DoD Contracts

There is no central repository for all DoD contracts; therefore, requesters should identify the contracting office to locate the records custodian of the contract before submitting a request. Please note that contracts are only maintained for six years and three months after the termination of the contract.

The OSD/JS FOIA Requester Service Center services contract requests, with a few exceptions, for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Missile Defense Agency, Defense Micro Electronics Activity, and Washington Headquarters Services, Acquisition and Procurement Directorate. Contracts administered by the Military Services, the Combatant Commands, and other Defense Components are not under the control of this Service Center and must, therefore, be directed to the appropriate office for processing. To facilitate your search, please use the following resources to identify the controlling DoD activity.

If the DoD contract number is known (e.g., DACA63-03-D-0005), the contracting office may be identified by referring to Appendix G of the DoD FAR Supplement (DFARS) for all contracts issued prior to November 2003. (Note: You will need to page down near the bottom of the page to locate Appendix G. Because Appendix G is arranged by DoD Component, your search effort will be simplified if you know, at least, the parent organization (e.g., Army, Navy, Air Force, etc.) of the contracting officer). The first grouping of letters (first six digits) and numbers prior to the first dash in the contract number is the DoD contracting officer identifier (e.g., DACA63 identifies the U.S. Army Engineer District, Fort Worth). Once the DoD contracting office has been identified, requesters seeking copies of DoD contracts may direct their Freedom of Information Act request directly to that activity.

You should be aware that you must search a version of Appendix G dated October 1, 2003, or earlier. The DFARS can be found on the Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy website.

In November 2003, all contracts issued by the Department of Defense began using the DoD Activity Address Code (DoDAAC) as part of the contract number (e.g. W9126G-04-D-0001; W9126G is the DoDAAC). Unfortunately, DoDAAC codes are not publicly available. However, Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps), a site maintained by the General Services Administration (GSA), maintains many details pertaining to DoD and other Federal agency contracts. To identify the DoD component responsible for a particular contract, you should access the FedBizOpps search page. To conduct a search, enter the first six digits of the contract number. If you prefer, you may enter the full contract number for a more exact search. In the "Documents to Search" section, select both for a more thorough search. For example, if you enter contract prefix, HQ0006, then SEARCH, you will note that the search produced, under Agency/Office/Location, the Missile Defense Agency, which is an activity supported by the OSD/JS FOIA Requester Service Center. In contrast, if you enter contract prefix, SPM4A7, you will see that the number is associated with the Defense Supply Center, Richmond, a component of the Defense Logistics Agency.

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