Some recent occurrences have been calling into question some of the very practices that were hailed as breakthroughs to streamlining procurements. First, DOD’s Inspector General Office recently released a report revealing that of 423 reviewed multiple award task orders awarded in 2000 and 2001, 72 percent were awarded on a sole source or direct-source basis. The DOD IG concluded their study demonstrated the government was loosing the benefits of price competition. The NASA Inspector General office released a similar report at the same time concluding "NASA had not received the benefits of competitive bids and may have paid more for goods and services than necessary." Numerous congressional representatives jumped on the reports and expressed critical concern about the lack of competition under MAS task order awards and called for action.

Last April 1, the Department of Defense proposed amending the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) to require competition in the purchase of services under multiple award contracts. The proposed rule would require that each order for services exceeding $100,000 be made on a competitive basis requiring (1) the CO provide "fair notice of intent to make a purchase to all contractors offering such services under a MAS and (2) affording all contractors responding to the notice a fair opportunity to submit an offer and have that offer fairly considered. The CO may waive the requirement if one of the four circumstances in FAR 16.505)b)(2) apply (i.e. urgent need, one source of supply, logical follow-on to a preexisting order or sole source required by statute).

An avalanche of commentaries have flowed in response to this proposal. For example, John Chierichella and his collegues at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson assert in the Spring 2002 issue of the Lyman Report that recent efforts to increase competition under MAS contracts may be "tossing out the baby with the bathwater." They indicate that recent studies by DOD and NASA confirm that competition under MAS contracts are eroding competition which, if allowed to continue, will likely impair the procurement process, make procurement unpredictable and put at risk the very streamlining objectives the MAS contracts were intended to implement. They conclude, however, the DOD proposed requirement of notifying large numbers of contractors and the practicality of evaluating the resulting large number of offers undermines the original motivation to create MAS and may inhibit future proposals to streamline the procurement process.

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