Emergency Contracting: Themes from Agencies’ Disaster and Pandemic Response Efforts

Abstract

The federal response to the rising number of natural disasters coupled with other emergency response efforts, such as those for COVID-19, have illustrated the important role that federal contracts have in providing life-saving and life-sustaining goods and services. However, contracting during an emergency can pose a unique set of challenges as contracting officials face significant pressure to provide these services as quickly as possible. Leveraging several U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviews of emergency contracting issues, this paper examines (1) contract and agreement mechanisms agencies used to facilitate response efforts; (2) challenges planning and executing contracts in an emergency environment; and (3) how tracking contract obligations and contracting lessons learned can inform future response efforts.