DoD accounted for $456 billion split between products and services, while non-defense agencies spent $248 billion on services vs. $55 billion in products. Image: FOTOGRIN/Shutterstock.com
Federal agency spending on contracts grew by $33 billion to $759 billion in 2023 over 2022 after accounting for inflation, while the percentage of contracts awarded competitively fell from 68 to 66 percent, a dashboard posted by the GAO shows.
The competitive sourcing percentage held steady at non-defense agencies at 84 percent while the DoD percentage dropped from 58 to 53 percent, the GAO said. DoD accounted for $456 billion of the total, about evenly split between products and services, while non-defense agencies spent $248 billion on services vs. $55 billion in products.
Professional support and medical/general health care were the top two categories of services on both the defense and non-defense sides. For products, the top two were drugs/biologicals and medical and surgical equipment and supplies on the non-defense side and fixed-wing aircraft and combat ships and landing vessels on the defense side.
Among non-defense agencies, the VA accounted for the largest amount, $61.6 billion, followed by Energy at $46.3 billion and HHS at $38.5 billion. Among DoD components, the Navy at $151.8 billion was followed by the Army at $111.6 billion and the Air Force at $92.6 billion, with other defense entities accounting for the rest.
Agencies meanwhile increased their use of “other transaction agreement” authority—a more flexible procurement method—by $4 billion to $16 billion, although that still was below the recent $19 billion peak of the 2020 pandemic year. That spending is not included in the general accounting of contract spending.
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