GSA agreed with recommendations to improve oversight of contracts undergoing consolidation and to re-evaluate previously consolidated contracts. Image: JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe GSA should strengthen its price analyses when consolidating multiple award schedule contracts “so customer agencies can rely on MAS pricing to ensure that their orders will result in the lowest overall cost alternative,” an inspector general report has said.
The IG said it conducted its audit of the Federal Acquisition Service’s contract consolidation initiative, following its report on an earlier initiative finding the FAS did not consistently comply with the Federal Acquisition Regulation and GSA’s own policies.
Under those requirements, the FAS must perform price analyses for the products and services transferred from expiring and canceled contracts to the consolidated contracts, auditors said, but in a sample of 19 consolidated contracts, “we found that FAS’s price analyses for the products and services transferred to consolidated contracts were frequently limited and did not consistently leverage the government’s collective buying power.”
“FAS contracting personnel frequently accepted unsubstantiated most favored customer and commercial pricing information. This practice does not adhere to GSA policy, limits contracting personnel’s ability to fulfill their responsibilities, and ultimately reduces the effectiveness of the price analyses,” it said.
“Meanwhile, when performing price analyses on Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) pilot contracts, FAS contracting personnel did not use TDR pilot data for pricing decisions; instead, they relied primarily on pricing comparisons to other MAS and government contracts. However, according to GSA policy, these comparisons are to be used only as part of a larger negotiation objective development strategy,” it said.
In addition, several of the comparisons were invalid because the proposed services were not compared to similar services as required by the FAR, it said.
It said GSA agreed with recommendations to improve oversight of contracts undergoing consolidation and to re-evaluate previously consolidated contracts to ensure that added products or services were properly evaluated. However, the GSA disagreed with a recommendation regarding TDR reporting; the IG in turn reiterated that recommendation.
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