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

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 »

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 »

Question 1: How can we make doing business with the government easier and less costly for small businesses, minority businesses, new entrants, and non-traditional government contractors? Answer 1: So far I have not encountered any costs with trying to start a business, because I am doing extension research first. I do see there are a lot of costs to get started. Question 2: If you are a small business, minority ...more »

Government has been doing great things on setting up policies like "Cloud First". Same must be considered for "Small Business First" for each and every procurement and have those evaluation/findings report publish to small business so, businesses can improve on how decisions were made. This provides opportunity for small business to improve and extend services as expected.

Government can leverage the GSA evaluation process that is completed once and provide access to small business on opportunities on other similar vehicles as a default. This will increase competition and save taxpayer & small business dollars and effort on RFP responses and evaluations.

Example a GSA STARS-II industry partner must have access to Schedule IT-70 (atleast for the same NAICS Codes)

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 »

Contracting Officers/Specialists get comfortable processing set aside contracts of a particular type. Some are more comfortable with the WOSB program versus SDVOSB or HUBzone and naturally gravitate towards what they know. We continually face the comment of "if you bring me an 8(a), I can make this happen quickly but I can't give you an estimate for how long it may take otherwise" SBA has an incomplete set of practical ...more »

Many procurements recur every 3-5 years with small deviations in the requirements. FBO provides today's snapshot of opportunities while FPDS provides the historical view - GSA should consider ways to structure data in these systems to better connect today's opportunities with its historical predecessor(s). By understanding how a particular contract unfolded previously could help new entrants better position themselves ...more »

Government reporting systems have a tendency to grow over time without an overall design or architecture. As a consequence they can quickly become an alphabet soup of acronyms, with indecpherable connections and frustratingly different methods and rules of entry and extraction. A good example of this is the confusing jumble of systems that make up the government's past performance/integrity system. Suggest that systems ...more »

FBO should list correct Product and Service Codes from the FPDS Manual found at http://www.acquisition.gov/PSC%20Manual%20-%20Final%20-%2011%20August%202011.pdf If the codes could be validated before posting, it would help small businesses locate appropriate opportunities. For example, it would be easier for a roofer to locate a roofing contract if the FBO announcement is coded with a 'Y' or 'Z' designation, instead ...more »

Each site visited has unique registration, password requirements and required company data. Cumbersome and redundant. While it is understandable that agencies are different and data base information is not shared, some intra agency information is not shared from one platform to the next. There needs to be a Clearing House for each Agency and from there a sharing agreement between agencies.

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 »