Contract Management

In January 2003, we issued two reports that provide insight regarding the share-in-savings (SIS) provisions of the E-Government Act of 2002: one on critical elements of training for new acquisition initiatives and one on commercial practices that foster successful SIS contracting. As follow-up to these reports, we are writing to underscore the need for the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) to ensure (1) that members of the federal acquisition workforce understand and appropriately apply this new authority and (2) that appropriate data are collected and available to meet mandated reporting requirements regarding the effective use of SIS contracting. SIS contracting represents a significant change in the way the federal government acquires information technology. In our report on improving training for new acquisition initiatives, we emphasized the importance that industry and government experts place on training to successfully implement such change. Training on this information technology acquisition initiative will be essential to its effective implementation. In our report on SIS contracting, we highlighted the federal government's limited experience with SIS contracting as well as conditions that fostered successful implementation in commercial SIS contracts.

In view of the potential benefits of SIS programs, we think OFPP should consider developing policy and guidance that (1) specifically address the need for a well-defined training program and (2) incorporate practices that fostered success in the commercial SIS contracts we reviewed. The E-Government Act requires (1) the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to submit a report containing descriptive as well as evaluative information on the use of SIS contracts to the Congress not later than 2 years after the date of the enactment of the act and (2) the Comptroller General to conduct a review of the OMB report and provide an independent assessment of the effectiveness of the use of SIS contracts not later than 6 months after the OMB report is issued. Providing meaningful reports to the Congress will depend on the availability of good data. However, experience has shown that such data have not always been available to make program assessments. For example, in March 1998, we reported that procurement data were inadequate to determine whether the key purposes of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 were being achieved. Given this past experience and the limited use of SIS contracting by the federal government, we encourage OFPP to consider the need to collect data on the federal government's use of SIS contracting pursuant to the E-Government Act. The data should be uniform, reliable, and sufficient to accurately assess SIS use, and provide meaningful reports to Congress regarding the effectiveness of SIS contracting in improving agency processes and achieving agency missions.

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: