USPTO Should Improve Acquisition Planning and Vendor Performance Management to Prevent Schedule Delays and Unnecessary Costs Related to the SDI-NG Contract

For our audit of the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Software Development and Integration–Next Generation (SDI-NG) contracts, our audit objective was to determine whether USPTO provided adequate oversight of SDI-NG contracts. To address this objective, we specifically assessed whether USPTO provided adequate oversight of (1) the acquisition planning process and (2) vendor performance.Overall, we found that USPTO did not provide adequate oversight of the SDI-NG Bridge. Specifically, we found the following: I. USPTO did not timely plan and compete a follow-on SDI-NG contract and II. USPTO did not adequately document and use vendor performance information.