Federal Acquisition: Oversight Plan Needed to Help Implement Acquisition Advisory Panel Recommendations
Highlights
A growing portion of federal spending is related to buying services such as administrative, management, and information technology support. Services accounted for about 60 percent of total fiscal year 2006 procurement dollars. The Services Acquisition Reform Act (SARA) of 2003 established a Services Acquisition Advisory Panel to make recommendations for improving acquisition practices. In January 2007, the panel proposed 89 recommendations to improve federal acquisition practices. GAO was asked to determine how the panel recommendations compare to GAO's past work and identify how the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) expects the recommendations to be addressed. To do this, GAO analyzed the panel report and compared its findings and recommendations to GAO's past work and recommendations, obtained OFPP's views on how it expected the recommendations to be implemented, and reviewed proposed legislation in Congress to determine if legislative provisions had the potential to address some recommendations.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Office of Federal Procurement Policy | To help ensure timely and effective implementation of SARA Panel recommendations, the Administrator of OFPP should develop an oversight strategy or plan, in conjunction with agency chief acquisition officers and senior procurement officials, that would include milestones and reporting requirements OFPP could use to gauge the status and results of implementing the panel recommendations. | On May 21, 2008, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) published its Guidelines for Assessing the Acquisition Function. OFPP officials advised us that the GAO recommendation is implemented because the Guidelines mirror GAO's "4 corners report" and provide a vehicle for the standardized assessment of agency progress on a broad range of acquisition initiatives, including those that implement the SARA Panel's recommendations. We believe the Guidelines only partially implement the GAO recommendation because the Guidelines do not include milestones and reporting requirements to gauge the status and results of implementing the Panel recommendations. OFPP officials advised us that... they took a strategic approach in implementing the GAO recommendation, acknowledging that they did not establish metrics to document and track the implementation of each SARA Panel recommendation. OFPP officials maintained that they have established working groups that align with the 7 chapters in the SARA Panel report and that they are aware of exactly how the Panel's recommendations are being implemented. OFPP officials provided examples of recommendations that require legislative action, are still under OFPP review, are being addressed by FAR cases, and so on. We will leave this recommendation open and follow up next year to determine if the OFPP approach appears effective and if a new administration has taken or plans to take a different approach to overseeing the implementation of the recommendation that might be more in-line with our recommendation. On May 6, 2009, an OFPP official told us that no milestones and reporting requirements to gauge the status and results of implementing the Panel recommendations have been established, and that OFPP does not plan to develop an overall plan with milestones and metrics to gauge the status and success of implementing the panel recommendations as GAO recommended. Given this response, GAO will close out this recommendation and show it as not being implemented.
View More |