The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today reported results of its review of Federal agency efforts to reduce IT contracts duplication, and found that four of the seven agencies reviewed had fully or partially taken recommended steps to regularly identify potential contract duplication.
“Selected agencies varied in their efforts to implement five Office of Management and Budget (OMB) category management activities that contribute to preventing, identifying, and reducing duplicative information technology (IT) contracts,” the GAO report says. “For example, most of the seven selected agencies had fully implemented the activities associated with identifying a Senior Accountable Official and training their workforces.”
The selected agencies include the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security (DHS), Defense (DoD), State, Justice (DOJ), Veterans Affairs (VA), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USDA). According to the report: HHS and DHS fully implemented all five OMB category management activities; DoD implemented four activities; State implemented three; USDA and DOJ implemented two; and the VA implemented one activity.
“Until agencies ensure that their efforts to prevent, identify, and reduce duplicative IT contracts are fully aligned with category management principles and practices, and are informed by spend analyses, they will be at increased risk of wasteful spending,” GAO said.
GAO made 20 recommendations to six of the select agencies to fully implement the category management and spend analyses activities. USDA, DoD, DOJ, State, and VA agreed with the recommendations, while HHS agreed to one recommendation while asking to reconsider one other recommendation. GAO made no recommendations to DHS.
