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

Rather than continually develop more government unique rules and regulations, encourage the use of commercial business practices and standards in procurement/acquisition. Why? Creates opportunity for government to benefit from innovations, technologies and services found in the broad marketplace. Lowers the cost of doing business with the government for companies. Allows quicker incorporation of latest technologies ...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.

Small businesses seeking to enter the federal space must apply through various programs. These include GSA for GSA Schedules, set-aside programs (e.g. HubZone, 8(a), veteran-owned), etc are required to deal with multiple organizations and submit similar information to each. Create a consolidated application for small businesses that would permit them to apply for the special programs through a single application process. ...more »

FAR needs updated so that the contractor community does not have to submit numerous copies of forms such as an assignment of claims, novation agreement or change of name agreement. With going electronic, paperless, and electronic signatures, duplicate copies shouldn't be required.

As a small business, we had a gap of 4 months just for an office to exercise an option on our IDIQ. Despite our requests, it was not clear who was responsible for each step in the process and where things fell down. Revealing the steps, person responsible and due dates will prevent small businesses from suffering when government people don't do their job. Somehow, government acquisition people need to be held accountable. ...more »

Having held a GSA contract for years, I make the following observations/recommendations: 1) There needs to be a mandated response time from GSA COs and buyers. We had a CO that never returned e-mails or calls. Truly never. We finally got transferred to a new officer but it still can take days to get responses. If there were no deadlines, that would be great. The same holds true for buyers who are responsible for ...more »

One of the reasons there is so much set-aside money left is because the government makes it impossible for the average small business to grow. They give up before they even try. We need x number of contracts before we even become eligible to compete. How about the government being that entity that provides the first numbers of contracts? If private companies can take the risk to give the small business their first contracts, ...more »

The FAR needs a top to bottom scrubbing as well as some thought as to how its utility could be improved. Many sections of the FAR were developed years ago or pieced together from predecessor regulations dating back to the 60s when Federal procurement was supply-focused. Other sections of the FAR are a patchwork of concepts that, while "politically correct" at inception, no longer suit the needs of modern procurement and ...more »

It would be beneficial if the end users were cognizant of what they were asking vendors to bid on. There have been many "E-Buy" solicitations that we have passed on because tossed into the package of furniture is some oddball piece that locks the bid into a larger firm that will only work with their "preferred" dealers and effectively garnering the entire package. Making it mandatory for the requestor to select product ...more »

Transformation Innovation in IT/Services Acquisition: We must have open communication and collaboration with industry from day 1 of a new (large) procurement. Government publishes OMB 300, Report 15s and program-specific strategy on public website. Hold monthly Industry Days to openly communicate with Industry, verify requirements, get innovative ideas, and utilize digital market research. Utilize non-profits to assist ...more »

I would like to recommend that the information offered by the SBA and similar organizations be streamlined to be more efficient, user-friendly and practical. At this time there are so many areas and so many emails when all the small business needs are some practical pointers to become effective within the short amount of time they can afford to spend on administrative matters. Please do not think that this means poor ...more »

A significant challenge in procuring cloud-enabled IT services involves structuring an appropriate method of payment. For something simple, like Infrastructure as a Service, agencies should be able to contract directly with a cloud service provider without having to fund upfront (in effect, pre-paying) for a projected level of service consumption. These types of procurement arrangements are typically fixed price. This ...more »