GSA | The Contracting Education Academy

March 25, 2020 By cs

GSA reports coronavirus-related fraud and price gouging

The General Services Administration (GSA) says it has received reports of companies fraudulently claiming to be GSA vendors attempting to exploit legitimate COVID-19 concerns to mislead Federal consumers into paying exorbitant prices for products associated with COVID-19.

If a supplier claims to be a GSA vendor, GSA advises buyers to verify their status by checking prices and details on GSA Advantage or validate the contract number and supplier details on GSA eLibrary vendor database.

In a bulletin posted on March 19, 2020, GSA advises: “Even if information seems credible, take a moment to verify.”

In addition to worries about possible scams, there are product availability issues. Evidence of this is the recent message posted on the GSA Advantage website: “Due to current heightened demand for products which could be associated with COVID-19, please contact the vendor(s) prior to placing your order to confirm availability.”

Questions or reports of suspect fraudulent activity or price gouging with companies claiming to be GSA vendors, can be directed to GSA’s National Customer Service Center at (800) 488-3111 or via email to NCSCcustomer.service@gsa.gov.

March 24, 2020 By cs

GSA’s e-commerce initiative strained by new protests, questions over supply chain risks

There was a flurry of lawmakers seemingly troubled, disappointed and disturbed about the lack of governmentwide progress to move to the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract.

While the reality is most of the lawmakers probably had never heard of EIS until their staff explained to them 10 minutes before the hearing started that it’s a way for agencies to modernize their voice, video and data services, the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations created at least an newsworthy façade last week.

The hearing also ferreted out a host of other valuable news nuggets about several of the General Services Administration’s technology services.

As one never to let a good almost 90-minute hearing go to waste, the subcommittee pressed GSA on the status and future of its e-commerce platform initiative.

About an hour into the hearing, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., ranking member of the subcommittee and the incoming chief of staff for President Donald Trump, asked what seemed like a simple question about GSA’s e-commerce platform initiative.

“Are you going to have the two awardees by the end of the month?” Meadows asked.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2020/03/gsas-e-commerce-initiative-strained-by-new-protests-questions-over-supply-chain-risks/

March 18, 2020 By cs

Acquisition contracts key to agencies opening telework options in face of coronavirus

There’s good news and bad news for agencies looking to ramp up telework in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal contracting experts.

According to the CDC, a novel coronavirus was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China in 2019. It is formally named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The good news is federal acquisition contracts are set up for quick acquisition of essential telework equipment, such as laptops or tablets, said acquisition experts FCW spoke with.

The bad news could be that online scammers are watching the expanding tele-workforce with great interest.

The emphasis on agency telework is growing, and although most agency employees are already assigned computers, there may be some hardware gaps to fill as workforces move to remote locations.

Federal governmentwide acquisition contracts, such as NASA’s Services for Enterprise-Wide Procurement, the General Services Administration’s ordering schedule and the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) are set up to help quickly fill laptops, tablets and other IT commodity orders, they said.

Keep reading this article at: https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2020/03/11/coronavirus-telework-procurement-hardware.aspx

The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech has established a webpage where all contract-related developments related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are summarized. Find the page at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/coronavirus-information-for-contracting-officers-and-contractors/

March 13, 2020 By cs

Risk is high that GSA’s latest telecom contract suffers same fate as last two

The General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program is facing the same fate as its predecessor — delays in transition will cost the government millions of dollars and push IT modernization further back on the priority list.

The difference between the failure of Networx and the potential problems EIS is facing, however, is the recognition by some lawmakers that it’s not entirely GSA’s fault.

The House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations wants to hold agency chief information officers and other leadership accountable for not moving fast enough to take advantage of the new contract.

“We learned a tremendous amount of lessons and, in fact, I credit GSA for incorporating those lessons learned from the Networx transition into their guidance and disseminating those lessons to the agencies,” said Carol Harris, director of IT acquisition management issues at the Government Accountability Office, during a subcommittee hearing on March 4. “Now the onus is on the agencies to get their house in order and move quickly to ensure that they are moving onto EIS as quickly as possible.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/hearings-oversight/2020/03/risk-is-high-that-gsas-latest-telecom-contract-suffers-same-fate-as-last-two/

March 2, 2020 By cs

Change is hard vs. real problems: The tale of the beta.sam.gov portal

In the three months since the General Services Administration transitioned to the beta.sam.gov portal for contract opportunities from the decades-old FedBizOpps.gov site, the raw numbers show concerns over the site have settled down.

The site has seen almost 900,000 visitors and 120,000 registered users since November. The number of calls to GSA’s help desk is at or below the levels that came in during the pre-transition time.

“We don’t get any more help desk calls or asks for intervention than we did with the legacy FBO. And the calls we do get are generally around two things: how to log in and do multi-factor authentication and the second is how to use the new search features because they look very different than the legacy site,” said Judith Zawatsky, assistant commissioner in the Office of Systems Management in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, in an interview with Federal News Network.

But if you dig deeper, particularly the folks who understand the inner workings of the new site, frustration and disappointment over the transition and functionality of beta.sam.gov continue.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2020/02/change-is-hard-vs-real-problems-the-tale-of-the-beta-sam-gov-portal/

The General Services Administration (GSA) says it has received reports of companies fraudulently claiming to be GSA vendors attempting to exploit legitimate COVID-19 concerns to mislead Federal consumers into paying exorbitant prices for products associated with COVID-19.

There was a flurry of lawmakers seemingly troubled, disappointed and disturbed about the lack of governmentwide progress to move to the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract.

There’s good news and bad news for agencies looking to ramp up telework in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal contracting experts.

The General Services Administration’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program is facing the same fate as its predecessor — delays in transition will cost the government millions of dollars and push IT modernization further back on the priority list.

In the three months since the General Services Administration transitioned to the beta.sam.gov portal for contract opportunities from the decades-old FedBizOpps.gov site, the raw numbers show concerns over the site have settled down.

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