In its most recent review of the General Services
Administration’s multiple awards schedule program —
through which $34 billion changed hands in 2004 —
the Government Accountability Office concluded that
pricing problems persist and the use of pre-award
audits continues to decline.
GSA uses pre-award audits to ensure that it gets the
best prices vendors offer, and uses post-award audits
to determine if it was overcharged and to recover
funds, according to GAO-05-911T.
However, GAO said use of pre-award audits continued
to decline as of February 2005, and that GSA is
“continuing to miss opportunities to save hundreds
of millions of dollars.”
GSA had changed its procurement rules in August 2001,
at which point it “effectively eliminated the use of
post-award audits,” as GSA’s inspector general has
concluded.
The idea was to compensate with an increases in
pre-award audits, but that has not been the case,
GAO found.