June 10, 2022

The Department of Energy’s Chief Information Officer’s Business Operations Support Services Contract

The Department of Energy’s Chief Information Officer’s Business Operations Support Services (CBOSS) contract, which replaced, in large part, the prior contract with ActioNet, Inc., is a single-award blanket purchase agreement with 1 base year, 4 optional years, and an initial potential value of $2 billion.  Under the CBOSS contract, the contractor teaming arrangement was designed to provide cybersecurity, information technology operations, telecommunications, and other information technology support to various Department elements.

The objective of this audit was to determine whether the Department's CBOSS contract was effectively managed.

Our audit identified weaknesses related to other direct cost fee transparency, as well as application and management of the contract performance assessment process:  (1) Fees associated with CBOSS other direct cost purchases lacked transparency at the beginning of the contract; (2) the Department may have paid at least $110,000 more than agreed to across the other direct cost purchases we sampled for testing; (3) Contractor Performance Assessment Report evaluations we reviewed were not completed in a timely manner.

The issues we identified occurred, in part, because contracting officials did not ensure that all elements of the Department’s contract clause for invoicing were fully incorporated into the CBOSS contract.  In addition, fee percentages beyond 11 percent were due to inconsistencies in how fees were applied and a lack of clearly disclosed agreed-upon amounts.  Further, delays related to Contractor Performance Assessment Report evaluations occurred because the Department had not implemented an effective process to ensure their timely completion.

We made five recommendations and three suggestions that should, if fully implemented, improve the management and oversight of the current CBOSS contract and future information technology contracts.  Management concurred with the recommendations and provided corrective actions that are responsive to our recommendations.