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Reporting Competition in Defense Procurements: Recent Changes Are Misleading

PLRD-82-45 Published: Mar 08, 1982. Publicly Released: Mar 08, 1982.
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Highlights

A review was undertaken because of ongoing congressional concern about competition and because of the lack of consistency in Department of Defense (DOD) reports on the extent of competition for contracts.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should show procurements for civilian functions as an additional calculation after displaying the traditional and historical statistical classifications.
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD plans no action on this recommendation because it believes all the data are available to make comparisons on the basis of the traditional and historical classifications.
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should include in the noncompetitive category new subcategories entitled "Noncompetitive--No Potential" and "Noncompetitive--Potential."
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD considers the recommendation unacceptable because it is unable to develop objective criteria by which a reporting activity can distinguish between situations with no current or future competitive opportunities and other sole source situations where future competition may be feasible. DOD does not intend taking any action on this recommendation.
Department of Defense The Secretary of Defense should maintain longstanding historical classifications of military procurement contract data for purposes of displaying competitive versus noncompetitive trends.
Closed – Not Implemented
DOD has no current plans to make any changes in the current classifications of military procurement contract data for purposes of displaying competitive versus noncompetitive trends. It believes current classifications do not distort trend data.

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Topics

Competitive procurementDefense procurementIrregular procurementProcurement recordsSole source procurementStatistical dataProcurementGovernment procurementSchoolsMilitary forces