Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform Tom
Davis, R-Va., has introduced legislation to reform federal
procurement practices, according to a committee statement.
The Acquisition System Improvement Act includes provisions
not included in last year’s Services Acquisition Reform Act
signed into law with the Defense Department authorization bill.
“My goal is to have the government approach the best
practices of industry, particularly in the acquisition of
cutting-edge information technology and management services.
SARA moved us far in that direction, and ASIA will add to
those improvements we’ve already put in place,” said Davis
The ASIA proposal seeks to establish an acquisition
professional exchange program to allow federal and private
sector professionals to gain valuable acquisition
experience — much like the IT professional exchange program
announced by the Office of Personnel Management in January.
The act seeks to expand share-in-savings initiatives to
areas beyond IT. “Share-in-savings contracts encourage
industry to share creative technology and managerial
solutions so that agencies can lower costs and improve
service delivery without large up-front investments,”
said the statement.
The legislation would also require that telecom purchases
include multiple entry points to a building so that the
system will still function if a single conduit or
transceiver goes down, and that local networks be
physically diverse so that the failure of a switch or
router does not disrupt communications.
Agency-level acquisition protests would be permitted
under the legislation, which would provide a stay of the
award during the 20 working day period an agency has to
decide a protest. The act would also consolidate various
agency boards of contract appeals into two boards, one
at the Department of Defense, and one at the General
Services Administration for civilian contracts.
