TDR should be canceled if not fixed: OIG

TDR to be extended to all GSA schedules by Nov. 1

      The General Services Administration is planning to expand its Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) Rule to all Multiple Award Schedules by Nov. 1, even though the agency has not corrected ongoing issues regarding poor data quality and access, the agency’s Office of Inspector General wrote in a July 18 Alert Memo.

      The expansion could raise the risk of the government overpaying for products and services when ordering from MAS Schedules contracts, Thomas Tripple, the OIG’s regional inspector general for auditing wrote in the memo.

      The OIG has raised the concerns for a year, but it says GSA has not acted.

      TDR started as a pilot project in 2016 requiring contractors and MAS schedules holders to report transactional data, including prices paid for products and services by their government customers. In exchange, the contractors would not be required to provide commercial pricing information and also allows contractors to avoid the Price Reductions Clause.

      In 2021, the OIG judged TDR data as “inaccurate and unreliable” and said contracting personnel were not using TDR to make pricing decisions. The data for professional services pricing was “almost completely unusable,” the OIG wrote.

      GSA contends it is contractors’ responsibility to submit accurate data, but the OIG says that since the data is to be used for pricing decisions, “it is incumbent on GSA to either ensure that the data is accurate and reliable, or discontinue the (TDR) pilot.”

      GSA previously has said it would address the problems but has not done so and “we doubt they can be corrected before November 2022,” the OIG wrote.

      GSA officials were not available for comment at press time.

More Information:
OIG memo: https://bit.ly/3bzELEf

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