Three years after share-in-savings contracts were authorized
under the e-gov act of 2002 for IT projects, agencies have
not been unsuccessful or have shied away from using them,
the Government Accountability Office has said in a new report.
With the e-gov act set to expire in September of this year,
the Office of Management and Budget has yet to issue
implementation regulations and guidance — and it reported
that not a single contract has been
authorized.
This is despite the establishment of a GSA SIS office and two web
tools designed to help agencies identify opportunities to use the
contracts for IT projects and make business cases for them, according
to GAO-05-736.
It said officials from 11 agencies identified reasons why the SIS
initiative has not resulted in IT contracts including, “a lack of
implementing regulations; difficulty determining baseline costs; a
belief that the return on investment using share-in-savings contracts
is insufficient; concerns among agency officials that they still would
have to obtain funding for cancellation and termination liability,
which can be a significant sum; and too few acquisition employees
have been trained to use the — SIS – contracting technique.”
