According to the IG report, the agency’s consideration of GSA
contract vehicles, both at the outset and following the TCE
bid protest decision, was incomplete.
After the IG office repeatedly asked for planning documents
including the TCE business case, the agency eventually handed
over “deficient” documents, and when it finally submitted
evidence of a planning effort contained in 800 pages of
additional documentation, the IG concluded the documents were
“neither cohesive, comprehensive, nor complete.”
Further, the contract files Treasury provided lacked adequate
documentation of senior management approval of the acquisition
plan and failed to adequately detail how Treasury had arrived
at its $1 billion cost estimate for TCE, according to OIG-06-028.
It recommended that the agency consider all options before
awarding the contract, including the option of canceling the
solicitation — and said the approach taken should be
thoroughly documented and include evidence of approval by
senior management.
“I suspected for the last year or so that TCE was an
ill-considered stovepipe program conceived at a time when we
needed to move in the opposite direction,” said House
Government Reform Committee chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., in
response to the IG report.
“We should be meeting the government’s pressing need for
secure, efficient, and cost-effective movement of information
across agencies, departments, and jurisdictions of government,
” he added.
