What Is PALT? Procurement Administrative Lead Time in Federal Acquisition

PALT is the time between the date an agency issues the initial solicitation for a contract or order and the date it awards that contract or order. That is the definition the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), adopted in its January 14, 2021 memo to Chief Acquisition Officers and Senior Procurement Executives.

The wording comes from section 878 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2019 (Public Law 115-232), which required the OFPP Administrator to develop a definition of PALT and a plan for measuring and publicly reporting governmentwide PALT data for contracts and orders above the simplified acquisition threshold. Section 878 included this language as a suggested definition, and the Department of Defense had already adopted it. OFPP published its proposed definition and plan in the Federal Register on January 21, 2020, took public comments, then issued the 2021 memo.

The clock starts on the date the initial solicitation is issued and stops on the award date. The 2020 notice spells out the edge cases, because not every award begins with a standard solicitation:

In every case the clock stops when the contract or order is awarded.

PALT is measured from data agencies already report. The 2020 notice explains that GSA added a mandatory "solicitation date" field to the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS-NG) for contracts and orders above the simplified acquisition threshold (SAT) in a June 2019 update (GAO notes DOD began collecting solicitation dates in FPDS in June 2018). The award date sits in the same record, so the difference between the two is PALT.

That design means PALT is only as good as the dates contracting staff enter. It also means actions below the SAT are outside the governmentwide measure. The notice adds that the same data can show how authorities such as unusual and compelling urgency affect timelines.

The 2021 memo says agencies should baseline and benchmark PALT for their acquisitions and consider a set of practices aimed at shortening it. Agencies that already track broader timeframes, such as time from receipt of a complete requisition package, are encouraged to keep doing so as they are able.

The practices in the memo's first attachment are grouped into four phases:

• Acquisition planning to pre-solicitation: facilitated requirements development workshops and an acquisition requirements roadmap tool.
• Pre-solicitation to proposal receipt: pre-solicitation industry dialogue and putting the government's price in the solicitation.
• Proposal receipt to source selection: product and technical demonstrations, video proposals, on-the-spot consensus, confidence ratings, advisory down-selects, comparative evaluation, highest technically rated offeror, streamlined documentation, commercial simplified procedures and performance evaluation modernization.
• Source selection to award: a contractor responsibility determination bot, testing how robotic process automation can shorten responsibility determinations.

The memo also urges agencies to share what works through the Periodic Table of Acquisition Innovations.

From our delivery teams: Before you benchmark, check the dates. Pull a sample of your FPDS records and compare the solicitation date to the actual release date in the contract file; a few wrong entries can make a fast office look slow or hide a real bottleneck.

GAO's March 2024 report, GAO-24-106528, looked at Department of Defense (DOD) contracts and orders valued above $250,000. Median PALT fell by more than 20 percent, from 41 days in fiscal year 2019 to 32 days in fiscal year 2022. For awards over $50 million, though, median PALT rose by 70 days over the same four years.

PALT also varied widely by type of award. Across fiscal years 2019 through 2022, the median was 21 days for orders, 97 days for definitive contracts and 179 days for indefinite delivery contracts. GAO found PALT varied with contract value, contracting approach, contract type, the extent of competition and what was being bought. Over 85 percent of DOD's definitive contracts and over 90 percent of its orders in that period were under $10 million, and those smaller awards had shorter median PALT.

GAO also reviewed DOD's PALT Tracker for procurements over $250 million and found data gaps that limited its use; components called it burdensome and duplicative. DOD later decided the tracker was no longer needed and removed the requirement to use it effective October 1, 2024, according to GAO's recommendation status.

Because PALT leaves out requirements development, which the 2020 notice says "has long been recognized as one of the most significant sources of delay in the acquisition lifecycle." When OFPP proposed the definition, Nextgov/FCW reported that some commenters said it did not consider pre-solicitation work, such as assembling a complete requirements package before a solicitation is issued. OFPP's 2021 memo says it received three comments, all generally supportive, with no specific recommendations for an alternative definition.

For a program office, the solicitation is the midpoint. Requirements churn, market research, independent government cost estimates, legal and policy reviews and approvals all happen first, and a weak package there shows up later as amendments, extended evaluations and protest risk. Our post on HUD's acquisition modernization work describes that friction from the program side. That pre-solicitation work is where AIR-Quire, Pyramid's AI-native system of intelligence for the federal acquisition lifecycle, starts: it drafts the FAR-required acquisition documents, checks every step against the agency's rules and compiles a complete, reviewable record, with a person in charge of every decision.

Start with the inputs, then the evaluation. A practical sequence:

1. Measure both clocks. Report PALT as defined, and track requisition-to-solicitation separately so you can see which half is slow.
2. Fix requirements early. A facilitated requirements workshop and a complete package before release cut amendments later.
3. Talk to industry first. Pre-solicitation dialogue, such as posting a draft solicitation, surfaces problems before proposals arrive.
4. Evaluate in fewer passes. Demonstrations, on-the-spot consensus, advisory down-selects and streamlined documentation are the memo's options for shortening evaluation.
5. Use existing vehicles where they fit. GAO's medians for orders are far shorter than for new definitive or indefinite delivery contracts. Part of that gap is definitional (PALT for an order with pre-priced items and no negotiation starts on the award date), and large orders still take time. Where a suitable vehicle already exists, ask early whether an order can meet the need.
6. Keep a reviewable record. Documenting each decision as it is made is easier than rebuilding the file later for a review or a protest.

Whatever tools a team uses, the contracting officer still makes the decisions, and the time spent on each phase is worth measuring before and after any change.