The VA did not conduct a thorough analysis to justify the need for call center services, on which it will waste $13.1 million through fiscal 2015 unless corrective action is taken, the VA inspector general has said.
It said that HR acquired excess services when it expanded an interagency agreement with OPM to provide two employment call centers operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The call centers had call volumes so low during a 13-month period that each call center employee handled an average of 2.4 calls per day, the IG said.
It said that additionally, a veteran employment Web site duplicated key components of existing sites.
VA also awarded a $4.4 million one-year contract for HR support services that duplicated its own internal capabilities and contracted for certain inherently governmental functions, according to the IG.
VA agreed to improve its acquisition practices by assessing program needs against existing capacities and capabilities, and by establishing program metrics.
Goals and Metrics Needed to Gage Progress Improving Service Acquisition DoD, which obligated more than $186 billion for contracted services in fiscal 2012, has taken a number of actions addressing legislative requirements but is not yet positioned to determine what effects they have had on improving service acquisition, GAO has said.
It said the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (USDAT&L), has not identified specific goals and associated metrics that would enable it to assess progress toward achieving those goals.
USDAT&L has identified improving service acquisition as a priority but has not defined a desired end state for its actions or the measurable characteristics that would embody achieving such a goal, according to GAO-13-634.
It said DoD recently established new management positions within USDAT&L and the military departments to oversee and coordinate service acquisition, and that USDAT&L is focusing on efforts to improve the process for how requirements for individual service acquisitions are developed, and that it is enhancing training to respond to several legislative directives.
However, USDAT&L is challenged in defining a desired end state for its actions, in part, because it has not determined the current status of service acquisition in terms of volume, type, location, and trends, GAO said.
It added that while DoD is taking steps to improve its contract and financial systems to obtain such data, those efforts would not be complete until at least 2014.
