Open Dialogue on Improving How to Do Business with the Federal Government 2. Procurement Rules and Practices

Contractors are supposed to submit their initial best offer because award might be done without discussion. But we all know that once the contractors are ranked and graded and the competitive range is established, most of the time, the Contracting officer will issue a request for Best and Final Offer. Proposal development is costly. Multiple submissions also cost money. Contracting Officers are "required" to always ask ...more »

Having held a GSA contract for years, I make the following observations/recommendations: 1) There needs to be a mandated response time from GSA COs and buyers. We had a CO that never returned e-mails or calls. Truly never. We finally got transferred to a new officer but it still can take days to get responses. If there were no deadlines, that would be great. The same holds true for buyers who are responsible for ...more »

IRS and CAGE validation can take 2 weeks for contractors updating their annual registration. The problem is companies doing business with agencies are ineligible from receiving contracts/contract awards until the validation process is complete. The process should be changed for conmpanies renewing their annual registration or adding new NAICS etc. Companies could potentially lose business and bid & proposal cost as ...more »

In addition to requiring a pre solicitation phase in all procurements over a certain threshold to be determined by Agency Contracting Head, I would recommend a more involved use of performance based acquisition practices for initial strategy adoption and O&M efforts in information technology. This includes the occasional coupling with incentive based contracting where appropriate. When these parts of the FAR are used ...more »

As a small business, we had a gap of 4 months just for an office to exercise an option on our IDIQ. Despite our requests, it was not clear who was responsible for each step in the process and where things fell down. Revealing the steps, person responsible and due dates will prevent small businesses from suffering when government people don't do their job. Somehow, government acquisition people need to be held accountable. ...more »

Poor requirements or a willingness to change requirements on the fly continues to waste taxpayers' money in IT projects. Surety bonds are used to guaranty performance of federal construction projects and should be used for IT projects. Although it is seen as a way to hold the contractor accountable, it can and should be used to hold the buyer accountable. Senior officials should require bonds and use them as a method ...more »

Despite a growing body of evidence that fixating on costs actually increases them, acquisition personnel insist on making every transaction cost-based. Sections 2379 and 2306a(d) of Title 10, USC, for instance, provide limited authority to obtain cost and pricing information for major weapons systems and their component parts where certified cost data are not required. This authority is over-applied in practice and ...more »

In business, time is money. In war, time is lives. Companies and the warfighter alike are threatened by the glacial pace of current procurement cycles. Purchases that have always taken months now take years. As prominent authorities on policy have noted (citing examples such as unmanned systems and MRAP), the USG often has the most success when bypassing the system entirely: “When it is necessary to go around the ...more »

If the USG did not pay for development, it has no skin in the game. Include a presumption under FAR 2.101 that an item is commercial if developed entirely at private expense. Such items can be purchased at firm fixed prices and with no schedule or development risk to the USG. These advantages are undercut, however, if such items cannot be purchased efficiently (or at all). The increased transaction costs and complex ...more »

If a member of the Chief Acquisition Officers Council has never participated with a contractor in developing a formal proposal in response to a Federal solicitation, each is encouraged to engage one of the Agency contractor’s and ask to observe the (painful and expensive) processes industry goes through to respond to a Federal solicitation, particularly a high dollar value procurement involving submission of a complex ...more »

Issue: Intellectual property rights as currently set forth in GSA Schedule contracts are unclear, cumbersome and unduly burdensome for contractors. The End User License Agreement (EULA) requirements remain unclear in IT Schedule 70. As such, each license agreement must be reviewed by the contracting officer and legal counsel. Recommendation: A basic set of terms should be developed that identify the key requirements ...more »

Issue: Restrictive experience requirements under the GSA Schedule program. For example, under IT Schedule 70 a company must have been in business for at least two years to be eligible for a contract. The GSA Schedule experience requirements limit access to new, innovation companies providing cutting edge technologies. It is an unnecessary barrier to entry to the federal market place. Recommendation: Eliminate the mandatory ...more »