The Patent and Trademark Office didn’t follow best practices when monitoring its time-and-materials contracts for the amount of work done by a contractor, says a Dec. 3 Commerce Department inspector general report.
The IG reviewed 103 contracts worth $35.4 million and found that $24.6 million in contracts lacked the proper oversight to determine whether payments made to the contractors were warranted.
In a time and materials contract, the government agrees to be billed by a contractor for the work performed as well as the materials used.
Contracting officers often did not prepare service level agreements, which define the scope of the service, and the managers didn’t maintain documentation of contractor performance, the report says.
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