurement for the COPPER IMPACT System Should Be Reopened

Gao ID: AFMD-82-112 September 30, 1982

GAO reviewed the Air Force's COPPER IMPACT contract which was awarded to Boeing Computer Services Company in 1982. This report is part of a congressionally requested review of teleprocessing services contracts awarded by Federal agencies.

GAO found that teleprocessing services provided by this contract could cost the Government far more than estimated because of the contract's unbalanced pricing structure which allows the cost to increase disproportionately, or the discount to decrease, as the level of use increases. GAO believes that the problem created by unbalanced pricing was compounded by the fact that the Air Force did not use a representative system workload for the benchmarking test and that actual use may exceed expected use. GAO also believes that this contract violates procurement regulation and that contract costs will escalate far beyond Air Force estimates. GAO concluded that the Air Force can obtain more accurate system-life costs and can save the Government money by adjusting its workload estimates and reopening this procurement.

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: Walter L. Anderson Team: General Accounting Office: Accounting and Financial Management Division Phone: (202) 275-5044


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