Rapid Procurement and Technical Assessments to Mitigate Fraud and Adversarial Investment in COVID-19 Response

THE CHALLENGE

On August 2020, the COVID-19 Joint Acquisition Task Force (JATF) mission was established to identify critical suppliers and capacity and efficiently scale the production of essential medical supplies and materials, including ventilators, personal protective equipment (PPE), COVID-19 testing kits, oxygen, and other supplies. As with the financial system bailout by the United States Federal Government more than a decade ago, this $2.2 trillion coronavirus aid relief package is highly vulnerable to fraud, abuse, and adversarial exploitation. To help mitigate this risk, supply chain illumination must be conducted to holistically screen and vet the vendors and underlying supplier networks to ensure these medical suppliers are reputable, financially secure, operationally reliable, not vulnerable to undue corrupt influence, and will not introduce unacceptable risk or in any way compromise the fight against COVID-19.

THE SOLUTION

Exiger was contracted to deploy our AI platform and analytics capabilities in direct support of the White House response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Exiger was engaged to support the DOD JATF and all cooperating Federal Agencies to urgently provide critical supply chain illumination and supplier vetting capabilities to support decision-making in the purchase of trustworthy PPE, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices required to fight the global pandemic. Through the Defense Production Act, the U.S. Government intended to make significant and rapid investment in these items.

In support of the U.S. Government, Exiger’s proprietary technology, DDIQ, enabled DOD to illuminate 26 previously unknown critical global medical supply sectors, and then conduct rapid vetting of over 11,000 potential critical medical suppliers within a six-week time period.

THE IMPACT

The impact of this vetting directly informed investment decisions and our Under Secretary-level client stated that Exiger helped the Federal Government avoid over $500 million dollars of investment from being spent on high-risk companies, many with adversarial foreign ownership, control or influence ties or selling (or representing they could sell) fraudulent, counterfeit, or substandard goods, thereby ensuring safe and reliable COVID-19 products were purchased and deployed to our healthcare frontlines in a secure and expeditious manner, in time to save American lives.