Audit report on resources support services agreements between the USDA graduate school and AID

Department of Agriculture"s (USDA) Graduate School. Audit report covers eight RSSA"s in effect during the period 8-ll/84 and is based on document review. The Graduate School RSSA"s (dating from FY81 into the early months of FY85) clearly and on a continuing basis contained massive violations of the Federal Assistance Act, of the Office of Management and Budget"s Circular A-76, and of A.I.D. Handbook 12 regarding the procurement of technical services. Although RSSA"s are to be used to procure only technical goods and services (and even these should be procured directly from the private sector insofar as possible), the Graduate School agreements have been used to procure nontechnical goods and services (e.g., clerical and general office administrative services, office equipment), and even to establish a distinct office within A.I.D. Further, most of the services purchased were not only competitive with private enterprise, but were purchased by the Graduate School from the private sector - A.I.D. offices themselves frequently recruited or selected personnel for the Graduate School to hire or contract from the private sector. The RSSA"s also involved numerous other deficiencies in financial management - A.I.D. routinely approved excessive salaries, equipment purchases, payments for entertainment, and retroactive authorizations of work. The basic cause of these problems was a total breakdown of some of the Agency"s most basic management controls, as the Offices of Contract Management and of Financal Management, for reasons not yet known, exercised little or no control over subagreements exercised between A.I.D. program officers and the Graduate School. Steps have already been taken, prior to issuance of this audit report, to terminate all RSSA"s with the Graduate School as of 9/30/85; future relationships with the School will be by the contract mechanism subject to procurement regulations contained in the Federal and A.I.D. Acquisition Regulations. It is recommended that refunds be obtained for all unallowable costs incurred by the Graduate School.