Saturday, August 28, 2010
Too much of the U.S. government has established a bad habit of doing business again and again with the same contractors, resulting in inefficiencies and lost opportunities to save money. The Government Accountability Office came to this conclusion after reviewing certain trends in noncompetitive contracts that evolved over several years and discovering poor decisions and business practices by federal workers.
Forty-four percent of all federal contracts in fiscal year 2009 were not open to competition or attracted only one bid, according to the GAO’s report.
In some cases, agencies drafted their contracts so narrowly that it made it difficult for more than one company to compete for the work. At other times, government offices gave additional contracts to businesses because it made things easier, rather than start anew with the biding process and establish new working relationships with different firms.
The most common excuse agencies used to avoid competitive bidding was that there was “only one responsible source. The Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development Program also encouraged sole source awards.
Another problem exists with Department of Defense weapons contracts because the government does not have access to the technical data of private companies. For this reason, once a company receives a weapons-related contract, it usually retains the contract for the life of the program. The worst offenders in FY 2009 were the Navy and Air Force, with 45% of their contracts being non-competitive.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Agencies Are Getting Too Attached to Incumbent Contractors, Watchdog Finds (by Robert Brodsky, Government Executive)
Opportunities Exist to Increase Competition and Assess Reasons When Only One Offer Is Received (Government Accountability Office) (pdf)
Pentagon Uses Stimulus Funds for No-Bid Contracts (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Navy Awards Half Billion Dollars of Contracts without Competitive Bidding (by Kyle Kuersten, AllGov)
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