Acquisition

Contracting officers soft on negotiating prices, GAO says

Federal contracting officers don't negotiate hard enough for the best deals for the government, a new report from the Government Accountability Office says.

Jory Heckman@jheckmanWFED

August 11, 2015 11:35 am

1 min read

Federal contracting officers don’t negotiate hard enough for the best deals for the government, a new report from the Government Accountability Office says.

GAO found that agencies aren’t paying attention to prices when using the Federal Supply Schedules (FSS) program or seeking discounts from schedule prices, even when mandated by the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

“Most Americans know that when buying a car, you should never just accept the sticker price as the final price, and you should always shop around,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “The same goes for federal agencies’ purchases of goods and services.”

GAO closely examined the spending of the top agency users of General Services Administration schedules — the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services and GSA.

Those agencies did not consistently seek discounts from schedule prices, even when required by the FAR. However, contractors generally agreed to lower their prices when asked by federal contracting officers.

“If government employees simply treated taxpayer money as if it were their own, we’d save hundreds of millions in contracting costs,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the committee.

In addition, the GAO found examples where acquisition officials didn’t assess prices for certain items, even though it was required, or had insufficient information to assess prices.

Total sales through the FSS add up to $33.1 billion, according to GSA. Of those orders, only 40 percent received three or more quotes; 25 percent were noncompetitive, and 35 percent got only one or two quotes.

FAR procedures generally emphasize reviewing three price lists, soliciting three quotes, or attempting to obtain at least three quotes from vendors.