Energy Management
Using DOE Employees Can Reduce Costs for Some Support Services Gao ID: RCED-91-186 August 16, 1991Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Energy's (DOE) support service contracting practices, focusing on: (1) the overall cost and use of such contracts; (2) the adequacy of controls to ensure that DOE support service contracts are cost-effective; and (3) whether work performed on selected support service contracts could be performed less expensively by federal personnel.
GAO found that: (1) in fiscal year (FY) 1990, DOE obligated $522 million for support service contracts, a 56-percent increase from FY 1986; (2) the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) guidance on support service contracting does not uniformly require agencies to compare contract and in-house performance costs to determine which is more cost-effective; (3) DOE awarded few support service contracts on the basis of cost comparisons, since it could not get additional staff to perform the work in-house because of personnel ceilings; (4) although DOE guidelines for managing support service contracts limit the duration of each contract to 5 years, the guidelines do not limit how long an activity can be performed under successive support service contracts; (5) DOE policy does not require cost comparisons or establish other controls over assessing whether DOE support service contracts are cost-effective; (6) for 11 of the 12 contracts reviewed, DOE use of support service contracts cost $5 million more than federal employees would have cost; and (7) recent actions indicate that OMB may be willing to consider requests for additional staff if the requests adequately justify claimed cost savings.
RecommendationsOur 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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