10 Tantalizing Topics Testing Procurement in the New Fiscal Year
This week marked the Autumnal Equinox, and change is in the air. The leaves are beginning to fall to the ground, the morning air is turning crisp, the days are getting shorter — all signaling that we are approaching the end of the government fiscal year.
The beginning of a new fiscal year provides an opportunity for reflection, during which, we can look ahead at the issues and questions that likely will shape procurement over the coming year. With that in mind, here are 10 topics that surely will be of interest across the procurement stakeholder community:
Schedules Consolidation and commercial item contracting:
To be or not to be? The General Services Administration has made significant progress in updating the framework for schedule contracting to promote commercial item acquisition. Schedules consolidation will enhance competition, increase access to commercial solutions, and reduce administrative costs over the long run. At the same time, increasingly, GSA’s industry partners are perplexed by the treatment of services. GSA is limiting services under the MAS program to those priced on an hourly rate basis. This approach limits customer agency access to innovative, best value commercial solutions. Moreover, the use of cost-build negotiations for services serves as a non-commercial “double whammy,” further undermining customer agency access to best value commercial solutions. The combination of limiting services to hourly rates, combined with cost-build negotiations, is low price technically acceptable by other means. Here we go again.