GSA | The Contracting Education Academy

March 8, 2019 By cs

GSA details ‘rapid changes’ underway for acquisition

Officials from the General Services Administration’s procurement arm recently outlined plans to streamline the agency’s internal operations, including better use of data, boosting systems efficiencies and process reforms.

Crystal Philcox, assistant commissioner of enterprise strategy management for the Federal Acquisition Service, said at an ACT-IAC session that GSA continues to implement its “Federal Marketplace” strategy, a broad agency-wide plan to make acquisition more efficient and user-friendly for stakeholders.

“This strategy is really focused on experience,” she said. “I am pulling in as many things as I can find at GSA that have to do with improving the experience of interacting with the agency, for both buyers and suppliers.”

The strategy includes ongoing projects like GSA’s schedules consolidation and its e-commerce portals, but will also delve into other arenas like overhauling its contract-writing systems and crafting product offerings catalogs for customers.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fedscoop.com/fas-officials-detail-rapid-changes-underway-service/

March 7, 2019 By cs

What you don’t know about the Pentagon’s DEOS contract

While the Pentagon’s high-profile Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) procurement is stalled over legal action, contracting officials are close to bidding out its other multibillion cloud procurement, the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions contract.

Officials are currently reviewing feedback from industry through a draft solicitation for DEOS the General Services Administration and Defense Department released last month.

Depending upon responses, GSA — which, in a change announced last fall, is running the procurement — will soon issue a second draft solicitation or simply bid DEOS out.

Yet, DEOS is only the first phase of the Defense Department’s three-phase Enterprise Collaboration and Productivity Services, or ECAPS.

According to the draft solicitation, the DEOS portion of ECAPS, referred to as “capability set 1,” will cover an enterprise productivity suite, messaging, content management and collaboration services. A GSA spokesperson clarified to Nextgov that capability sets 2 and 3 will be met through “future acquisitions,” meaning they will not be bid out under DEOS.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2019/02/what-you-dont-know-about-pentagons-deos-contract/155155/

March 5, 2019 By cs

Should ICE use GSA Schedules for agile development — or go its own way?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say the agency has been doing well adopting agile development practices and wants to keep that going once its current suite of contracts expire.

The big question: Should ICE follow Homeland Security Department headquarters in looking to pre-established contracts through the General Services Administration or build its own vehicle?

ICE has been contracting for its agile development needs with vendors off of Homeland Security’s Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading-Edge Solutions, or EAGLE II. When that vehicle expires in 2020, ICE will need a new pool of vendors.

In December, DHS Chief Procurement Officer Soraya Correa announced the third iteration of EAGLE, dubbed EAGLE Next Gen, will be more of a strategy than a contract. Correa told Homeland Security components once EAGLE II expires, the agency will push offices toward using six governmentwide acquisition contracts, or GWACS: GSA’s Alliant 2 and Alliant 2 Small Business, 8(a) STARS II and VETS 2, and the National Institutes of Health’s CIO-SP3 and CIO-SP3 Small Business.

However, Correa also left additional options open, including specific contracts for unique mission areas.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/02/should-ice-use-gsa-schedules-agile-development-or-go-its-own-way/155145/

March 4, 2019 By cs

IBM to support operation, migration on 2 GSA contract data systems

IBM will operate and maintain two online contracting data repositories under the purview of the General Services Administration (GSA) as part of a $24.5M contract from the agency.

GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service said in a FedBizOpps notice posted last Wednesday that IBM will help manage the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) and the System for Award Management (SAM) as well as migrate data and functionality to an updated version of the SAM system.

Source: https://www.govconwire.com/2019/02/ibm-to-support-operation-migration-on-two-gsa-contracting-data-systems/

March 2, 2019 By cs

There’s hope that FARSite’s useful features will be incorporated into Acquisition.gov

We expressed concerns last week that the features and functionality of Hill Air Force Base’s search engine for the Federal Acquisition Regulation and agency FAR supplements — the FARSite — might not be transferred to Acquisition.gov.

Now, there is at least one indication that the FARSite’s capabilities will be incorporated into Acquisition.gov.

**These two FAR search engines are scheduled for merger on October 1, 2019.**

As announced last week, the popular and functional FARSite search engine is going to be “transitioned” on Oct. 1, 2019 into the FAR search site maintained by the General Services Administration (GSA) at Acquisition.gov.

However, in the initial announcement of this change, there was no word about whether the FARSite’s capability to simultaneously search both the FAR and individual agency FAR supplements would be part of the transition. This feature is especially useful when researching the application of a specific FAR provision or clause in a particular agency’s solicitation or contract. Also unclear was whether Class Deviations to the FAR, currently shown in context with FAR provisions and clauses on the FARSite, would be integrated into Acquisition.gov.

Now, it appears that both of these helpful features will be part of the “new” Acquisition.gov when it debuts on Oct. 1st.

Last last week, the FARSite posted this message on its home page:

“We will continue making updates to FARSite until the new capability is ready for full deployment at which time you’ll be able to access the new system by going to Acquisition.gov. More exact dates and information will be provided once the prototype is nearing completion. During prototype testing the AF will have full transparency into ensuring the new site provides the existing capabilities as the current FARSite.”

The last sentence of the statement implies that the popular features and functions of the FARSite will be integrated into Acquisition.gov. At present, Acquisition.gov offers neither the ability to search the FAR and FAR supplements simultaneously nor the ability to identify Class Deviations as a part of FAR searches.

Incidentally, while Acquisition.gov was initially silent about the merger with the FARSite, GSA posted this announcement on Friday:

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), Air Force (USAF), and Defense Acquisition University (DAU) are partnering to reduce duplication and make it easier to electronically access acquisition regulations. The USAF website for supplemental regulations, FARSite.hill.af.mil, will be transitioned to GSA’s acquisition.gov by September 30, 2019. Acquisition professionals and vendors will then have a single website to access and search the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and supplemental regulations. For additional questions, please contact the website administrator.

While GSA’s announcement offers no specific assurances that FARSite’s unique functionality will be a part of the transition, we’re counting on the FARSite’s assurances that “… the new site [will provide] the existing capabilities as the current FARSite.” After all, the latest usage statistics available show that while all military branches make up the majority of the users of the FARSite, visitors from GSA itself and Lockheed Martin are among the top 25 user groups. There’s no questioning the FARSite’s popularity; since its inception in mid-1996, it has been accessed 2.3 billion times.

Bottom line: There are a lot of people depending on the Air Force and the GSA to get this merger right.

See our initial story on this subject here.