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January 13, 2014 By AMK

OFPP updates rules for how agencies should analyze ways to lower costs

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy is reinvigorating the concepts of share- in-savings and lowering life-cycle costs of programs by analyzing all facets of the approach.

OFPP released the first update to Circular A-131 in more than two decades in the Federal Register on Dec. 26, 2013.  The Office of Management and Budget first issued A-131 in 1988 and updated it in 1993, but since then has only offered memos encouraging its use.

A-131 promotes the use of value engineering (VE), which is an organized effort by an integrated product team to evaluate functions of systems, facilities, services and supplies with an eye toward lowering costs and maintaining performance, quality, safety and reliability.

“VE challenges agencies to continually think about their mission and functions — in the most basic terms — in order to determine if their requirements are properly defined and if they have considered the broadest possible range of alternatives to optimize value,” OFPP Administrator Joe Jordan wrote in the notice. “Most importantly, VE enables agencies to achieve greater fiscal responsibility and operate within tighter budgetary constraints. By identifying and eliminating unnecessary program and acquisition costs that do not contribute to the value, function and performance of the product or service, VE can permit programs to continue delivering the same, or an even higher, level of service for less money — a critical capability for managing in a fiscally austere environment.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/517/3534771/OFPP-updates-rules-for-how-agencies-should-analyze-ways-to-lower-costs 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: A-131, acquisition strategy, acquisition workforce, cost, cost analysis, DAU, FAI, Joe Jordan, life-cycle costs, OFPP, value, value engineering, VE

June 21, 2013 By AMK

Unraveling the facts about GWACs

Obama administration officials say there are too many IT procurement vehicles, and they want agencies to consolidate their buying around existing interagency contracts rather than launch new ones. There is even a strong case to cut back on current contracts, which officials say are often duplicative in what they provide for buyers.

Where does that leave governmentwide acquisition contracts (GWACs)?

In early 2012, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) issued rules requiring agencies that wanted to award their own multi-agency contracts (MACs) to submit a business case arguing why those contracts were necessary — something agencies that wanted to award GWACs have had to do for years.

“Agencies are required to balance the value of creating a new contract against the benefit of using an existing one, and whether the expected return on investment is worth the taxpayer resources,” said Dan Gordon, who was OFPP administrator at the time.

Following the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act that authorized their creation, GWACs became a poster child of sorts for that kind of contract inflation. Many agencies were looking to create their own contracts as testimony to their procurement mojo in an era of huge growth in government IT acquisition. For vendors, GWACs were seen as a hunting license to pursue lucrative government IT business.

Keep reading this article at: http://fcw.com/articles/2013/06/07/feature-gwac-facts.aspx

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Clinger-Cohen Act, contract vehicle, Daniel Gordon, DHS, GAO, GSA, GWAC, Interior Dept., IT, Joe Jordan, MAC, multiple award, NASA, NIH, OFPP, VA

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