A report said officials provided a GSA contracting officer with “misleading market research” to get a TAA waiver to purchase the Chinese tech. Image: Nicholas Rjabow/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA House subcommittee chair has pressed the GSA to explain the purchases of video cameras from a specified supplier that a recent inspector general report concluded was the result of IT officials misleading a contracting officer to justify the request.
The report said that IT officials specifically requested the purchase of videoconferencing cameras made by a Chinese company, a choice of supplier that required a waiver of Trade Agreements Act restrictions. It said that officials provided the contracting officer “misleading market research” to justify it—that the company was the only supplier that met the requirements, when in fact the officials knew there was at least one other, which would not need such a waiver.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. wrote to the GSA that the report “would be troubling enough if the buyer were any federal agency. But GSA is not any federal agency; it is the federal government’s purchasing agent, buying tens of billions of dollars of information technology products and services annually on behalf of other agencies.”
She noted that the report concluded that not only was the contracting officer misled by “her own colleagues within GSA,” after the initial purchase the IT officials ordered a second set of cameras even though in the interim a private security firm had identified security vulnerabilities in them.
She asked GSA for information including further details of the events, whether the GSA attempted to “determine whether the staff who presented the flawed market research to the contracting officer willfully misrepresented the facts concerning the availability of TAA-compliant alternatives, as opposed to being grossly negligent,” and whether disciplinary actions have been taken.
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