- GSA’s watchdog has found gaps in FAS product data that hinder price comparisons
- Inconsistent manufacturer names and part numbers have affected pricing records
- Auditors have found low rates of complete pricing data in two FAS systems
The General Services Administration’s Office of Inspector General has conducted an audit that found the Federal Acquisition Service’s lack of effective processes to ensure accurate product data across its pricing systems has limited contracting officers’ ability to compare prices.
What Did the Audit Find?
According to the report issued Thursday, manufacturer names and part numbers were found to be inconsistent between GSA Advantage! catalog listings and Transactional Data Reporting, or TDR, records, a problem the OIG said undermines FAS’ ability to compare prices for the same products with any reliability.
Auditors tested this against a sample of 52 unique part numbers. The legacy Price Point Plus Portal pulled complete pricing from every available source for only 12 of those products, a 23 percent success rate. Its replacement, the Compliance and Pricing Reporting Portal, which took over on Oct. 1, 2025, fared slightly worse, returning full pricing for just 11 products, or 21 percent.
Auditors also reviewed 20 contractor assessment reports and found that industrial operations analysts had skipped verification of manufacturer part numbers in 12 of them, a 60 percent failure rate.
Federal procurement data is one piece of the broader effort to strengthen how civilian agencies manage technology and resources. The Potomac Officers Club’s 2026 FedCiv Summit on Oct. 29 will cover AI, data infrastructure, cybersecurity and other federal civilian priorities. Save your seat now!
What Did the OIG Recommend?
FAS received six recommendations from the OIG, among them correcting manufacturer name and part number inconsistencies already on record and establishing processes to verify part number accuracy at the point contracts are awarded or modified.
The watchdog also recommended strengthening automated data quality checks, equipping contracting personnel with better tools and guidance for manual market research and having industrial operations analysts verify TDR data.
The OIG also advised that FAS put processes in place for identifying and comparing product add-ons alongside base products that carry multiple variations under a single manufacturer part number.
FAS agreed with one recommendation and partially agreed with the other five.
