Interagency Contracts: Out From Under The Radar OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy is taking the first census of interagency contract vehicles to find out how many there are and who is using them. While federal acquisition officials and industry agree that interagency contracts are growing like weeds, there is “no central repository of information” about them, said Jonathan Edgerton, who heads the federal Acquisition Advisory Panel’s working group studying the issue. OFPP directed agencies to report on their use of interagency contracts and agency-wide vehicles such as the Navy’s Seaport-e and the Homeland Security Department’s EAGLE and First Source. At its Feb. 23 meeting, the Acquisition Advisory Panel recommended that OMB set guidelines for the establishment and continuation of interagency and agency-wide vehicles. “The agencies need to be held accountable,” Edgerton said. The working group found, “There are no uniform standards for their creation and no governmentwide measures to support their continuation based on desired performance.” But the panel stopped short of recommending centralized approval of new vehicles, saying that would stifle experimentation. “Interagency contract vehicles have played an important role in streamlining the Federal government’s acquisition process,” the working group said. The growth of interagency contracting, and the discovery of irregularities in some GSA contracting shops, has raised concerns in Congress and the executive branch. The Government Accountability Office has added interagency contracting to its “high risk” list of programs that are vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse. Congress directed the Defense Department’s inspector general to determine whether interagency contracts were abiding by all laws and regulations. Members of Congress also questioned whether DOD is paying too much in fees to use those contracts. In a report to the Acquisition Advisory Panel last fall, Edgerton said the vehicles “are not a free lunch” because of the fees paid by customers and the bid and proposal costs when contractors have to bid on many different vehicles. (SAA, 11/4/05) A more recent development, the agency-wide contract, is sparking “major changes in customer behavior,” said Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, an industry group. He said there are at least 20 such contracts. (SAA, 2/24) He said one result has been to give customers an alternative to GSA schedules, which have been losing some business. In a Feb. 24 memorandum, OFPP Associate Administrator Robert Burton asked agencies to report on the number of interagency and agency-wide contracts currently in operation, “the scope of these vehicles; the primary users; and the rationale for their establishment and renewal.”