Review of Alleged Contract Irregularities in VA's Office of Information and Technology

VA OIT’s Office of Architecture, Strategy, and Design officials allegedly directed contractor personnel to perform work outside the scope of a task order. Although we substantiated the allegation, we found no evidence that this work was actually completed. However, we did find that the work the contractor was doing, did not meet the overall intent of the task order—technical reviews of OIT systems. Our review questioned $1,651,215 for an underutilized task order for the first and second option years. Additionally, OIT could better use $786,840 by either exercising the third option year then require the contractor perform the required technical reviews of OIT systems, or terminating the task order altogether. We recommended OIT terminate the task order. The Principal Under Secretary agreed with our findings and recommendations and terminated the contract.