Open Dialogue on Improving How to Do Business with the Federal Government Browse Popular ideas

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 »

Growing small businesses and diversifying the pool of federal contractors are important goals. However, recently, there have been several highly publicized examples of small business contractors who shortchanged workers on federal jobs. While small businesses may not be able to meet all the experiential criteria that are part of the responsibility determination, there needs to be a mechanism in place to ensure that ...more »

For IDIQ orders for services (including construction) the true competition takes place at the task order level. The unit prices established at the "umbrella" contract level are essentially meaningless to knowing what the actual cost of work is, yet CICA requires that we establish binding prices. This is particularly problematic for services, where the quantities of units can vary greatly contractor to contract, and ...more »

SBA mandates that small subcontractors be paid quickly by primes when the government pays quickly. This would extend the same requirement to small businesses that are team members on Contractor Teaming Agreements under the GSA MAS program.

Acknowledging that the acquisition process is frustrating and cumbersome is a start, but to understand how to fix it starts with a willingness to look at the acquisition processes, technologies, and professionals from the perspective of a small business owner. Follow a small business owner's experience with the acquisition system - from the first sources sought to award of a contract - for a specific procurement and ...more »

In section 866 of the 2011 NDAA, Congress authorized a pilot program for the acquisition of Military Purpose Nondevelopmental Items (MPNDI). This allows products developed entirely at private expense to be purchased using streamlined, commercial-like procedures. This gap-filler was carefully “designed to test whether the streamlined procedures similar to those available for commercial items can serve as an effective ...more »

We have been registered on CCR and now Sam for several years. Part of the registration requires a listing of services/products offered. However we have NEVE$R been alerted of an rfp by a CO using this system to notify qualified suppliers.

The present system requires a marketing effort broader and more intensive than is required to sell to non governmental operations.

The FAR should reflect best practices in the private sector and many state construction (15 or so) programs by requiring prime contractors to list/name primary subcontractors in low-price award procedures (like proposed in HR 1942). Since the 1984 Competition in Contracting Act, federal agencies have run away from construction project low-bid prime contract award procedures because of the claims and disputes that were ...more »

Attached is a statement by a company that has done business on federal contracts making the point that it is hard to compete against vendors who cut corners on wages and other required standards.

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 »

Small Businesses operating in the federal marketplace often find themselves competing against Large Businesses who hold long term Multiple Award Contracts (MACs) that they obtained while they were a small business (SB). These large businesses may be able to compete as a SB in SB Set-Asides, even though they no longer qualify as a SB for the applicable NAICS code per SBA size determination regulation. For example, the ...more »