Procurement

Navy Competition Advocate General and ADP Vendor Complaint Handling Gao ID: NSIAD-90-39BR November 15, 1989

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Navy's Office of the Competition Advocate General (OCAG), focusing on a comparison of its contractor complaint handling process with similar Army processes.

GAO found that: (1) OCAG had only a limited complaint recordkeeping system, while the Army had a more comprehensive system, which it used to periodically identify and address procurement management issues; (2) about half of all the complaints received alleged either unjustified restrictive or sole-source procurements; (3) the Navy revised its automatic data processing (ADP) procurement procedures to require development of competition plans for ADP procurements over $300,000; (4) of the 22 planned awards based on brand-name specifications that the Navy reviewed, it approved 13, including 5 with changes, still had 6 under review, and did not complete reviews on the other 3 for various reasons; (5) OCAG involvement in addressing vendor complaints varied in each procurement; and (6) the Office of Naval Research (ONR) did not perform advance procurement planning, which resulted in its purchase of ADP equipment on a piecemeal and noncompetitive basis.

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: Team: Phone:


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.