We audited the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer’s (procurement office) procedures for administering completed and expired contracts in compliance with applicable regulations. Our objective was to determine whether the procurement office performed contract closeout procedures on completed and expired contracts in a timely manner. We expanded our objective to determine whether the contract files were complete and properly maintained.

We determined that the procurement office did not close contracts in a timely manner. Specifically, the procurement office did not close out more than 1,800 contract actions for which the performance period had expired or the work had been completed more than 6 months before our review. Of these actions, 35 contracts had outstanding balances totaling $15.2 million that should have been deobligated. Also, the procurement office did not maintain accountability over contract files. As a result, the procurement office could not locate 15 of the 94 files in our sample, and 11 files were incomplete because required documents were missing.

We recommend that the procurement office deobligate the $15.2 million in outstanding balances remaining on the contracts included in our review, increase the priority for closing expired and completed contracts and appropriately deobligate outstanding balances to avoid future backlogs, and establish adequate administrative controls to properly maintain and safeguard contract files.