Audit of DHS' Issuance and Management of Other Transaction Agreements Involving Consortium Activities

DHS OIG determined that DHS had controls in place when it issued, solicited, selected, and mitigated risks for its three consortia Other Transaction Agreements (OTA) active in fiscal year 2017 for development of prototypes for border and cyber security, and research in critical infrastructure protection. However, DHS could better manage consortia OTAs by periodically reassessing their continued use. Although DHS requires an agreement analysis to determine its continued use of its other transaction authority at each new phase of the OTA, it does not require an assessment of an OTA’s effectiveness. As a result, the Department may not be receiving the most effective research and efficient use of its staffing resources. We made one recommendation that DHS modify its policies to require documenting additional assessments to ongoing OTAs. DHS concurred with our report recommendation. The recommendation is resolved and will remain open until the Department provides evidence to support that corrective actions are