The Department of Defense spends 40% of its procurement budget through indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity or IDIQ type contracts, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). That’s a significant amount of business and underscores why companies have historically felt the need to be on multiple IDIQ vehicles.  Being on the vehicle itself, though, may not be enough.  Approximately three quarters of IDIQ task order competitions were only bid on by a single contractor.  GAO believes that one of the reasons behind such low response rates are the layers of rules DOD agencies put on IDIQ contract orders.  The rules may actually reduce the number of contractors that are eligible to compete for the orders.  Although GAO did not say so in this report, another reason for low-bid responses may be compressed response times that may signal to industry that the buyer already has a contractor in mind for a piece of work. Relationships matter, too, especially for follow-on work. Removing rules from DOD contracts was a topic covered in last week’s “Week Ahead”.  The GAO report reinforces why streamlining the rules is so important.  Now, can someone please tell Congress and the compliance community to follow suit?