Acquisition Reform

The Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 seeks to simplify government acquisition procedures, speed the delivery of goods and services, and reduce in-house purchasing costs. All changes stipulated by the act were to apply to government acquisitions by October 1995. Because not enough time has elapsed and uniform procurement data were unavailable, GAO was unable to reach meaningful conclusions about the impact of this legislation on the government's annual acquisition of nearly $200 billion in goods and services. However, the eight federal agencies GAO reviewed seemed to be working toward achieving the act's key objectives.

GAO noted that: (1) no uniform procurement data were being collected centrally to adequately assess whether FASA's purposes were being achieved; (2) data for each measure were not always available for the eight federal organizations; (3) accordingly, GAO's analyses had variations; (4) certain organizations had introduced acquisition streamlining initiatives before FASA's implementation, and they had several years of data available for some measures; (5) for other measures, only one year of data was available, and that provides a baseline for comparing subsequent years' data; (6) despite limitations, GAO's measures indicate that the organizations it reviewed were working toward achieving key FASA purposes; (7) to reach more meaningful conclusions on the extent to which these key FASA purposes are being achieved, additional data would have to be collected and examined for subsequent fiscal years; and (8) the following is a summary of results linked to key FASA purposes: (a) reduce unique purchasing requirements; (b) requests for submission of cost or pricing data decreased at two of three Department of Defense (DOD) locations, while little change was noted DOD-wide; (c) sufficient information was not available to determine whether acquisition of commercial items had increased; (d) increase use of simplified acquisition procedures; (e) use of simplified acquisition procedures, including the use of purchase cards, increased at most locations; (f) obtain goods and services faster and reduce in-house purchasing cost; (g) the number of bid protests declined at most locations; (h) the time needed to award a contract had generally decreased, thereby expediting the purchases of goods and services; (i) sufficient data were not available to make a definitive observation regarding in-house purchasing costs; and (j) additional data would have to be available and examined for subsequent fiscal years.