Benchmarking: Costly and Difficult, but Often Necessary When Buying Computer Equipment or Services

Citation
General Accounting Office, Benchmarking: Costly and Difficult, but Often Necessary When Buying Computer Equipment or Services (AFMD-83-5) (Oct. 22, 1982) (full-text).

Overview
Pursuant to a congressional] request, the GAO assessed the costs of benchmarking in automatic data processing procurement to determine whether benchmarking is necessary and cost-effective and what alternatives there are to the benchmark process.

The GAO found that benchmarking is the most common evaluation technique used in the selection of computer equipment and services by the federal government, because it is the only technique that can reliably compare the performance of different computers, which is also generally acceptable to the vendor community.

The GAO believes that, for compatible acquisitions, the federal government can adopt the private sector practice of limited use of benchmarking. The GAO found that, if agencies can improve benchmarking practices, the cost and time burden on the vendor could be greatly reduced. However, for fully competitive procurements of computer equipment with a projected system life contract value of less than around $2 million, the GAO believes that benchmarking should be discouraged because of its high costs.