The GSA MAS Program is reviewing several upcoming initiatives to improve the buying and selling experience of its customers and industry partners. GSA’s objective is to use data analytics to get actionable insights to find and buy solutions on schedules, vendors will have the ability to offer their solutions in a way that fits their model and the way their customers buy. GSA will be utilizing the advances in technology and explore legislation and policy reform that will support agility, transparency and competition. GSA will also promote government-wide and other interagency contracts by removing outdated reporting requirements for contracting officers. In addition, GSA has the opportunity to increase competition at the task order level with the use of unpriced contracts for services; true competition will take place at the task order level.
eBuy Project: The eBuy Project is a one year effort. It is designed to increase transparency and competition by studying the effects of releasing post–award RFQ information on FedBizOpps. The project eBuy will collect and analyze data from a test group as well as a control group. The test group includes contracting officers from the GSA Office of Internal Acquisition, and the FAS Region 7 Southwest Supply and Acquisition Center for GSA Funded Procurements. These test groups were selected because they are the most active on eBuy. During the pilot, the test group will upload the award notice of each individual eBuy award, including a copy of the RFQ, on FedBizOpps for public viewing.
- Update to the eBuy Pilot October 1, 2019. This is a year long of the benefits of additional transparency for GSA funded procurements, specifically government-wide IDIQ contract vehicles. Normally, IDIQ opportunities are only visible to those contractors eligible to compete for orders – not the general public. The pilot will enable GSA to analyze whether expanded transparency of eBuy RFQs retains current benefits while increasing interest in the use of GSA contracts – thereby further increasing competition”.
GSA is hopeful that this increased transparency will result in an increase of new entrants into its acquisition programs and further increasing competition at the order level.
GSA has a total of 35 awards to date under the pilot and expect to see more before the end of the fiscal year. We’ve also made it easier for you to locate eBuy pilot award notices posted to FBO by maintaining a current.
FAS Contract Writing System: The General Services Administration (GSA) has posted an update on e-Buy on the Federal Acquisition Service’s (FAS) Contract Writing System (CWS) project. Initiated in June 2018, the CWS project seeks to identify an enterprise-wide CWS that supports the entire acquisition lifecycle for all of FAS’ major programs. To date, the CWS project team has conducted market research, inventoried internal systems, and examined existing solutions. Based on these efforts, FAS has identified the following CWS alternatives to its current systems:
- Purchase a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) CWS
- Reuse an internal FAS system
- Utilize a shared-service solution
Moving forward, GSA anticipates that it will select one of these alternatives by the end of February 2019, with a specific solution identified by the second quarter of calendar year 2019. Further, GSA expects it will begin piloting that solution by the third or fourth quarter of calendar year 2019.
Catalog Management: With the GSA Schedule Consolidation, GSA has recognized that reorganization of its operations based categories of services and goods is required to facilitate GSA operating more like the commercial market. GSA has an internal team assigned to realign operations to match the structure of the supply market. They anticipate an announcement of progress made in mid to late 2019. Once this realignment of categories to the commercial market has been completed, GSA expects that they will have removed confusion and duplication in contracting, thereby reducing the time and cost to do business with the government through its Consolidated GSA Schedule.