Procurement

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) compliance with the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA), focusing on: (1) DOD awards based on other than full and open competition; (2) DOD awards based on full and open competition and the submission of only one offer; and (3) whether DOD had resolved previously identified problems.

GAO found that: (1) with awards based on other than full and open competition, DOD experienced written justification and public notice problems concerning statutory and regulatory requirements; (2) DOD officials acted inconsistently with full and open competition requirements in half of its contract awards based on full and open competition and the submission of only one offer, and inappropriately awarded such contracts without written justification, certification, or approval; (3) due to inappropriate DOD contract awards, it did not have the assurance under CICA that it did not miss potential opportunities for awards; (4) the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense General Supply Center experienced more significant procurement problems than other DOD agencies; (5) during the past several years, DOD contract award data indicated a positive trend, attributable to CICA, in the use of competitive contracting; (6) limited DOD data indicated that the award processing time had increased at five DOD agencies, but the increase could not be attributed to any one cause; (7) DOD agencies less frequently used questionable practices to obtain competition; (8) in response to a GAO recommendation, DOD decreased the amount of its awards containing footnotes in preaward notices from 91 percent to 19 percent; and (9) DOD officials did not fully comply with preaward notice requirements.

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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