GSA tech services arm violated hiring rules, misused recruitment incentives, watchdog says

The General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services violated federal hiring requirements and mismanaged recruitment incentives, according to the agency’s inspector general. 

In a report published Monday, the GSA’s Office of Inspector General determined that the hiring process for TTS, a component of the GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), violated the merit-based hiring rules for federal workers and raised “serious concerns about fairness and accountability.” 

“Merit-based hiring is the cornerstone of a fair and effective federal workforce,” the report stated. “It ensures that all candidates have an equal opportunity to compete and are selected based on their qualifications. TTS deviated from merit system principles in its hiring and workforce management practices, resulting in noncompliance.” 

TTS, the GSA’s tech services arm, is primarily made up of IT professionals. The report followed an audit of the division’s hiring actions during a three-year period that ended in March 2025. 

According to the report, TTS improperly used Direct-Hire Authority (DHA), which is a less competitive hiring process used for hiring in “emergencies or extraordinary circumstances.” 

When DHA is used, federal agencies can speed up the hiring process by eliminating competing rating and ranking practices, which include veterans’ preference claims. 

The Office of Personnel Management must approve agencies’ use of DHA, which the OIG points out is only used to “hire any candidate who is qualified for the position,” regardless of qualifications.

“TTS incorrectly used DHA by routinely using competitive ranking processes to seek out highly qualified candidates,” the report stated, adding that the approach “raises concerns about whether TTS had a hiring emergency and TTS attempted to circumvent veterans’ preference.” 

In doing so, TTS hired fewer veterans compared with the rest of GSA, the OIG determined. 

The watchdog further found TTS hiring managers “preselected and backfilled candidates for merit promotions,” bypassing the competitive hiring process that assesses an applicant’s qualifications and performance. 

Through an analysis of emails and hiring documentation, the OIG determined TTS put qualified candidates at a disadvantage as a result. This was furthered by the application limits TTS put on their postings, which sometimes resulted in job announcements only being active for one day, the watchdog said. 

The OIG recommended the FAS commissioner evaluate TTS’s use of DHA, ensure its hiring procedures comply with governmentwide and GSA-specific hiring requirements and strengthen controls to guarantee an “open and fair competition” among applicants. 

The report shared additional concerns about TTS’s use of recruitment incentives, which are typically used to entice candidates to take hard-to-fill roles. 

Despite “consistently successful recruitment,” TTS continued to offer recruitment incentives that went beyond GSA-recommended amounts, according to the report. The tech services arm further failed to conduct the mandatory annual evaluation of whether these incentives were still needed the following year. 

This included the distribution of superior qualifications appointments (SQA), a recruitment tool offering prospective employees higher pay rates based on their “superior qualifications or a special agency need.”

In some cases, the OIG said hiring documentation lacked details justifying the SQAs and no examples arose of other, often less costly, recruitment incentives being considered instead. 

The FAS commissioner disagreed with the audit’s methodology and the OIG’s recommendations, the watchdog said. 

“The FAS Commissioner’s disagreement suggests that FAS is not planning to take any action to address these recommendations, leaving FAS at risk of violating hiring requirements in the future,” the report wrote.