The Postal Service likely didn’t justify $210 million in noncompetitive purchases made over two fiscal years, which puts USPS at risk for not obtaining the best price when awarding contracts, a Sept. 25 USPS inspector general report says.
Contracting officials at the USPS did not document a finding of price or cost reasonableness or write up a necessary justification in 21 of 56 statistically-sampled noncompetitive contract awards worth $37 million that the inspector general audited. Based on those findings, auditors project that at least $210 million worth of Postal Service purchases in fiscals 2011 and 2012 likewise lacked documentation to show that the noncompetitive award was necessary and not unnecessarily expensive. The mail deliverer spent $1.3 billion on contracts those two fiscal years.
Agencies must conduct a price or cost analysis to support that noncompetitive contract prices were fair and reasonable. And there must be documentation that that process took place.
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