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

there are increased requirements for reporting and compliance that are not reimbursed by the Government but require contractors to develop tracking and reporting systems and have dedicated resources to maintaining the system and information for reporting. CDM is an excellent example of this.

I would like to recommend that the information offered by the SBA and similar organizations be streamlined to be more efficient, user-friendly and practical. At this time there are so many areas and so many emails when all the small business needs are some practical pointers to become effective within the short amount of time they can afford to spend on administrative matters. Please do not think that this means poor ...more »

Currently there is a Commercial Items test programs that allows use of SAP up to $6.5M for commercial items, or NDIs that have been sold to State and Local Governments. Unfortunately some design activities are wary about providing commercial item determinations because they fear it could cause them to lose control of the item to another design activity or lose Quality Assurance capabilities. There is also a military ...more »

See attached document for details.

GSA needs to have a single senior manager to advance the Schedules Program. This +30Billion dollar program needs to be updated to allow significant taxpayer savings and eliminate contract duplication.There is no one in charge of this multi-billion dollar commercial services and products program.

We have been registered on CCR and now Sam for several years. Part of the registration requires a listing of services/products offered. However we have NEVE$R been alerted of an rfp by a CO using this system to notify qualified suppliers.

The present system requires a marketing effort broader and more intensive than is required to sell to non governmental operations.

We recommend that SBA increase the Personal Networth definition to $5 million, in addition remove the required Audited financials unless the organization has revenue of over $100 million.

If you really want to increase small biz participation, increase the use of Section 845 Other Transactions Agreements. It's a great way to encourage non-traditional small biz participation, eliminate a lot of DCAA accounting issues, and keep innovation flowing. The ones my company has been involved in have been very successful. Also, expand the OTA to allow for manufacturing as well as prototyping. Moving away from ...more »

The current system relies heavily on an assumption that everyone knows how to navigate the various technologies inherent in government contracting. The human element is inadequate.

Given the breadth of the complaints, perhaps it is time to create a new major panel similar to the Section 800 panel to address this issues in depth and systematically. Such a group could have the support of both the Congress and the Administration and the product of that group would be much more likely to obtain broad support, as FASA received overwhelming bi-partisan approval and resulted in significant change.

I have been trying to get paid for a service I provided to the federal government awhile ago. Previously, I had an account on the CCR system. I have been trying to migrate it to the SAM system, without success. I have called the SAM help lines (there seem to be a few of them) many times. The main purpose of the representatives seems to be to upsell callers for a $599 service to facilitate the registration process. So, ...more »

What about an organization that is dedicated to helping small companies navigate the contracting process? In our experience, once you have fought the battle to gain certification (FedRamp or ATO), there is a bigger and more expensive hurdle of getting on the GSA price list and/or finding an appropriate contracting vehicle. Most companies end up working with a contracting partner like Carasoft or mmix who take a big ...more »