9 years later, GSA federal purchasing data called ‘unusable’

Topline: The General Services Administration plans to help federal agencies and local governments make $47 billion of purchases in 2026 using a data system that the GSA inspector general says is “almost entirely inaccurate, unreliable, and unusable.”

Key facts: The GSA’s Multiple Award Schedule program helps government agencies buy goods and services at discounted prices.

Since 2016, the GSA has been experimenting with a way to lower prices even more with a rule called Transactional Data Reporting. Whenever a company makes a sale through the Multiple Award Schedule, they must send 16 data points to the GSA, including the names of the products sold and how much they cost.

The data reporting is meant to help the GSA negotiate lower prices by keeping track of how cheaply a product can be purchased. In 2020, the GSA ran a pilot program to see if the data reporting actually helped lower expenses for the government, and in May 2023 the agency declared the pilot program a success.

The GSA inspector general quickly sounded the alarm. The pilot program never actually used the new data to negotiate cheaper prices, and the GSA declared it a success based on “flawed methodologies and inaccurate and unsupported information.” This year the GSA made “modest improvements” to its data collection, but 73% of the data gathered in 2025 is still unusable, according to the inspector general.

Yet on June 9, the GSA announced that starting in October every purchase in the Multiple Award Schedule program will use Transactional Data Reporting. The inspector general said in a statement that there still is no “tested methodology to ensure data is accurate and usable.” As a result, it “could place government agencies at risk of overpaying for products and services when ordering from” the Multiple Award Schedule program.

The problem is worst for services. This year the GSA has collected data to track the prices of $4.9 billion worth of services, but 98% of the data is unusable, the inspector general said.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Summary: The GSA has had nine years to try and perfect its data reporting system. If the process is still flawed, the agency might need a new option.

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