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GAO-07-215R 1 (2007-01-12)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptaurw0001 and id is 1 raw text is: S=GAO Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 January 12, 2007 The Honorable Carl Levin Chairman The Honorable Norm Coleman Ranking Minority Member Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs United States Senate Subject: Selected Agencies Use of Criminal Background Checks for Determining Responsibility This letter and its enclosure respond to your request for information on selected executive agencies' policies and practices for making responsibility determinations before awarding contracts. You requested this information because of your continued concern for effective pre-contract screening to reduce fraudulent activities by contractors. On the basis of discussions with your office, our objectives were to (1) identify agency policies and practices for making contractor responsibility assessments, and determine under what conditions agencies conduct criminal background checks, (2) determine how contracting officers use the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) to make responsibility assessments and identify planned improvements to the system, if any, and (3) determine the number of fraud investigations in which the contractor or principals had a prior criminal background. On August 31, 2006, we briefed your office on the information gathered during our preliminary work. This letter summarizes and updates the information presented at the briefing. The additional information you requested regarding suspensions, debarments, and proposed debarments for fiscal years 1996 through 2006 is included in the briefing at Enclosure I. In developing the information for this report, you asked us to focus our work in the following agencies: Department of Defense (DOD), General Services Administration (GSA), Department of Justice (DOJ), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). We reviewed appropriate sections of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR); agency supplements for DOD, GSA, DOJ, and DHS; and discussed our objectives with agency officials from offices of policy and general counsel (debarment officials). We also obtained data on fraud investigations and discussed agency efforts to track whether the subjects of these investigations had prior criminal backgrounds with agency officials in GAO-07-215R Responsibility Determinations Page 1

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