Federal buyers spent more than $4.8 million on hand sanitizer alone in the last two months.
Federal agencies have spent upward of $300 million over the last two months in response to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Between February 1 and March 22, agencies reported spending more than $297.8 million on telework products and services—such as virtual meeting rooms, collaboration tools and virtual private networks—and health products like hand sanitizer and ventilators, according to data maintained in the Federal Procurement Data System.
An analysis by The Pulse of GovCon, a federal contracting market intelligence firm, looked at all federal spending data tagged with the National Interest Action code “COVID-19-2020” and variations, such as “covid-19,” “covid19,” and “coronavirus.” The analysis shows agencies spent $6.5 million on ventilators, nearly $4.8 million on hand sanitizer, $3.7 million on gloves and $3.2 million on disinfectants. The balance was spent on personnel support services and IT products and support for teleworking.
But Pulse analysts stressed that the data is likely incomplete at this time.
“Many contracting offices supporting COVID-19, particularly those relocated to the disaster recovery area, do not have access to their normal contract writing systems and thus have not been able to populate FPDS-NG contemporaneously with the contract awards they have made,” they said in a summary report. “Others have not had time to enter data due to the tempo of operations.”
Analysts also noted these figures do not include Defense Department spending, as that data is kept on a 90-day delay for the sake of national security.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/03/agencies-have-spent-more-300m-response-covid-19-outbreak/164097/
The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech has established a webpage where all contract-related developments related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are summarized. Find the page at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/coronavirus-information-for-contracting-officers-and-contractors/
