Mitchell A Bashur is an Associate in our Tysons office.

The Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General (DoD IG) recently published a nonstatistical sample of 14 Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) IT service contracts, valued at $72 million. The Report presented the IG's findings with respect to the question of whether DCMA properly awarded and administered the contracts. DoD IG found that for 11 of the 14 IT service contracts reviewed, valued at $61 million, DCMA contracting officials did not properly award the contracts. The IG concluded that DoD awarded $56.4 million in IT services on contracts with poorly defined or nonexistent performance work statements, risking that the services may not meet the performance needs required to successfully execute the DCMA mission. The problems encountered included:

  • failure to properly define requirements that included measurable performance standards for 8 contracts;
  • failure to develop an acquisition plan for one contract;
  • failure to submit offers for two contracts awarded through the 8(a) program for Small Business Association (SBA) acceptances; and
  • using flexible ordering agreements to award five of the 14 contracts, which violated Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) system requirements.

DoD IG found that these problems occurred because DCMA officials did not ensure that contracts were developed in accordance with FAR and DCMA guidance, use multi-functional teams to plan and manage IT service requirements, and perform pre- or post-award peer reviews of contracts. Finally, DoD IG found that 13 out of the 14 contracts were not properly administered because DCMA officials did not:

  • appoint Contracting Officer Representatives (CORs) for three of the 13 contracts;
  • terminate CORs for six of the 13 contracts;
  • properly train the CORs for 10 of the 13 contracts;
  • develop quality assurance surveillance plans for seven of the 13 contracts; and
  • develop adequate quality assurance surveillance plans for four of the 13 contracts.

In addition, invoices were accepted and approved by officials who did not have authority to do so. Finally, DoD IG provided a list of recommendations to fix the problems, primarily focused on training and policies, with which the DCMA Director agreed and identified corrective action. It is too early to tell if these corrective actions will result in significant changes to the solicitations or the administration of contracts.

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