The Federal Acquisition Service overrode its contracting officers and pressured them to extend or award schedules contracts based on complaints from contractors, a June 4 General Services Administration office of inspector general report (.pdf) says.
FAS management allowed contractors to circumvent contracting officers when the contractors disagreed with contracting staff determinations and supported the contractors’ positions, including by reassigning contracts to different contracting officers, the report says.
In each reassignment case, the new contracting officer awarded or extended contracts without properly addressing significant issues identified by previous contracting officers, the report says. The result, auditors add, is that GSA signed or extended schedules contracts with inflated pricing or unfavorable terms.
The report focuses on three large information technology schedule contracts that represented over $900 million in contract sales in calendar year 2011–a Oracle services contract that garnered $358.4 million worth of business, Carahsoft Technology with $432 million worth of sales, and a Deloitte Consulting contract worth $119.5 million that year.
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