ROM 10-16 - SBA’s Planning and Award of the Customer Relationship Management Contracts, 6/29/10

This report presents the results of our audit of SBA's planning and award of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) contracts funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). The purpose of the audit was to determine whether, in making the contract awards, SBA: (1) adopted an acquisition plan for the procurements that promoted competition and provided for measurable outcomes; (2) ensured contractors were qualified and that contracts contained required Recovery Act provisions; and (3) properly posted the solicitation and contract awards to meet transparency requirements of the Recovery Act.

To accomplish the first objective, we reviewed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance on the Recovery Act, pertinent Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), SBA's Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 00 11 IH, Annual Acquisition Strategy and Procurement Planning, and the CRM contract files. We also interviewed personnel from the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and the Office of Business Operations. To address the second objective, we reviewed the CRM contract files to determine whether contracting personnel determined the contractors were qualified. We also reviewed the contracts to determine whether all contract-related Recovery Act requirements were included. To address the third objective, we reviewed the contract files and information from the Federal Business Opportunities (Fed BizOpps) website--the Federal website for contract solicitation and award postings--to determine whether the awards were properly publicized. We conducted our audit between June 2009 and March 2010 in accordance with Government Auditing Standards prescribed by the Comptroller General of the United States.