Competition Advocate
Background
The U.S. Postal Service established the competition advocate (advocate) on January 28, 2011. The advocate promotes competition by helping contracting officials develop effective ways to obtain best value in contracting and issuing an annual report on noncompetitive purchase activity. The advocate must review noncompetitive requests for contractual actions (steps to create or modify a contract) greater than $1 million. The advocate does not approve or deny noncompetitive purchases but offers feedback to contracting officers (CO) on how to increase competition, including how to transition work to internal resources and research potential suppliers. COs are supposed to consider this feedback when evaluating whether the Postal Service should compete a contract. The advocate does not decide appeals by contractors.
The Postal Service issued 1,182 noncompetitive contractual actions, totaling about $523 million, from October 2012 through December 2013. Of these, 74 (6 percent), totaling about $417 million (80 percent), exceeded $1 million. Our objective was to evaluate the advocate’s impact in promoting contract competition.
What the OIG Found
We could not determine the advocate’s impact in promoting contract competition because the Postal Service does not have metrics to measure advocate performance. For example, for 35 of the 74 contractual actions, the advocate provided feedback on ways to increase competition, but there are no metrics to determine the impact of this feedback. Without such metrics, the Postal Service cannot accurately gauge the Highlights For 35 of the 74 contractual actions, the advocate provided feedback on ways to increase competition, but there are no metrics to determine the impact of this feedback. The Postal Service issued 1,182 noncompetitive contractual actions totaling $522,801,089 from October 2012 thru December 2013. Slide your cursor over the pie charts below to see how it breaks out $ Competition Advocate Report Number SM-AR-14-008 1 What the OIG Recommended We recommended management develop metrics to gauge the impact of the advocate, reiterate the requirement to obtain the advocate’s review of applicable requests, and establish a process to verify that the advocate reviewed all applicable noncompetitive actions. We also recommended management clarify how COs should address the advocate’s feedback. advocate’s success in promoting competition.
In addition, the advocate did not review requests for 12 of the 74 contractual actions, totaling about $40 million. This occurred because there is no process to ensure that the advocate reviews all applicable requests. These actions were awarded without an opportunity for the advocate to suggest ways to promote competition. Further, COs did not document their consideration of the advocate’s comments on requests for two contractual actions, totaling about $2.8 million. This occurred because Postal Service policy does not explicitly state how the CO should document responses to the advocate’s comments.
What the OIG Recommended
We recommended management develop metrics to gauge the impact of the advocate, reiterate the requirement to obtain the advocate’s review of applicable requests, and establish a process to verify that the advocate reviewed all applicable noncompetitive actions. We also recommended management clarify how COs should address the advocate’s feedback