Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

The devil’s in the details as GSA seeks to consolidate the Multiple Award Schedules

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The General Services Administration (GSA) will use the coming year to determine what its recently announced consolidated schedule will look like, according to the official leading the effort.

GSA announced in November the consolidation of 24 multiple award schedules into a single contract vehicle that federal agencies can use to purchase a range of more than 10 million products and services. Each year, agencies purchase about $30 billion worth of products — ranging from office supplies to various IT services — through GSA’s 24 schedules.

“Over this year, we’ll start the consolidation of the MAS program,” said Stephanie Shutt, director of the MAS Program Management Office, speaking at a recent GSA industry day.

Shutt said an integrated project team consisting of MAS members and officials from various acquisition centers and portfolios is doing much of the early work. This team will help make crucial decisions that could shape the single schedule.

For example, Shutt said they are reviewing all existing terms and conditions and determining where overlap exists among special item numbers, which generally categorize the kinds of good and services available. One goal, she said, would be to get rid of redundant or duplicitous conditions.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/12/devils-details-gsa-seeks-consolidate-multiple-award-schedules/153638/

Industry applauds acquisition consolidation, warns of work to be done

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Members of the private sector and industry-representing groups applauded the General Services Administration’s decision to consolidate the 24 multiple award schedules into a single acquisition vehicle, but cautioned that the agency would have to do much more than just consolidation to affect real change.

“Assuming all else stays the same, combining all of the [special item numbers] under one umbrella doesn’t necessarily alleviate the burden to negotiations and buyers,” said Julia Conti, contracts director at CGI Federal, at a Dec. 12 GSA industry day. “Making it easier is not necessarily keeping it on autopilot.”

According to Conti and other members of a panel at the event, the GSA is going to have to rework contracting language, examine a broader array of contracting vehicles and make efforts to reach out to both agencies and the workforce for the MAS consolidation to be truly effective.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2018/12/12/industry-applauds-acquisition-consolidation-warns-of-work-to-be-done/

GSA reopens Schedule 75, and introduces ‘enhanced’ office supplies SIN

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The General Services Administration (GSA) has reopened the new and improved Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) 75 to new offerors and also added what GSA is calling “a new enhanced” special item number (SIN).  The new SIN is known as Office Supplies Fourth Generation (OS4) for Office Products and Services to the Schedule.

“The new MAS 75 and enhanced SIN were designed to leverage the advantages of utilizing the increased competition from OS2 and ensuring the transparency set forth in OS3, to help GSA accomplish its goals and create value,” says GSA Administrator Emily Murphy. “Increased competition and transparency will help customers and GSA’s industry partners by improving task order-level competition for the federal acquisition community and removing barriers to entry to industry. Ultimately, this means better value and more favorable terms and conditions for customers and more opportunities for small businesses in the government marketplace.”

Run by GSA’s Northeast Caribbean Region, the new office supplies acquisition solution incorporates the Best-In-Class (BIC) features of the OS3 solutions to increase market share, reduce program redundancies, improve customer satisfaction, and increase federal acquisition opportunities for small businesses. Additionally, the combined legacy and enhanced SINs offer customers significant savings, while also meeting sustainable acquisition and socioeconomic goals.

The reopening of MAS 75 and establishment of the enhanced SIN OS4 will also help GSA meet GSA’s goals of refreshing and expanding a competitive pool of qualified vendors, improving customer value on MAS 75 by offering more favorable terms and conditions, savings, and increasing OCONUS (overseas) utilization.

For more information about the reopening of MAS 75 and the new enhanced SIN, visit www.gsa.gov/schedule75.

GSA to make veteran-owned small businesses more accessible on supply schedules

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The General Services Administration (GSA) has partnered with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to make it easier to for the agencies to find veteran-owned vendors on acquisition supply schedules.

The pair signed a memorandum of understanding July 10 to provide verified service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses and veteran-owned small businesses listed in VA’s verified vendor database more clear designations on GSA’s VA Advantage list.

VA Advantage catalogs GSA-approved veteran contractors offering services on the agency’s supply schedules. The new MOU will provide VOSBs with a special icon to designate their verified status on VA Advantage.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fedscoop.com/gsa-make-veteran-owned-small-businesses-accessible-supply-schedules/

Are contractors worrying too much over GSA’s data rule?

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Many government contractors are worried, fearful and in disbelief about the General Services Administration’s implementation of its Transactional Data Rule.

There are calls for delays in implementation and more training for contracting officers and contracting specialists. There are worries that contracting officers will continue to ask for the dreaded, outdated, lawsuit inducing data that the TDR is supposed to replace — commercial sales practices (CSPs) and the price reduction clause disclosures.

And maybe most of all, industry is concerned about the cost to collect and transmit the data back to GSA.

Despite all of these fears, we know very little about the impact, cost or problems with GSA collecting transactional data, which it says is information generated when the government purchases goods or services from a vendor. The rule requires vendors to report specific details such as descriptions, part numbers, quantities and prices paid for the items purchased.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2017/02/contractors-worrying-much-gsas-data-rule/

GSA seeks input from Schedule-holders on contract modification process

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GSA logoThe U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is asking for feedback from GSA Schedule contractors on the contract modification process.

GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) will use the industry input it receives to improve the GSA Multiple Award Schedules’ (MAS) modification process.

GSA explained that its industry outreach is part of its recently-launched Making it Easier Initiative which includes “improving the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) modification process in order to make it easier for you, our MAS industry partners, to do business with the government.  We’ve heard your concerns, and want to make sure that your feedback on how to enhance the process is captured and taken into account.”

GSA Schedule contractors can provide comments by responding to the survey questionnaire at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1i0RX9FmMz56I1OY73k5VaxONDX7yiqQVHlVKlPV1kGw/viewform.

GSA’s contracts revamp could help small IT companies

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GSA Schedule ContractThe General Services Administration is currently transforming its Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) contracts, which should make it easier for smaller, more innovative companies to do business with the government, the official leading the effort said Thursday.

The transformation of GSA schedules — long-term governmentwide contracts that provide more than 25 million products and services to agencies with shorter procurements and lower administrative costs — will streamline the process for vendors of all types and sizes in doing business on one of GSA’s schedules. But specifically, said Judith Zawatsky, GSA’s program manager for the MAS transformation, it will make it easier for “new suppliers and potential suppliers to do business with the federal government.”

“We need to find a way to bring innovation from industry into the government,” Zawatsky said at a GSA industry day. “This is really, really important … And we need as a Schedules program not just to sort of be the charter, stalwart program of the federal government, but we also need take part and to facilitate bringing innovation into government.”

Keep reading this article at: http://fedscoop.com/how-gsas-contracts-revamp-could-help-small-it-companies

GSA continues efforts to consolidate Professional Services contracts

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The General Services Administration (GSA) recently announced its intention to further promote the consolidation of professional services contracts by encouraging agencies to transition from expiring, one-off contracts to multiple-award contracting vehicles.

GSA Schedule ContractThe announcement comes on the heels of GSA’s October 1, 2015 announcement that it would be consolidating eight separate schedules into a new Professional Services Schedule (PSS) that will allow federal government agencies to use one contracting vehicle to fulfill a host of professional services requirements.

With many professional services contracts set to expire in Fiscal Year 2016, GSA is actively encouraging agencies to re-compete the contracts using existing agency indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contracts (IDIQ), GSA schedule contracts, such as the PSS, or GSA’s OASIS contracting vehicle, an IDIQ contract meant for professional services.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=441736

For more information on the PSS, read the blog post at: http://govcon.mofo.com/schedule-contracting/gsa-launches-new-professional-services-schedule/.

As GSA’s FAS struggles to reinvent itself, contractors suffer

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The last year has been a tough one for the General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) program.  The Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) – the GSA agency charged with administering the MAS program – has struggled to re-invent itself and its contracting vehicles in order to ensure they both stay relevant in an increasingly competitive federal marketplace.  The byproduct of this struggle has been mostly negative for Schedule vendors.

GSA Schedule ContractIn an effort to demonstrate the value its contracts bring to federal customers, FAS has pursued an unrelenting crusade aimed at reducing prices at all costs.  It is no longer enough for a vendor to give the Government a great deal vis-à-vis its commercial customers (a determination historically made through a “vertical pricing” analysis).  Now vendors also must charge less than their competitors – a determination made through a “horizontal pricing” analysis.  While FAS contracting officers are supposed to consider factors that may explain a price differential as part of their price evaluation, in practice, COs pay little heed to such “trifles.”  The concept of value rarely enters into the equation any more.

Time and again, vendors are told to lower prices or remove products from their Schedule because another vendor offers the same product at a lower price.  So what that the other vendor offers no customer service, no phone support, no warranty, and is run by two guys out of a garage in Glenwood.  Price is king, and that’s all FAS seems to care about nowadays.  (We mean no disrespect to the good people of Glenwood by the way.  We just couldn’t resist the alliteration.)

Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=417332

GSA moves forward with overhaul of Multiple Award Schedules

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The General Services Administration is moving forward with its plan to overhaul the Multiple Award Schedules, putting into action recommendations from the agency’s 2010 Multiple Award Schedules Advisory Panel, says an April 13 blog post by GSA Senior Procurement Executive Jeffrey Koses.

“The $33 billion program now demands transformation in order to maintain its status as a best acquisition solution in a fast-changing marketplace,” Koses says.

The transformation will include reducing price variability, minimizing burdensome regulations and processes and introducing additional flexibilities, the GSA blog post says.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/gsa-moves-forward-overhaul-multiple-award-schedules/2015-04-13

Read GSA’s complete blog post at: http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/gsablog/2015/04/13/gsa-seeks-to-transform-the-multiple-awards-schedule-program-to-deliver-better-value/

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