HUD has a contract with Leidos Innovations Corporation for E-Discovery services using the E-Discovery Management System.  The process for collecting electronically stored information (ESI) and delivering it to customers has two major subprocesses: (1) an initial ESI collection and (2) a keyword search to refine the initial collection results.  OGC’s and Leidos’ collection of ESI does not meet customer demand because processing ESI requests takes too long to meet each program offices’ (that is, customers) needs.  Several factors contribute to this result.  Namely, (1) the contract was not scoped using complete demand information, (2) demand for ESI has changed over time and may increase, and (3) technical issues create challenges for the timely delivery of ESI to customers.  This condition poses several risks to HUD, including monetary and other sanctions, missed opportunities to perform investigative fieldwork, and litigation and associated costs.

HUD planned several changes to its information technology infrastructure, which over time may increase its capacity to process ESI requests and decrease the time it takes to deliver collection results to customers.

We recommend that (1) OGC conduct a study to project HUD’s capacity needs for ESI collections, and (2) OGC give its completed study to OCIO for consideration during future contract award decisions regarding E-Discovery services