This column was first published on Roger Waldron’s weblog at The Coalition for Government Procurement and changed to be republished here with permission from the writer. The circulate to e-trade solutions predicted using segment 846 of the fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) represents the most significant technological procurement coverage change. As we technique the deadline for the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Phase II document, this week’s blog examines the organization’s distinct possibility of leveraging e-commerce to grow first-class price deliverables, fostering monetary increase, and making more significant federal customers enter commercial solutions.
In the latest boards, GSA has indicated that the precept value of of a couple of award schedules (MAS) applications provides federal clients with equipped access to compliant merchandise at “competitive” fees. Indeed, numerous current research confirmed the program’s effectiveness through comparisons with opportunity industrial platforms. These researchers noted that GSA gives notably decreased pricing and quicker, less expensive delivery for its clients than the commercial alternatives they are in comparison. Notwithstanding the numerous tested blessings of the MAS program, the program’s e-trade platform, GSA Advantage! No l,onger enjoys favorable critiques for its user interface.
Consequently, this system appears to be hindering GSA from maximizing the capacity of the MAS application. By investing in sources and leveraging business abilities to improve the usability of GSA Advantage!, GSA may want to create a considerable opportunity for financial growth and increase admission to quality-cost solutions for federal customers. Another extensive option for GSA to leverage e-trade could be to enlarge the scope of its Section 846 pilot application. As you don’t forget, in its Phase I file, GSA identified three ability sorts of e-commerce portal fashions:
In its recent request for information (RFI), GSA restrained its proposed pilot from besting this portal provider model, the so-called “e-market version.” According to GSA, the e-market model may offer the portal company’s proprietary merchandise and products from 1/3-birthday celebration companies, or in some cases, most effectively, the latter. By artificially and unilaterally narrowing the focal point of the Section 846 pilot, this approach has generated concerns concerning its consistency with statutory requirements and its effect on competition within the federal marketplace. Moreover, by not exploring all commercial e-trade solutions, GSA risks proscribing possibilities for systems that don’t fall in the e-market model.
Specifically, under Section 846, GSA is answerable for establishing the protocols and policies governing the usage of business e-trade platforms. By narrowing its recognition to the best model within the business marketplace, GSA’s technique raises significant questions on whether the enterprise can appropriately set up protocols and rules that would accommodate the particular aspects of the industrial e-commerce systems that aren’t blanketed within the e-market model.
GSA may want to create similar possibilities by using the phrases and situations of the Section 846 pilot’s contracts to address capacity inconsistencies between industrial systems and federal regulation and policy. For instance, Section 846 and Section 838 of the fiscal 2019 NDAA offer specific protections related to the use of facts, consisting of an unequivocal prohibition on portal carriers the service of provider transaction information for their aggressive purposes. These protections are essential for suppliers as these statistics may want to yield a vast gain for any portal provider that still gives its merchandise inside its portal.
In addition, as stated in a previous blog, GSA has to recognize and address the effect that expenses, commissions, or other marketplace-affecting phrases and situations have on the over-arching first-rate interests of the authorities. Not only do these fees risk bad fee impacts, but additionally, they could discourage competition, small business participation, and authorities’ access to modern solutions. Moreover, capacity inconsistencies among the terms and conditions of portal providers and federal regulation and policy — including Most Favored Nation (MFN) pricing provisions — danger proscribing possibilities by reducing competition, growing costs, and discouraging participation inside the federal marketplace for small, medium, and large businesses.
Thus, it would be an unfortunate twist if what commenced as an effort to grow the government’s right of entry to innovation led to a decrease in such access. Precise, as we method the discharge of the Phase II file, GSA’s community of industry companions may be eagerly looking to see if the company, in reality, will leverage e-commerce to maximize possibilities for the financial boom, best-fee deliverables, and patron get admission to e-GSA commercial answers. Roger Waldron is the president of the Coalition for Government Procurement and host of Off the Shelf on Federal News Network.
