GAO Assessment of SBA Breakout Efforts at Four Air Force Air Logistics Centers

GAO discussed its assessment of breakout efforts by the Small Business Administration (SBA) to identify new competitive contracting opportunities in the procurement of aircraft spare parts by the Air Force. Since late 1979, SBA procurement center representatives (PCR) have been assigned to work at four Air Force Air Logistics Centers (ALC). Their primary mission has been to challenge spare parts procurements that the Air Force plans to make on a noncompetitive basis and to identify ways to purchase the parts on a competitive basis or, at a minimum, directly from the actual manufacturer. In the opinion of GAO, the breakout progress has been and will continue to be slow, unless the Air Force finds ways to effectively deal with a number of constraints which have hampered breakout efforts. These include: (1) incomplete information on who actually manufactures the parts for the prime contractor; (2) missing technical data, with uncertainties as to whether data may be available elsewhere; (3) questions of whether the data are proprietary and, therefore, legally unavailable to other suppliers; and (4) reluctance on the part of the ALC material management officials to accept the additional risk and inconvenience in procuring from a new source. In spite of difficulties posed by these constraints, the SBA breakout efforts have resulted in large dollar savings relative to the program's costs. The SBA breakout efforts have also increased the Department of Defense's awareness of potential savings through breakout and have helped the Air Force to identify new opportunities to obtain competition. Within the next year, SBA would like to expand the breakout program by assigning breakout PCR to a number of additional installations. GAO supported this action, since effective use of the additional breakout PCR should result in even greater savings to the Government.