Follow-Up Review of Procurements Made by the National Institutes of Health for the Department of Defense

As required by the Department of Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, we conducted a follow-up review of procurements made by the NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (the Center) on behalf of the Department of Defense (Defense). We found that the Center's compliance with acquisition requirements had improved. However, the Center did not fully implement our prior recommendations related to the use of operations and maintenance (O&M) funds instead of research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) funds and the use of funds for equipment and services that were provided after the period of performance for which the funds were obligated. We also found that between fiscal years (FY) 2002 and 2007, the Center paid for some equipment and services that were provided after the period of performance and that the Center did not always maintain adequate documentation on competition, award decisions, and contractor monitoring. In addition, the Center exercised a task order option that may not have filled an existing need of the Government.

We recommended, among other things, that the Center (1) request Defense to provide a final decision on the use of $1.2 million of O&M funds instead of RDT&E funds for three task orders identified in our previous review that remain unresolved, (2) work with Defense to resolve funds ($1.4 million identified in our previous review and $3.7 million identified in our current review) that were used for equipment and services provided after the period of performance for which the funds were obligated, and (3) determine whether options to task orders fill an existing need of the Government before awarding the options. In comments on our draft report, NIH concurred with our recommendations.