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

The most ironic display of waste in the federal acquisition system is multiple websites referencing the FAR. There needs to be one, and just one, government-run website referencing the FAR with all the benefits of the other sites.

Acquisition.gov/far can do the job of http://farsite.hill.af.mil/vffara.htm in addition to other FAR sites out there.

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 »

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 »

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.

The PQDR process needs to be revised. Why does a contractor have to take extraordinary steps for the Government to remove a PQDR from the system that the contractor has proven was incorrect and the products meet the contract and requirements. The PQDR system is reviewed when a contracting officers is considering and award. False reports can impact getting awards.

Reenact the pre-award survey, not desk audits. This will illuminate contractors that can not perform , right up front, and not delay the procuring process and require re-solicitation.

Question 2: How can we reduce the cost of transactions for contractors? Answer: I recently worked for a company that allowed the employees to post their own time-card. There are too many people that are NOT trust-worthy enough (especially a very large company) to allow this to happen. We actually had to log in and log out electronically, but I heard stories of people that would enter more hours worked than they ...more »

Use of Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA) source selection procedures has increased considerably in recent years and in many cases it is being used inappropriately when the government is not acquiring commodity goods and services. If the product or service cannot be well defined, so that all competitiors are effectively competing on supplying the same product or service, LPTA shouls not be used. Also, if there ...more »

Establish upfront timelines for procurements and establish a performance metric or incentive for meeting those timelines. There is currently no incentive to meet procurement schedules. Extensions and delays should be the exception, not the norm. Delays are not only inefficient to meeting the mission goals but the longer cycles also hinder innovation and cost money. Industry requires predictability to manage their ...more »

The government may be able to increase the likelihood of new vendor participation (particularly among small businesses) if it lowers the ‘barrier of entry’ to doing business with the government through contractor registration simplification. One of the most common complaints from Sellers new to Federal procurement is the process of needing to register with multiple databases (DUNS, SAM, ORCA, IPP) before a vendor can ...more »

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 »