Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Energy management

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5503727

GAO reviewed the Department of Energy's contracting practices for support services. These contracts involve obtaining staff for a wide variety of services related to DOE's management, administrative, and technical activities. This paper discusses the overall cost and use of the contracts, the adequacy of controls to ensure that DOE's support service contracts are cost-effective, and whether work done on selected support service contracts could be done less expensively by federal employees. DOE rarely considered the cost of awarding in-house performance in awarding the support service contracts GAO reviewed. In 1990 inadequate attention cost-effectiveness cost the government at least $5 million more than was necessary to perform activities for which GAO conducted cost comparisons. GAO believes that cost comparisons are an essential management tool in making decisions about whether to contract out.

Research Organization:
General Accounting Office, Washington, DC (United States). Resources, Community and Economic Development Div.
OSTI ID:
5503727
Report Number(s):
GAO/RCED-91-186
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English