General Services Administration: Actions Needed to Stop Buying Supplies From Poor-Performing Vendors
GGD-93-34
Published: Jan 11, 1993. Publicly Released: Jan 22, 1993.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the General Services Administration's (GSA) governmentwide purchases of common-use supplies and equipment, focusing on: (1) purchases of supplies under competitive, indefinite delivery contracts; (2) the GSA practice of awarding supply contracts to vendors with poor performance histories; and (3) the causes, costs, and operational effects of such awards.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| General Services Administration | To help make supply purchases less vulnerable to fraud, waste, and mismanagement and ensure that GSA stops awarding supply contracts to poor-performing vendors, the Administrator of General Services should make this a more clearly stated agency goal and place more emphasis on product quality, on-time delivery, and vendors' capability and past performance in awarding as well as administering supply contracts. |
GSA issued guidance on terminations for quality, which allows for terminating contracts for recurring deficiencies.
|
| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should complete and fully implement ongoing initiatives to: (1) develop more complete and readily usable data on supply vendors' capabilities and past performance; and (2) more fully address the product quality and delivery problems that result from poor vendor performance. |
GSA developed and issued a contractor alert list that identifies poor-performing contractors.
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| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should make effective use of the new data, criteria, and guidelines, which GSA is developing, to deny additional contracts to repeat poor-performing vendors and terminate existing contracts or otherwise deal more effectively with documented poor performance and/or improper or illegal vendor activities. |
GSA's OIG reviewed controls over vendor performance in two commodity centers and concluded that the controls were adequate to ensure that vendor performance was being monitored.
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| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should reevaluate the adequacy and effectiveness of the GSA Quality Approved Manufacturer Agreement (QAMA) program and other internal controls designed to prevent and detect receipt of defective or poor quality products into the governmentwide supply system. |
GSA completed several initiatives which emphasized to vendors the effects and seriousness of poor performance, encouraged more and better monitoring of vendors' products, and improved its capabilities to prevent and detect poor performance.
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| General Services Administration | The Administrator of General Services should reexamine the emphasis that GSA procurement and performance pay and bonus systems now place on product contract coverage in assessing the performance of its commodity centers and procurement officials. |
GSA has modified its criteria for evaluating employee performance to (1) deemphasize the importance of maintaining supply products contract coverage and (2) emphasize the importance of vendors' contract performance.
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Topics
Contract oversightContract performanceContractor violationsFederal supply systemsIndefinite delivery contractsInformation systemsProcurement practicesProduct evaluationQuality controlProcurement