Procurements Made by the National Institutes of Health for the Department of Defense

We conducted this review pursuant to section 817 of the Department of Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (Public Law 109-364).  The NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (the Center) complied with appropriation statutes and financial management regulations for 13 of the 28 task orders that we reviewed but may not have complied for the remaining 15 task orders.  Also, the Center generally complied with acquisition regulations and Governmentwide contract provisions.  However, the Center did not always maintain adequate documentation with respect to acquisition planning, competition, award decisions, and contractor monitoring.

We recommended that the Center (1) work with the Department of Defense (Defense) to resolve the obligation of $11.8 million in operations and maintenance funds instead of research, development, testing, and evaluation funds for 4 task orders; (2) work with Defense to resolve the use of $25.4 million for equipment and services that were not provided during the period of performance for 13 task orders; (3) comply with Federal appropriation statutes and financial management regulations on obligating and expending funds, and (4) improve controls for documenting the task order award and oversight processes .  NIH concurred with our recommendations.