GSA announces TDR pilot program is on track and eligible for expansion: GSA OIG says not so fast

On June 24, 2021 the General Services Administration Office of Inspector General (GSA OIG) released an  audit report of the current status and implementation of the Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) pilot just two months after the General Services Administration (GSA) announced that the pilot was “on track” to meet its objectives and would be eligible for expansion.

The TDR final rule was established by GSA on June 23, 2016 and requires participating vendors to report transaction data from orders placed against GSA’s Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) program. With the issuance of the final rule, GSA commented that the purpose of TDR is to reshape how FSS contract pricing is established, with the intent of centralizing purchasing decisions, reducing contract duplication and lowering acquisition costs.

The results of the audit offer a stark contrast to GSA’s FY 2020 evaluation of the TDR pilot, which found the program to be “meeting or exceeding targets.” GSA OIG concluded that the TDR pilot is “not meeting its intended purpose of improving taxpayer value.”

The following article summarizes GSA OIG’s findings:

TDR pilot audit report summary

GSA OIG has monitored the TDR pilot program since GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) released the proposed rule in 2014 and included this audit in their Fiscal Year 2019 Audit Plan. The intent of this audit was to assess the TDR pilot’s current status and determine if FAS has achieved its objective of improving taxpayer value. GSA OIG performed the audit between February 2019 and June 2020. The Office of Government-wide Policy’s (OGP’s) positive FY 2020 evaluation was published after GSA OIG conducted the exit conference associated with their audit of the TDR program, but they still included their assessment of the evaluation findings within their audit report. Ultimately, GSA OIG determined that the TDR pilot was not meeting the stated objectives of the program.  A summary of OIG’s findings are as follows: