CPARS | The Contracting Education Academy

October 15, 2020 By cs

Call to change how agencies rate contractor performance rises to new level

Let’s start out with this basic truism: No one likes the current approach to rating contractor performance.

Neither the agency contracting officers nor program managers, and not the vendors who sometimes wait three to six months after the contract is complete to get a mostly meaningless “satisfactory” rating.

The data itself lacks value and transparency.

And, to be honest, it seems to have become another checklist activity for many agencies.

A new survey by GovConRx and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy shows, once again, just how little value there is in the current approach to contractor performance assessment ratings (CPARs).

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2020/10/call-to-change-how-agencies-rate-contractor-performance-rises-to-new-level/

September 3, 2020 By cs

Agencies achieving frictionless acquisition in variety of ways

Years of criticism directed at federal agencies has created a culture of risk aversion. That’s something which Soraya Correa, Department of Homeland Security chief procurement officer, said needs to change.

“We’ve got to allow people to do things differently, to try new [things], and so take those chances,” she said Tuesday. “And we the leadership in this profession and across all the professions need to support our people a little bit better to make them feel that confidence that they can take some calculated risks and move the ball forward.”

Correa was part of the Accelerating Acquisition in the Dynamic Workplace webinar, sponsored by FedInsider, which gathered agency acquisition leaders to talk about inefficiencies in federal procurement and what they would like to be done differently.

One of Correa’s initiatives, DHS’ Procurement Innovation Lab, has set an example of creating “safe spaces” for innovation. Its PIL boot camp has proved popular with other agencies and DHS and its components have awarded a cumulative 52 PIL procurement projects from fiscal 2015, when the lab started, to 2019, according to the agency.

Several speakers referenced the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting Systems (CPARS), an electronic workflow that reports and rates contractor performance, at the General Services Administration. Correa said DHS is championing artificial intelligence to track past performance with CPARS data, but the system is “daunting.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/acquisition/2020/08/agencies-achieving-frictionless-acquisition-in-variety-of-ways/

January 6, 2020 By cs

GSA Schedule applicants now must demonstrate past performance through CPARS, customer references

The General Services Administration (GSA) no longer utilizes Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) reports to check the performance of companies wishing to sell to the federal government through the multiple award schedules (MAS) program.

Use of the D&B reports — known as Open Ratings Past Performance Evaluations — was discontinued in December.

MAS offerors now demonstrate their performance records through one of two means:

Verifying in their eOffer submittal that they have three or more CPARS assessment reports that meet the solicitation criteria, or
Submitting a past performance narrative and list of customer references as outlined in the solicitation.

If the offeror uses the second option, GSA will contact each customer reference and request they complete a past performance questionnaire. A copy of the questionnaire can be downloaded here: GSA MAS Past Performance Questionnaire.

Source: https://interact.gsa.gov/document/open-ratings-retirement-and-past-performance-requirements-new-mas-offerors

October 8, 2019 By cs

R.I.P. PPIRS

First things first: sorry about the title of this article.

**How contractor past performance information used to flow from CPARS through PPIRS and into FAPIIS.**

The longer, alternate title would have been “Rest In Peace – the Past Performance Information Retrieval System Sleeps with the Fishes.” But that doesn’t have the same kind of obscure, punchy, epitaph-type quality that I’m aiming for. So instead, we give you get a garbled mess of an acronym to remind us that the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) – the system once used by the U.S. Government to house the final performance assessments for government contractors – is no more. As far as epitaphs go, most of us would agree that “R.I.P.” is just about what an acronym deserves.

There are various “past performance” reporting and accountability systems for contractors, including the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) (dating back to around 2007), PPIRS (first introduced around 2009), and the Federal Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) (finalized in early-2010). There is a neat little picture to help demonstrate how data flowed through the various governmental systems.

These systems continue to evolve, and PPIRS is officially no more – formally rolling into CPARS. And, in time, CPARS will be no more, eventually rolling into the multi-functional, highly integrated, federal System for Award Management (SAM), available at SAM.gov (and currently available in a semi-upgraded fashion at beta.SAM.gov).

Keep reading this article at: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/rip-ppirs

September 4, 2019 By cs

DHS wants AI to improve the contract performance assessment reporting system

The Homeland Security Department (DHS) wants proofs or viable prototypes that demonstrate how artificial intelligence can support contracting officers as they conduct past performance evaluations and make effective use of data from the Contract Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS), according to a solicitation on the FedBizOpps website.

Run through the department’s commercial solutions opening pilot program to competitively procure innovative items, the solicitation was originally posted in early August but amended this week to include the government’s answers to submitted questions.

“An AI solution for CPARS may significantly assist contracting officers conducting past performance evaluations by identifying relevant past performance assessment records in a more accurate, consistent, faster and useful manner, reducing the administrative workload on contracting officers while increasing the quality of the outcome,” the solicitation states.

When selecting services over the simplified acquisition threshold, contracting officers are required to consider vendors’ past performance. CPARS is the central system federal officials use to collect and share contractor and vendor past performance information. But according to the solicitation, anecdotal evidence indicates that contracting officers face challenges trying to use the data for past performance evaluations, due primarily to the “volume of records and the inability to rapidly identify relevant reviews.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/08/dhs-wants-ai-improve-contract-performance-assessment-reporting-system/159418/

Let’s start out with this basic truism: No one likes the current approach to rating contractor performance.

Years of criticism directed at federal agencies has created a culture of risk aversion. That’s something which Soraya Correa, Department of Homeland Security chief procurement officer, said needs to change.

The General Services Administration (GSA) no longer utilizes Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) reports to check the performance of companies wishing to sell to the federal government through the multiple award schedules (MAS) program.

First things first: sorry about the title of this article.

Search this Website