OFPP Administrator Says Competition Levels Remain Steady; Calls for Efforts to Increase It Further

July 18, 2008
In a recent memo, Office of Procurement Policy Administrator Paul Dennett urged agencies to do more "to promote the appropriate use of tools and effective practices to improve and increase the use of competition." Dennett noted that the percentage of competitively awarded dollars remained at 64 percent, and tasked the Chief Acquisition Officers Council to establish a competition working group to facilitate agency collaboration on effective competition practices and analyze government-wide competition trend data. He said this will help agencies evaluate their competition practices and goals.

The memo was sent to agency Chief Acquisition Officers, Senior Procurement Executives and Agency Competition Advocates. Appendices to Mr. Dennett's memo include highlights of competition initiatives taken by individual agencies during the last fiscal year. Some initiatives included:

• discouraging exercising of options on procurements awarded without competition;
• conducting face-to-face acquisition planning meetings with program offices;
• using program management reviews to identify and address barriers to competition; and
• creating a specialized acquisition planning position to assist program officials during the early stages of procurements.

A second appendix to the memo outlined how individual agencies ranked with respect to the percentage of contracts each competitively awarded. The Department of Energy ranked the highest, with 85 percent of its contract dollars contracted competitively, while only 39 percent of the Department of Veterans Affairs' contracting dollars were awarded on a competitive basis.