**GAO-08-160**                      Published: Dec 20, 2007. Publicly Released: Jan 22, 2008.                  

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## Highlights

A growing portion of federal spending is related to buying services such as administrative, management, and information technology support. Services accounted for about 60 percent of total fiscal year 2006 procurement dollars. The Services Acquisition Reform Act (SARA) of 2003 established a Services Acquisition Advisory Panel to make recommendations for improving acquisition practices. In January 2007, the panel proposed 89 recommendations to improve federal acquisition practices. GAO was asked to determine how the panel recommendations compare to GAO's past work and identify how the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) expects the recommendations to be addressed. To do this, GAO analyzed the panel report and compared its findings and recommendations to GAO's past work and recommendations, obtained OFPP's views on how it expected the recommendations to be implemented, and reviewed proposed legislation in Congress to determine if legislative provisions had the potential to address some recommendations.

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## Topics

Government Operations

Contract administrationContract oversightContractorsData integrityFederal procurementGovernment contractsPerformance measuresProcurement evaluationProcurement lawProcurement policyProcurement practicesQuality assuranceReporting requirementsRequirements definitionSmall business contractsStandardsGovernment agency oversight