Open Dialogue on Improving How to Do Business with the Federal Government Browse Recent ideas

Certainly there are many changes to the FAR possible to improve its shortcomings. Beyond that, however, Contract Specialists, Administrative Contracting Officers, legal contract reviewers, and the many program staff members that provide input to Procurement can improve the acquisition process. There are no hindrances to government personnel coming together to create internal metrics, to improve accountability, timeliness ...more »

Establish upfront timelines for procurements and establish a performance metric or incentive for meeting those timelines. There is currently no incentive to meet procurement schedules. Extensions and delays should be the exception, not the norm. Delays are not only inefficient to meeting the mission goals but the longer cycles also hinder innovation and cost money. Industry requires predictability to manage their ...more »

Attached is a statement by a company that has done business on federal contracts making the point that it is hard to compete against vendors who cut corners on wages and other required standards.

Government has been doing great things on setting up policies like "Cloud First". Same must be considered for "Small Business First" for each and every procurement and have those evaluation/findings report publish to small business so, businesses can improve on how decisions were made. This provides opportunity for small business to improve and extend services as expected.

Government can leverage the GSA evaluation process that is completed once and provide access to small business on opportunities on other similar vehicles as a default. This will increase competition and save taxpayer & small business dollars and effort on RFP responses and evaluations.

Example a GSA STARS-II industry partner must have access to Schedule IT-70 (atleast for the same NAICS Codes)

Use of Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA) source selection procedures has increased considerably in recent years and in many cases it is being used inappropriately when the government is not acquiring commodity goods and services. If the product or service cannot be well defined, so that all competitiors are effectively competing on supplying the same product or service, LPTA shouls not be used. Also, if there ...more »

Issue: The Relationship between Buyers, Acquirers, and Suppliers is increasingly silo-ed and divisive versus engaged in collaborative problem solving. Recent events and articles have highlighted the need for increased collaboration and alignment between business/IT sponsors, procurement organizations, and suppliers/contracts. PSC’s Commission Report, “From Crisis to Opportunity”, as well as NCMA’s recent article, “Becoming ...more »

The current structure for agency reporting relevant to small business utilization goals is flawed, in that it allows agencies to grossly misinterpret the intent of the these goals. Agencies are required to report dollar volumes at this time. This is an accurate representation of whether or not the dollars are going to small businesses, but it is not an accurate representation of how many small businesses are receiving ...more »

SBA mandates that small subcontractors be paid quickly by primes when the government pays quickly. This would extend the same requirement to small businesses that are team members on Contractor Teaming Agreements under the GSA MAS program.

Mid-tier businesses have valuable government contracting experience and power the economy by subcontracting with small business concerns. Prohibiting these dollars from counting towards an agency’s socioeconomic goals artificially reduces the apparent government investment in such companies. As a result, SBA goals are treated with heightened importance, creating greater exclusion of sources in open competition and increasing ...more »

Agencies should have more flexibility and discretion in defining and using size standards by NAICS code and ownership category to solve the ‘mid-tier trap’ that limits participation and reduces the value created by the small business program. Some departments have recently recognized the value and challenges of mid-tier businesses, many of which are successful graduates of the small business program. When successful ...more »

Enable more agency flexibility and discretion in defining and using size standards by NAICS code and ownership category to solve the ‘mid-tier trap’ that limits participation and reduces the value created by the small business program. Some departments have recently recognized the value and challenges of mid-tier businesses, many of which are successful graduates of the small business program. When successful small businesses ...more »