GAO: Contract Spending Down, Service Contracts Up

GAO’s recent analysis of governmentwide contracting data found that while defense obligations to buy products and services decreased by almost 31 percent from fiscal year 2011 through 2015, from $399 billion to $274 billion, civilian obligations remained fairly steady over this time. Governmentwide competition rates—the percentage of total obligations reported for competitive contracts—remained steady at just below two-thirds over fiscal years 2011 through 2015. From fiscal year 2011 through 2015, federal agencies used fixed price contracts for an average of 63 percent of obligations, mitigating risk to the government.