The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced today the release of a report on the extent and appropriateness of DOJ components using expired contracts and agreements, or “procurement vehicles,” to award contracting orders. We reviewed a sample of 45 orders, totaling over $39 million, awarded between October 2020 and 2022 by the Drug Enforcement Administration; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP); Federal Prison Industries (FPI); United States Marshals Service (USMS); and other DOJ offices, boards, and divisions.
The OIG’s audit found that the components generally complied with federal regulations prohibiting the award of orders under expired procurement vehicles. However, we concluded that some components need to improve their contract oversight to ensure that expiration dates are properly monitored and that appropriate controls exist to guide contracting officials when they extend those dates. These improvements would help ensure that rules promoting competition in government contracting are not circumvented, and they would reduce the risk of contractor noncompliance, service disruptions, and legal disputes.
The OIG’s specific findings include:
- An order awarded approximately 23 months after its procurement vehicle expired.
- A 2012 procurement vehicle with no explicit expiration date that had been used by at least eight contracting officers to award 256 orders totaling over $65 million, without further competition.
- Orders awarded under expired procurement vehicles where, although the government had the option to extend, it did not exercise its option or exercised it later than federal regulations allowed.
- Instances where contracting officials did not accurately report publicly-available data or could not locate official contract documents, and instances where documents did not include sufficient information for informed decision-making.
The OIG made eight recommendations to improve the FBI’s, BOP’s, FPI’s, and USMS’s contract management. The components agreed with the recommendations.