Transparency in debriefs would improve competition, help small businesses

Taxpayers have the right to know how the government is spending their money. After all, the insights gained from total transparency in the federal procurement process can hold agencies more accountable. For this reason, administrations and congresses have undertaken initiatives to boost transparency and improve oversight of federal government spending on a bipartisan basis.

A few efforts stand out, such as the Clean Contracting Act, USAspending.gov and the DATA Act, but outside of these select few, transparency is still lacking under Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 16 Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity task or delivery order awards. To fix this, it is time that federal agencies be required to provide post-award debriefings to all unsuccessful offerors, regardless of the value of the awarded IDIQ task or delivery order.

IDIQ contracts account for a substantial amount of federal contract dollars. A 2017 GAO report states that, from fiscal years 2011 through 2015, the federal government spent $130 billion per year through IDIQs and the U.S. Department of Defense accounted for two-thirds of that amount. The current regulatory framework for IDIQ contracts allows for agencies issuing task or delivery orders using a multiple-award IDIQ contract to not engage in full and open competition. Instead, they can, and are, limiting competition to the subset of prime contractors that were awarded an underlying contract.

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