OSC, which does not have in-house contracting staff, has an agreement with ARC, an office within Treasury’s Bureau of the Public Debt, to provide contracting support for a fee. As a member of the Treasury franchise fund, ARC does not receive direct appropriated funds, but instead relies on revenue from its federal agency customers to pay organizational expenses. Franchise funds are government-run, self-supporting, business-like enterprises that provide a variety of common administrative services, such as payroll processing, information technology support, and contracting. The agreement between ARC and OSC is a mechanism for interagency contracting. This type of fee-for-service procurement process generally involves three parties: the agency requiring a good or service, the agency placing the order or awarding the contract, and the contractors that provide the goods and services. The requiring agency officials determine the goods or services needed and, if applicable, prepare a statement of work, sometimes with the assistance of the ordering agency. The contracting officer at the ordering agency ensures that the contract or order is properly awarded or issued (including any required competition) and administered under applicable regulations and agency requirements. If contract performance will be ongoing, a contracting officer’s representative—generally an official at the requiring agency with relevant technical expertise—is normally designated by the contracting officer to monitor the contractor’s performance and serve as the liaison between the contracting officer and the contractor. While interagency contracting can offer the benefits of improved efficiency and timeliness, this approach needs to be effectively managed. Due to the challenges associated with interagency contracts, we recently designated interagency contracting as a governmentwide high-risk area. As authorized by OSC’s appropriation, OSC may use 5 U.S.C. § 3109 to hire intermittent consultants. Section 3109 permits agencies, when authorized by an appropriation or other statute, to acquire the temporary or intermittent services of experts or consultants. Under the statute, appointments of experts and consultants may be made without regard to competitive service provisions and classification and pay requirements. Individuals appointed under this authority may not be paid in excess of the highest rate payable for a GS-15 unless a higher rate is expressly provided for by statute or an appropriation. Under section 3109, OPM is responsible for prescribing criteria governing circumstances in which it is appropriate to employ an expert or consultant and for prescribing criteria for setting pay. Section 3109 of title 5 and OPM’s implementing regulations in 5 C.F.R. Part 304 provide for broad discretion in the appointment of experts and consultants. In promulgating its regulations, OPM recognized that agencies need to obtain outside opinion and expertise to improve federal programs, operations, and services and that by bringing in the talent and insights of experts and consultants, agencies can work more economically and effectively. OSC’s primary mission is to protect federal employees from prohibited personnel practices. It carries out this mission by conducting investigations, attempting informal resolution through discussions with the agency during the investigation phase (or by offering mediation), and, when necessary, prosecuting corrective and disciplinary actions before the MSPB. An individual may also request that the Special Counsel go before the MSPB to seek to delay an adverse personnel action, such as a termination, pending an OSC investigation. If an agency fails to remedy a prohibited personnel practice upon request by OSC, corrective action may be obtained through litigation before the MSPB. OSC may also seek disciplinary action against an employee believed to be responsible for committing a prohibited personnel practice by filing a complaint with the MSPB. However, when the disciplinary action involves presidential appointees (subject to Senate confirmation), OSC forwards its complaint against the appointee, a statement of supporting facts, and any response of the appointee to the President for appropriate action. Obtaining the assistance of OSC may be an individual’s only recourse with regard to an alleged prohibited personnel practice, unless the individual can pursue the matter with the MSPB or through the discrimination complaint process. Only employees who have been subject to an adverse action, such as a termination, demotion, or suspension beyond 14 days, may appeal to the MSPB and argue that such adverse action was the result of a prohibited personnel practice. An employee would not be able to go directly to the MSPB to complain that a geographic relocation was the result of a prohibited personnel practice. Even when an employee alleges that he or she was retaliated against for whistleblowing, he or she must first go to OSC and wait 120 days before filing directly with the MSPB, unless that employee was subject to an adverse action as noted above. An employee may also pursue resolution of a prohibited personnel practice through the federal equal employment opportunity (EEO) process if the prohibited practice relates to discrimination covered under the antidiscrimination laws enforced by the EEOC. In contracting with MPRI for the organizational assessment, several required steps were not taken: competition was not sought among Schedule vendors, and there was no convincing demonstration of why a sole-source order was necessary, the determination of the reasonableness of MPRI’s price was not OSC officials performed duties normally done by contracting officer’s representatives without authorization or training and, further, performed other duties that should have been reserved for the contracting officer. Contracting officers are generally required by the Competition in Contracting Act to promote and provide for full and open competition in soliciting offers and awarding government contracts. Use of GSA’s Schedule program is considered a competitive procedure as long as the procedures established for the program are followed. In this instance, GSA’s procedures required ordering offices to prepare a request for quotes and evaluate contractor catalogs and price lists, transmit the request to at least three contractors, and after evaluating the responses, place the order with the Schedule contractor that represented the best value. GSA’s Schedule for Management, Organizational and Business Improvement Services (MOBIS), under which the MPRI task order was issued, includes these special ordering procedures. At the time the MPRI order was placed (April 2004), neither the FAR nor GSA’s ordering procedures explicitly provided for sole-source orders under GSA Schedule contracts. However, ordering offices could meet competition requirements by properly justifying such an order. Rather than follow the required GSA special ordering procedures by placing the task order competitively on behalf of OSC, ARC approved a written sole-source justification prepared by OSC. The justification stipulated that the required services were available from only one responsible source—MPRI—and no other contractor could satisfy agency requirements. When supplies or services are available from only one responsible source and no other type of supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements, full and open competition need not be provided for. However, the justification merely asserted that “no other contractor except MPRI, Inc. has the experience and background in this type of sensitive assessment.” It did not contain sufficient facts and rationale to justify a sole-source order and did not provide the minimum required information. For example, the justification did not demonstrate that the proposed contractor’s unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition required an exception to full and open competition, describe efforts made to ensure that offers were solicited from as many potential sources as practicable, determine that the anticipated cost would be fair and reasonable, or describe the market research conducted and the results. The only support in OSC’s justification for the statement that MPRI was uniquely qualified for the task is a statement that “an informal market survey reveals that only MPRI has the demonstrated past performance in bringing together the required unbiased and highly ethical subject matter experts to complete this type of assessment in the time allocated.” However, the cited market survey does not provide a credible foundation for the conclusion that only MPRI could perform the work. The Special Counsel and his Deputy asked three vendors, including MPRI, for presentations. OSC officials could not recall how these three vendors were selected, and no documentation was available—such as a request for quotes—that set forth the requirement to which the vendors were responding. Rather, the request was communicated orally to the vendors. OSC provided us with proposals submitted by two of the vendors and stated that MPRI submitted a statement of work as its proposal. This statement of work subsequently became part of ARC’s official contract file. We found that the summary statement of OSC’s requirement and the scope of work differ among the three proposals. OSC officials explained that the two vendors’ proposals were not well-matched to what the Special Counsel had communicated to them as OSC’s requirements and that MPRI offered a “no-frills” approach that met OSC’s needs. Nevertheless, in the absence of a documented request for quotes or other solicitation tool, it is not possible to determine whether MPRI and the other vendors were responding to the same set of requirements. Further, our recent search of GSA’s Web site revealed that 1,668 vendors (1,163 of them small businesses) had contracts under GSA’s MOBIS schedule, many of which could have potentially performed the required services. The sole-source justification listed other factors as well. It stated that “there is insufficient time and no contractor’s currently have the expertise to meet Government’s requirements given the required budget limitations.” There is no explanation in the justification as to why only this contractor could perform the task within the required time frame. In fact, despite the reference to urgency, 3 days before the period of performance was to end, OSC asked ARC to change the required completion date, almost doubling the time frame from 3 to 5-½ months (with no increase in price).