NTSB's Competitively Awarded Contracts Nearly Doubled in Five Years
Summary
A [GAO review requested under the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108506) found the National Transportation Safety Board obligated about $86 million on awarded contracts between fiscal 2020 and 2024, adjusted to fiscal 2024 dollars -- 84% of it competitively bid. Competitively awarded obligations nearly doubled over that span, from about $10 million to nearly $20 million a year, which NTSB officials attribute mostly to growing IT investment; noncompetitive obligations barely moved, rising from about $2.5 million to about $2.6 million.
Competitive obligations nearly doubled, driven by IT
Obligations on competitively awarded contracts rose from about $10 million in fiscal 2020 to nearly $20 million in fiscal 2024⧉ -- 's own word is that they "nearly doubled." NTSB officials attributed most of that growth to increased investment in information technology products and services⧉, telling the spending has let the agency improve investigation timeliness and meet congressional expectations for efficient data and knowledge sharing. Noncompetitive obligations, by contrast, moved almost nothing over the same period -- about $2.5 million in fiscal 2020 to about $2.6 million in fiscal 2024⧉, roughly a 4% rise. Whatever is driving NTSB's contract growth, in other words, is landing almost entirely in the competitively bid column.
View data as table
| Competitive, FY2020 | 10,000,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| Competitive, FY2024 | 20,000,000 | Nearly double FY2020; NTSB attributes most of the growth to IT investment |
| Noncompetitive, FY2020 | 2,500,000 | |
| Noncompetitive, FY2024 | 2,600,000 |
A chairwoman's signature, now required above $100,000
NTSB's contracting rules already built in extra scrutiny at certain dollar levels: additional reviews or senior-level approvals kick in for noncompetitive awards over $100,000 and competitive awards over $500,000⧉. That framework tightened further in 2025. In response to a February 2025 executive order, NTSB changed its policy so that every new contract requirement worth more than $100,000 needs the Chairwoman's approval before the agency can award it⧉, unless she delegates that sign-off to the Managing Director. 's figures predate the change -- the data run through fiscal 2024 -- so this report captures the spending pattern that a single-signature approval requirement now sits on top of, not what it produces going forward.
View data as table
| Competitively awarded (84%) | 72,240,000 |
|---|---|
| Noncompetitively awarded (16%) | 13,760,000 |
- Competitive obligations nearly doubled; noncompetitive barely moved. From FY2020 to FY2024, competitively awarded obligations grew from about $10 million to nearly $20 million⧉, while noncompetitive obligations rose only from about $2.5 million to about $2.6 million -- almost the entire five-year increase in NTSB's contracting sits in the competitively bid column.
- NTSB names IT investment as the driver. Agency officials told GAO⧉ the growth traces mostly to information-technology products and services meant to speed up investigations and meet Congress's data-sharing expectations -- an explanation this report relays but does not independently verify against a line-item contract list.
- A single-signature requirement now sits above the review thresholds documented. Existing rules already required extra review for noncompetitive awards over $100,000 and competitive awards over $500,000⧉; since a February 2025 executive order, every new contract requirement over $100,000 needs the NTSB Chairwoman's sign-off⧉ unless delegated -- a change that postdates the FY2020-2024 data this report is built on.
-26-108506 is a descriptive report Congress mandated in the Reauthorization Act of 2024; it makes no recommendations to NTSB and identifies no finding of noncompliance with contracting rules -- this piece describes what found, not a violation. GAO drew its obligation figures from the Federal Procurement Data System as of September 25, 2025, and determined that data sufficiently reliable for its purposes⧉; also states its own totals only as rounded figures ("about $86 million," "about 84 percent"), so the dollar splits computed here from those percentages are approximations, not numbers itself published in dollar form. reports only the FY2020 and FY2024 endpoints for each award type, not a full five-year series, so this piece does not claim to know what happened in the three years between.
A direct fetch of the report's PDF returned HTTP 403 at read time; the figures here come from the report's .gov landing page (Fast Facts, Highlights, What Found, and Why Did This Study), sealed by this outlet's collection pipeline minutes after the report's July 21, 2026 publication. No individual NTSB official is named in this piece; 's own report describes findings by role ("NTSB officials") rather than by name.
Sources(2) ▾
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, National Transportation Safety Board: Use of Competitive and Noncompetitive Contract Awards to Acquire Products and Services (GAO-26-108506) (2026-07-21) — 's review of NTSB's contract-award policies and its obligations on competitively and noncompetitively awarded contracts for fiscal years 2020 through 2024, published the same day it was accessed. Congress mandated the review in a provision of the Reauthorization Act of 2024. A direct fetch of the report's PDF (gao.gov/assets/gao-26-108506.pdf) returned HTTP 403 at read time; the Artemis mining pipeline had already sealed the report's HTML landing page (Fast Facts, Highlights, What Found, Why Did This Study, and Contacts sections in full) minutes earlier at 2026-07-21T13:50:21Z, which is used here as the capture. Used for every figure in this piece: the total FY2020-2024 obligation figure and competitive/noncompetitive split, the year-over-year obligation figures, the contract-review thresholds, the February 2025 executive-order policy change, and the FPDS data-reliability statement. gao.gov · original document
- National Transportation Safety Board, National Transportation Safety Board, Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request (2025-05-30) — NTSB's budget submission to Congress, fetched directly from ntsb.gov (HTTP 200). Used only for the FY2024 actual total-obligations figure ($139,392,000) in the Object Classification table, p.10, as an independent, in-context comparison point for the report's five-year contract-obligation total -- this document is not otherwise about contracting. ntsb.gov · original document
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Congress ordered the check in the Reauthorization Act of 2024: how does the National Transportation Safety Board⧉ -- the agency that investigates plane crashes, train derailments, and pipeline failures -- award its own contracts? GAO's answer, published July 21, 2026⧉, covers fiscal years 2020 through 2024: NTSB obligated about $86 million on awarded contracts over that span, adjusted to fiscal 2024 dollars, with 84% competitively bid and 16% awarded without competition. The obligation total is small next to what NTSB spends running itself -- $139.4 million in fiscal 2024 alone⧉ -- but its shape changed fast: competitive-contract obligations very nearly doubled in five years.