Multiple Award Schedule Purchases

GAO reviewed a random sample of 101 Multiple Award Schedule orders exceeding $25,000 for automated data processing and telecommunications services at six procurement offices at NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the Internal Revenue Service, and the military. This report discusses the extent to which these procurement offices complied with requirements to (1) publish preaward synopsis notices in the Commerce Business Daily, (2) describe the federal information processing requirements in the synopsis notices in terms that do not restrict competition, and (3) document the results of the synopsis notices and show that the procurement met the government's needs at the lowest possible cost. GAO also evaluates the extent to which Commerce Business Daily notices generated responses from suppliers and how anticipated administrative costs of buying in the commercial open market affected agencies' decisions about how to fulfill Multiple Award Schedule requirements.

GAO found that: (1) although the agencies generally complied with the Federal Information Resources Management Regulation (FIRMR) requirement to place notices in the Commerce Business Daily (CBD) regarding proposed Information Resources Management Service (IRMS) schedule orders expected to exceed $50,000, they did not synopsize orders with expected values of $25,001 to $50,000, as required by statute; (2) of the 101 sample orders valued at more than $25,000, 36 had synopses published in CBD prior to award; (3) procurement offices' CBD notices were often unnecessarily restrictive of competition; (4) 13 of the 27 notices did not describe the essential characteristics of the agency's federal information processing requirements so that suppliers of alternative products would know what would be acceptable to the agency; (5) 12 of the remaining 14 notices did not cite the applicable reason for limiting competition although the contract file documentation provided a justification for other than full and open competition; (6) most of the 36 notices generated few or no responses from suppliers, and when suppliers did respond they generally offered non-schedule prices for the products; (7) in all 36 cases, the procurement offices purchased the manufacturer's product identified in the notice and in only one of those cases did the orders go to a supplier other than the one identified; and (8) in 6 of the 12 notices with responses, suppliers offered commercial open-market prices for federal information processing items that were lower than the IRMS contract order prices, but agencies did not issue solicitations in any of those cases, due to the relatively high administrative cost of trying to acquire the items on the open market.

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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