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

Issue: The Relationship between Buyers, Acquirers, and Suppliers is increasingly silo-ed and divisive versus engaged in collaborative problem solving. Recent events and articles have highlighted the need for increased collaboration and alignment between business/IT sponsors, procurement organizations, and suppliers/contracts. PSC’s Commission Report, “From Crisis to Opportunity”, as well as NCMA’s recent article, “Becoming ...more »

Rewrite FAR Part 17.207 for options. Flip the requirement for due diligence to focus on those contracts where the option will NOT be exercised rather than when it will be exercised. Probably 99.99% of options are exercised each fiscal year. This is a huge resource drain on COs and keeps contractors in limbo for no reason. Eliminate this pencil whip exercise so that COs can focus on getting the funding modification correct ...more »

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 »

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)

Issue: Major information technology (IT) investments frequently exceed original cost and schedule estimates and, in some cases, deliver very little useable capability. One key driver of these outcomes is the continued preference to develop solutions in-house rather than structure programs to allow for increased use of existing commercial solutions that can be rapidly deployed, often under firm-fixed price arrangements. ...more »

The current structure for agency reporting relevant to small business utilization goals is flawed, in that it allows agencies to grossly misinterpret the intent of the these goals. Agencies are required to report dollar volumes at this time. This is an accurate representation of whether or not the dollars are going to small businesses, but it is not an accurate representation of how many small businesses are receiving ...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.

Certainly there are many changes to the FAR possible to improve its shortcomings. Beyond that, however, Contract Specialists, Administrative Contracting Officers, legal contract reviewers, and the many program staff members that provide input to Procurement can improve the acquisition process. There are no hindrances to government personnel coming together to create internal metrics, to improve accountability, timeliness ...more »

If the USG did not pay for development, it has no skin in the game. Include a presumption under FAR 2.101 that an item is commercial if developed entirely at private expense. Such items can be purchased at firm fixed prices and with no schedule or development risk to the USG. These advantages are undercut, however, if such items cannot be purchased efficiently (or at all). The increased transaction costs and complex ...more »

Standards need to be established to for how buyers are completing their due diligence as it relates to verification of classifications. If the government worked to align its practices between systems, regulated/verified information submitted, and created a more holistic structure of classifications, the government would see better practices, overall increased compliance, and enhanced utilization of small businesses. ...more »

If you really want to increase small biz participation, increase the use of Section 845 Other Transactions Agreements. It's a great way to encourage non-traditional small biz participation, eliminate a lot of DCAA accounting issues, and keep innovation flowing. The ones my company has been involved in have been very successful. Also, expand the OTA to allow for manufacturing as well as prototyping. Moving away from ...more »

The government should identify as many opportunities to use platforms for open market competition as possible in order to increase participation in federal business from a more diverse community of suppliers. Many organizations are too entrenched in their relationships with huge corporations and the use of BPAs that many small- and minority-owned businesses are denied access to these opportunities where they may be able ...more »