Agencies are generally required to use full and open competition— achieved when all responsible sources are permitted to compete—when awarding contracts. However, the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 recognizes that full and open competition is not feasible in all circumstances and authorizes contracting without full and open competition under certain conditions. Examples of allowable exceptions to full and open competition include circumstances when the contractor is the only source capable of performing the work or when disclosure of the agency’s need would compromise national security. An agency may also award a contract noncompetitively when the need for goods and services is of such an unusual and compelling urgency that the federal government faces the risk of serious financial or other injury. When using the urgency exception to competition, an agency may limit competition to the firms it reasonably believes can perform the work in the time available. However, an agency is not permitted to award a noncompetitive contract where the urgent need has been brought about due to a lack of advanced planning. Unlike the other exceptions to competition provided by the FAR, awards that use the urgency exception have certain time restrictions. Specifically, the total period of performance is limited to the time necessary to meet the requirement and for the agency to enter into another contract through the use of competitive procedures. Further, the period of performance may not exceed 1 year unless the head of the agency or appointed designee determines that exceptional circumstances apply. Generally, noncompetitive awards must be supported by written justifications that contain sufficient facts and rationale to justify use of the specific exception to competition that is being applied to the procurement. At a minimum, justifications must include 12 elements specified in the FAR, including a description of the goods and services being procured, market research conducted, and efforts to solicit offers, among other things, as shown in figure 1. For noncompetitive awards using the urgency exception, justifications may be prepared and approved within a reasonable time after award when doing so prior to award would unreasonably delay the acquisition. Justifications are to be published—on the Federal Business Opportunities website (FedBizOpps)—generally, within 30 days after contract award.Additionally, justifications must be approved at various levels within the contracting organization. These levels vary according to the estimated total dollar value of the proposed contract, including all options. As outlined in table 1, the approval levels range from the contracting officer for smaller dollar contracts up to the agency’s senior procurement executive for larger dollar contracts. The FAR has more streamlined procedures for awarding contracts under the simplified acquisition threshold—generally less than $150,000. These smaller dollar awards are exempt from the justification and documentation requirements described above for contracts over this threshold. For example, contracting officers awarding a contract under simplified acquisition procedures must only document the determination that competition was not feasible; no approval beyond the contracting officer is required. Further, agencies do not have to document the extent and nature of the harm to the government that necessitates limiting competition when using simplified acquisition procedures. When using these procedures, agencies may solicit an offer from one contractor in certain circumstances, including when the contracting officer determines that only one source is reasonably available. In general, once a contract is awarded, the awarding agency must enter certain information into FPDS-NG, the federal government’s database that captures information on contract awards and obligations. Agencies are responsible for the quality of the information entered into the database. Data captured includes, for example, the contract value, whether the contract was awarded competitively or not, and what authority was used to award the contract noncompetitively. In FPDS-NG, there are three fields for agencies to report competition data for contracts awarded: Extent competed: the competitive nature of the contract awarded, for example, whether the contract was awarded using full and open competition or not competed using simplified acquisition procedures. Solicitation procedure: the procedure an agency used to solicit offers for a proposed contract opportunity, for example, soliciting an offer from only one contractor because the agency deemed only one source available to fulfill the need or soliciting offers pursuant to simplified acquisition procedures. Other than full and open competition: the reason an award was not competed and the authority used to forego full and open competition, for example, the unusual and compelling urgency exception to competition. For the purposes of this report, we refer to this field as “the reason not competed” to be more descriptive of the content in the field. Based on data from FPDS-NG, DOD, State, and USAID obligations for contracts and task orders reported as using the urgency exception during fiscal years 2010 through 2012 were small relative to other exceptions to Of the $998 billion that DOD obligated for all full and open competition.contracts during this period, $432 billion or 43 percent were awarded noncompetitively; however, only about $12.5 billion—or about 3 percent— of DOD’s noncompetitive obligations were awarded under the urgency exception. Less than 1 percent of USAID’s noncompetitive obligations— $3.3 billion—were obligated under the urgency exception. In comparison to DOD and USAID, State’s obligations under the urgency exception were more substantial, accounting for 12.5 percent—or $582 million—of its noncompetitive obligations, as shown in figure 2. DOD’s obligations under the urgency exception accounted for more than 85 percent of the total dollars obligated using the urgency exception across the federal government from fiscal years 2010 through 2012. Among civilian agencies, State and USAID obligations using the urgency exception accounted for about 4 percent and less than 1 percent of total urgency obligations across the federal government, respectively. DOD and USAID’s obligations under the urgency exception remained relatively constant for fiscal years 2010 through 2012; however, State’s obligations in fiscal year 2011 were $301.4 million, more than a twelvefold increase over its fiscal year 2010 obligations, which totaled $24.4 million. Most of the increase can be attributed to three contracts, which altogether totaled more than 75 percent of State’s total urgency obligations in fiscal year 2011. Our analysis of FPDS-NG data showed that use of the urgency exception varied in the types of goods and services acquired across DOD, State, and USAID for fiscal years 2010 through 2012. As figure 3 shows, State and USAID obligated funds to almost exclusively procure services while DOD obligated funds to procure an equal percentage of goods and services. During the 3-year period, DOD procured a broad range of items with more than half of funds—or over $6 billion—for research and development and to purchase communications and radar equipment. For State, about 60 percent of funds—over $335 million—were obligated to procure guard protection services at U.S. embassies and other facilities. For USAID, nearly half of its funds—more than $9 million—were obligated to support construction of roads and highways and to procure education and training services. We found coding errors in FPDS-NG for contracts awarded by DOD, State, and USAID. Specifically, of the 62 contracts we selected for our sample, 28 were reported in FPDS-NG as being awarded noncompetitively using the urgency exception, but were not. Of the 28 contracts that were not correctly reported in FPDS-NG, three contracts were awarded using other exceptions to competition, such as national security, five were awarded using a unique authority to award noncompetitive contracts at USAID, and 20 contracts were awarded using simplified acquisition procedures. We note that our sample is not representative of all dollars obligated for federal contracts. We found three Air Force contracts that were incorrectly coded in FPDS- NG as awarded using the urgency exception to competition, but the contract file documentation confirmed that these contracts were awarded noncompetitively on the basis of national security concerns or that only one vendor could supply the requirement. Of these three contracts, two were awarded noncompetitively to procure an unmanned aircraft system and replacement aircraft accessories on the basis that disclosure of the agency’s need would compromise national security. Officials explained that these coding errors were due to an administrative oversight. For the remaining contract which was awarded on the basis that only one contractor could perform the work, officials identified and corrected the error during a routine inspection that occurred after we included the contract in our sample. We identified five USAID contracts that were noncompetitive awards using an authority unique to USAID that allows the agency to award noncompetitive contracts where competition would impair or otherwise have an adverse effect on programs conducted for the purposes of foreign aid, relief, and rehabilitation. FPDS-NG does not include an option to report noncompetitive awards using USAID’s unique exception to competition. Thus, according to USAID officials, contracting staff use their professional judgment to choose an option in FPDS-NG that most closely matches the circumstances of the award. This may include reporting the noncompeted award as being procured using the urgency exception. We did not assess the extent to which USAID consistently reported these awards using the urgency exception versus other exceptions to competition. Twenty of the contracts were awarded for less than $150,000 using simplified acquisition procedures. These contracts were awarded noncompetitively on the basis that the good or service was required immediately and only one source was deemed reasonably available. The contract file documentation showed that DOD, State, and USAID procured various goods and services—including water purification systems, furniture storage space, drapes and holiday gifts—using streamlined procedures for simplified acquisitions. However, when recording the reason these contracts were not competed in FPDS-NG, DOD, State, and USAID incorrectly reported that these contracts were awarded using the unusual and compelling urgency exception to full and open competition. Contracting officials attributed these coding errors to an administrative oversight and some officials admitted to confusion about how to input data in FPDS-NG.