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

The government should be less reluctant to bar vendors with poor federal contract past performance from participating in federal business opportunities, or should otherwise provide a centralized resource for reporting and reviewing past performance on federal contracts. The bar for being placed on EPLS is alarmingly high. While it makes sense that the government would be cautious and judicious in adding a registered contractor ...more »

Many RFPs with an IT component require that the government own the code. This means a "build it" approach for ALL of these vs. buy it. Ok, Healthcare.gov has been discussed endlessly but this is still a good example. There was zero reason to build from ground up other than that I assume the procurement required ownership. Many modules could have been purchased from other vendors for this and MANY other procurements. ...more »

if Congress stopped requiring procurment to spend their full budget every year, gov't would be more creative with their spending and more careful. Now it's - we have the money, give it to them; and when the money ois gonem the project stops. When we negotiate, we should SAVE money to use on something else FOR something else to get more bang for the buck and spread more money around to small businesses.

For all the contracts we had bid on, we were required to submit the proposals and revisions in multiple paper copies. This mandate delays the communication between us and the contracting agencies and it consumes a lot of paper. An electronic submission system can streamline this into a much more efficient and environmentally friendly process.