The Services Acquisition Reform Act Advisory Committee has released a draft report containing findings and recommendations to increase competition in federal contracting.
Federal procurement has increased by 75 percent since fiscal 2000 and services make up an increasingly large share — 60 percent today — but the federal acquisition workforce has declined by nearly 50 percent since personnel reductions in the mid-1990s, it said.
There is also a shortage of procurement professionals with between five and 15 years of experience that will become more pronounced as half of the professionals become eligible for retirement over the next four years, said the report, which echoes other calls for broad procurement reforms.
The Project on Government Oversight, which has followed the development of the report, urged Congress to pass legislation incorporating a number of the recommendations, calling the recommendations “a softball that Congress should hit out of the park.” The recommendations include:
Congress should redefine “commercial” services to include only those services that are actually sold in substantial quantities in the commercial marketplace;
Contractors should receive an agency’s annual ethics training;
Federal contract reporting systems should be improved to ensure that complete, accurate, and timely information is available to the public — and agencies should improve transparency and openness of all no-bid task and delivery orders;
Agencies should develop a system to un-bundle contracts and mitigate the effects of contract bundling; and
Contractors should be permitted to file bid protests of task and delivery orders over $5 million under multiple award contracts.
The latter recommendation has reportedly led to criticism from industry groups that say the recommendations will unnecessarily complicate an already cumbersome procurement process.
The report is available here:
http://www.acquisition.gov/comp/aap/index.html
