More VA awards, fewer vendors

      The Veterans Affairs Dept. in recent years has been awarding about half of the value of its IT contract awards to only 10 contractors each year, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

      The GAO examined trends in the VA’s IT contracting. It found an increasing concentration of contracts to fewer vendors, as well as an increase in IT contract awards even as the number of vendors was shrinking. The watchdog agency also noted a lack of oversight.

Concentration of vendors

      The GAO identified the bulk of VA’s IT obligations being awarded to a small number of vendors.

      The proportion of the VA’s IT obligations received by the 10 vendors with the most such awards in a given year rose from 45% in fiscal year 2017 to 56% in fiscal year 2021.

      The specific contractors that comprise that top 10 change each year. Even so, the GAO identified enhanced concentration among fewer contractors.

      Furthermore, the watchdog agency found that the VA’s 30 top IT contractors in a given year received roughly 75% of all the VA’s IT awards each year.

Additional findings

      Additional findings of the report for the period of fiscal 2017 to fiscal 2021 include:

• The VA’s IT obligations increased from $4.2 billion to $6.5 billion during the four-year period, which was a 55% increase;
• The number of contractors receiving IT awards from the VA decreased from 1,641 vendors to 1,200 vendors, a 26% reduction;
• The number of veteran-owned contractors receiving VA IT obligations fell to 327 such vendors, down from 367, from 2017-2021. That was an 11% drop; and
• The number of non-veteran-owned contractors slipped by 30% to 873, down from 1,247.

      The GAO also found that VA’s procurement of IT did not always receive appropriate oversight.

      For example, from March 2018 to September 2021 there were 39% of new VA IT contract actions awarded without evidence of CIO approval.

      Also, 14 of 26 selected fiscal year 2021 contract actions did not have CIO approvals.

More Information:
GAO report: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106845.pdf

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