The General Services Administration Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Transition Ordering Assistance (TOA) task order is not supporting customer agencies in the government-wide transition to the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract, the GSA Inspector General (IG) found in a recent report.
FAS’s Office of IT Category launched the TOA task order in Sept. 2016 to support agencies in transitioning telecommunications to the EIS contract “by assisting customer agencies to analyze their needs, develop solicitations for EIS services, and select EIS contractors.
The IG, however, found that the TOA task order did not accomplish its intended purpose.
“FAS’s ineffective administration of the TOA task order resulted in high rates of spending with minimal transition progress,” the IG said. “We identified deficiencies in FAS’s planning and management, as well as in its oversight of the contractor’s performance and invoicing.”
The report added the respective FAS deficiencies likely contributed to its need to extend the planned EIS transition timeline by three years. The original timeline aimed to have the transition complete by March 2020, but the new completion date is in March 2023, leading to missed cost-savings, the IG said.
“Deficiencies in FAS’s planning and management of the TOA task order resulted in high rates of spending with minimal transition progress,” the IG added. “FAS did not establish interagency agreements with customer agencies before work under the TOA task order began.”
The IG further added that FAS’s fund allocation methodology caused agencies to prematurely exhaust their funding, and staffing plan variances contributed to high spending rates. Furthermore, FAS had poor oversight of TOA invoicing and the TOA contractor’s performance.
The report concluded with six recommendations to the FAS Commissioner, suggesting that FAS should:
- Establish a measurement to align budget consumed to work completed;
- Create standard operating procedures to guide TOA task order performance, including a readiness assessment and a schedule of deliverables into future interagency agreements;
- Modify interagency agreements to ensure contracting officers’ representatives receive information they need to monitor contractor performance and enforce the Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan;
- Determine if it should modify the task order to address key personnel in the task order implementation and circumstances under which the TOA contractor must charge onsite rates;
- Seek monetary recoveries associated with unqualified contract employees and improperly approved travel claims, and ensure future compliance with task order provisions; and
- Establish a standard invoice review process.
The FAS Commissioner agreed with the IG recommendations.