Government Contracting News | The Contracting Education Academy

January 15, 2020 By cs

GSA reissues e-commerce platform solicitation with significant changes

After an extended bid period and a short-lived protest, the General Services Administration (GSA) has re-released the request for proposals for an e-commerce platform with some significant changes.

However, vendors that didn’t bid on the original proposal won’t get another chance this time around.

The government buyers at GSA want federal employees to be able to purchase standard goods through a digital platform, similar to e-commerce platforms like Amazon. For the last few years, the agency has been working on a solicitation for just such a platform and released an RFP in October for “online e-marketplace platforms [that] feature multiple suppliers offering the same product and will allow buyers to decide which supplier/product combination meets their needs.”

The first instance of this platform will be a three-year, multiple-award pilot to test the marketplace idea. Once up and running, agencies will be able to purchase products directly through the portal for any transactions under the micropurchase threshold of $10,000.

After bids were submitted in mid-November, GSA received a protest of the solicitation, prompting the agency to pull it back and rework the RFP. The agency reissued the solicitation on Jan. 8, with revised bids due Jan. 15.

The revised solicitation includes several changes. The most important is the insertion of language in two places requiring bidders to provide a full, working solution rather than one developed in conjunction with GSA.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/01/gsa-reissues-e-commerce-platform-solicitation-significant-changes/162374/

January 14, 2020 By cs

How the Air Force is breaking down perceptions of Federal procurement

The Air Force’s pitch days have become so popular that several of the squadrons are excitedly borrowing the idea.

These squadrons have a good reason to expand this approach to attracting new and different companies. About 80% of all participants in the pitch days are non-traditional defense contractors.

Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt, the deputy assistant secretary for contracting in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said he wasn’t surprised by the number of new contractors participating in this new approach to finding emerging technologies.

“We are hoping for those kinds of returns. After all, the idea of Air Force pitch days is specifically for that purpose,” Holt said at the National Contract Management Association’s Government Contract Management Symposium. “A lot is said about government contracting and the barriers being so high. In fact, many venture capital firms will be very open with young tech startups in America and tell them if their business model includes doing business with DoD, then they will not back them because the cash flows are too long, the time periods are too long and the processes are too long.”

Holt said the Pitch Days are breaking down all of those perceptions.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/air-force/2019/12/how-the-air-force-is-breaking-down-perceptions-of-federal-procurement/

January 13, 2020 By cs

3 must-read acquisition provisions in the 2020 NDAA

After a long Congressional conference period the 2020 Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was finally signed into law, and with it come some changes to the defense acquisition process.

Federal News Network compiled three provisions that are particularly interesting regarding the procurement of military weapons.

These provisions involve intellectual property, middle-tier acquisition, and the establishment of a Defense Civilian Training Corps, and are summarized here:

The 2020 NDAA gives DoD more leeway in experimenting with that policy by creating a pilot program on intellectual property evaluation.
The middle-tier acquisition method allows for rapid prototyping and fielding within five years, as long as certain criteria are met.
The Defense Civilian Training Corps will train civilians for public service in the Department of Defense.

Read the complete Federal News Network article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-main/2019/12/three-must-read-acquisition-provisions-in-the-2020-ndaa/

January 10, 2020 By cs

After 2 years, JEDI is finally underway

The second year of competition for the Pentagon’s controversial cloud contract was as dramatic as the first.

The Pentagon’s high-profile Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract is right back where it was one year ago: tied up in litigation.

The circumstances have changed in the past calendar year, with Microsoft winning JEDI in October and former favorite to win the contract, Amazon Web Services, protesting the decision in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

At best, the Defense Department and Microsoft cannot begin work until at least mid-February, putting the Pentagon more than a year behind its initial schedule for JEDI. An internal JEDI strategy document released in November 2017 sought a JEDI award in fourth quarter of 2018 and migrations to the cloud platform by the beginning of 2019.

And yet, what unfolded in 2019 was high drama in the federal contracting world over an improbably high-profile government contract.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/12/after-two-years-jedi-finally-underway/162005/

January 9, 2020 By cs

A win-win contracting tool for the Pentagon and the private sector

The Defense Department is taking measures to get new capabilities to warfighters more quickly, and they’re working. One of these tools is called Other Transaction Authority.

The Pentagon has made increasing use of this contracting method, which has existed since the space race but was expanded dramatically in the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act.

The value of Other Transaction Authority agreements has increased nearly 300% since 2016, from $1.4 billion to $3.7 billion, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in November.

The normal defense contracting system is, by all accounts, too slow. Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy has likened the procurement system to baseball: “It’s like having a 19-year-old kid that can throw a 100-mile-an-hour fastball but who won’t make the majors until he’s 39.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/12/30/a-win-win-contracting-tool-for-the-pentagon-and-the-private-sector/

After an extended bid period and a short-lived protest, the General Services Administration (GSA) has re-released the request for proposals for an e-commerce platform with some significant changes.

The Air Force’s pitch days have become so popular that several of the squadrons are excitedly borrowing the idea.

After a long Congressional conference period the 2020 Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was finally signed into law, and with it come some changes to the defense acquisition process.

The second year of competition for the Pentagon’s controversial cloud contract was as dramatic as the first.

The Defense Department is taking measures to get new capabilities to warfighters more quickly, and they’re working. One of these tools is called Other Transaction Authority.

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