Open Dialogue on Improving How to Do Business with the Federal Government Ideas

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 »

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 »

Over the last decade, the number of laws, regulations and provisions that apply to commercial item have dramatically increased. For example, in 1996 under 52.212-5(b) there were 17 provisions of law or executive orders identified as applicable to commercial item contracts. In 2012, the number has climbed to 51. The resulting explosion of statutes and regulations applicable to commercial item contracting increases complexity, ...more »

Issue: Extensive data collection requirements via the Federal Acquisition Regulation combined with an explosion in data reporting for agency specific procurement programs and the Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative (FSSI). These data reporting requirements are increasing costs and risks for contractors across the federal procurement enterprise. Costs that are ultimately borne by customer agencies through higher prices ...more »

Issue: Reform the MAS Pricing Policies. Specifically, eliminate the Price Reduction Clause (PRC), GSAR Clause 552.238-75. The current MAS pricing policies do not reflect current practices in the commercial market place. The pricing policies are inconsistent with the statutory and regulatory mandates for competition at the order level. The increased transactional and contract administration costs for compliance with the ...more »

Issue: The overly complex, burdensome ordering procedures for the establishment of Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs) under the GSA Schedules program. Specifically the preference for multiple award BPAs over single award BPAs. The strong preference of multiple award BPAs undermines the ability of customer agencies to achieve best value outcomes using the GSA Schedules program. It essentially limits the tools in the tool ...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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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.