View PDF Document

Summary

The Volpe National Transportation Center (Volpe) is a Federal, fee-for-service organization within the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA). Each year, Volpe spends approximately $250 million—based on DOT and non-DOT customer requests and associated fees—to perform a wide range of transportation related systems research and applications development. One vehicle Volpe relies on to provide information technology services for its customers is a specialized multiple award service contract known as Volpe’s Transportation Information Project Support (V-TRIPS), which was awarded to five vendors in 2010. Our past work on large service contracts found that agencies do not always ensure adequate competition or provide sufficient oversight of contractor performance. Accordingly, our audit objective will be to determine whether Volpe (1) awarded the base V-TRIPS contract under competitive procedures and provides each awardee fair opportunities for subsequent task orders and (2) administers and oversees the contract in accordance with Federal and DOT acquisition regulations.