The administration intends to launch several more initiatives in its category management purchasing program, focusing on IT purchases, and expects to have ten “Category Centers of Excellence” operational early in 2016.
In a joint OMB-GSA blog post, officials also said more is to come regarding GSA’s Acquisition Gateway, an online tool for the federal contracting workforce that contains key acquisition information and tools by category. Also coming is a digest of best practices in the form of a football-style playbook.
The category management initiative, launched a year ago, seeks to better leverage the government’s buying power, make purchasing practices more consistent among agencies, better share information, reduce the number of contracts issued, increase the share of spending under government-wide management and reduce duplication.
The posting highlighted services available through the Acquisition Gateway including information for contracting officers on terms and conditions of contracts, the fee, agencies designated to use the contract, and a link to the agency ordering sites. GSA also recently reduced eight schedules to one, and the blanket purchase agreement for identity monitoring, data breach response and protection services will give agencies access to a number of well-qualified contractors capable of providing credit monitoring services in response to the recent data breaches, it said.
