GSA Can Improve Traffic Management Practices

The General Services Administration's (GSA) transportation and traffic management responsibilities include: (1) prescribing policies and methods of procurement and supply of personal property and nonpersonal service, including transportation and traffic management; (2) representing executive agencies in negotiations with carriers and other public utilities; and (3) providing traffic management services to any federal agency upon request.

Civil agencies generally do not come to GSA for assistance in traffic management matters even in situations where federal regulations require them to do so. As a result, GSA often does not know how well agencies are performing or whether the lowest possible transportation costs are being obtained. A review of operations in four agencies indicated that the correction of deficiencies identified would save $2.3 million annually in administrative and transportation costs. GSA has not been making the type of analyses needed to obtain the lowest transportation costs on procurement contracts. GSA now uses Free on Board (FOB) destination delivery terms almost exclusively, but millions of dollars could be saved if it were to consider FOB origin delivery terms and take advantage of special reduced transportation rates available to the government. The use of FOB origin delivery terms would also eliminate transportation costs as a factor in bid offerings.

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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