The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Office of Inspector General has issued its report on The FDIC’s Purchase and Deployment of the FDIC Acquisition Management System.
The FDIC procures goods and services from contractors in support of its mission. In December 2020, the FDIC entered into an agreement to purchase an enterprise-wide acquisition management system. In June 2022, the FDIC went live with the system. However, the FDIC was unsuccessful in deploying the new system and abandoned it within 5 months. As a result, the FDIC incurred contract and staff labor-hour costs of nearly $10 million and had to revert to its legacy acquisition systems and manual reporting of some acquisition activities.
We conducted an evaluation to review the primary factors that led to the FDIC’s unsuccessful deployment of the FDIC Acquisition Management System and identify improvements for implementing future significant organizational changes.
We determined that the FDIC’s deployment of this new acquisition management system was unsuccessful because the FDIC did not employ an effective change management process as its policies and procedures did not require it. In addition, FDIC managers lacked awareness and training on when and how to implement a change management process.
We made three recommendations for the FDIC to: (1) incorporate change management processes into the FDIC’s policies and procedures and internal controls, (2) provide training on the change management process, and (3) implement a change management strategy and plan for the acquisition of a new acquisition management system. We also identified $9.9 million of funds to be put to better use, and we will report this amount in our Semiannual Report to the Congress. The FDIC concurred with all of the recommendations and the funds to be put to better use. The FDIC plans to complete corrective actions by December 31, 2024.