The General Services Administration (GSA) has proposed revisions to the Federal Acquisition Regulation on use of reverse auctions by federal agencies, saying that while they have been in common practice for more than 20 years, their use has been inconsistent.
In reverse auctions, multiple vendors compete with one another to win a contract by lowering the offered price.
They generally are used for acquiring commercial products and most often result in the award of a fixed price contract valued less than $150,000 to a small business, a Federal Register notice says.
The notice says GAO reports in 2013 and 2018 found that:
“Confusion exists concerning a lack of documentation about reverse auction service provider fees and their application to federal contracts;
“There is a lack of sufficient data available for agencies to verify actual cost savings resulting from a reverse auction; and
“The potential benefits of reverse auctions are not being maximized, as many reverse auctions are resulting in the receipt of only one offer or a lack of interactive competition amongst offerors.”
Keep reading this article at: https://www.fedweek.com/federal-managers-daily-report/gsa-proposes-to-standardize-policies-on-reverse-auctions/
Don’t think about a contract that failed or even an act of Congress ending a specific program, but focus on a service offering that just couldn’t make it.
The first real demonstration of that concept happened earlier this month when the General Services Administration (GSA) conducted a reverse auction to set up three blanket purchase agreements for five agencies to potentially buy more than 45,000 laptops and desktops. The customers for this fourth quarter buying event were GSA’s Chief Information Office, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Defense Health Agency, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Defense Logistics Agency.
