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

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.

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.

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 »

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.

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.

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.

See attached document for details.

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 »

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 »

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.

One of the reasons there is so much set-aside money left is because the government makes it impossible for the average small business to grow. They give up before they even try. We need x number of contracts before we even become eligible to compete. How about the government being that entity that provides the first numbers of contracts? If private companies can take the risk to give the small business their first contracts, ...more »

The time is right for a public policy discussion contrasting the SWOT for fully outsourcing government IT - no longer would government own, maintain, and upgrade IT infrastructure or application development, but instead private industry would provide government with secure cloud-based DaaS/SaaS that would accelerate commercial as well as government security, convenience, affordability, and trust compared to ownership. ...more »