Sole-source awards are down, but their share of the pie is not
Gettyimages.com/ Douglas Rissing
By
Nick Wakeman
An analysis of GovTribe data finds non-competitive contract awards are down 20% through July, but they claimed a bigger slice of all federal contracts.
The Trump administration has made increasing competition a centerpiece of their procurement strategy, but the reality is somewhat different and more complex.
According to an analysis of federal procurement data, the total number of non-competitive awards from Jan. 1 through July 29 is 20% down from the prior year period in 2025. But non-competitive awards did not experience the same drop as all contract awards, which fell 32%.
But when looked at as a percentage of all awards, the number of non-competitive awards grew from 12.6% in the first seven months of 2025 to 14.8% for the same period in 2026.
We looked at procurement data by using our sibling organization GovTribe with an assist by Claude, Anthropic’s artificial intelligence tool.
The aggregate value of the non-competitive awards fell from 25.3% of total obligations in the first seven months of 2025 to 23.3% for the same period in 2026.
This is not a story of runaway dollars flowing to non-competitive awards, but the data does point to a growing share of individual contracting actions bypassing competition.
When diving into individual agencies and buyers, the Defense Department dominates the Top 10 with the Army Materiel Command capturing the top spot in 2025 so far at $5.72 billion in non-competitive obligations, compared to $7.21 billion in 2026.
The aggregate value of the top 10 fell from 2025 to 2026, going from $28 billion to $21 billion 2026.
All of the top 10 in 2025 were defense entities. The only non-defense entity in 2026 is the Coast Guard.
Given the trailing nature of defense reports, we likely have yet to see the full impact of spending on the Iran War in this data, but that will be a factor to track going forward.
