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The proposed rule could indicate that small companies would need to have one worker spend three months a year just entering data. Remember, this is data the government currently has but does not collect centrally. While I am all in favor of developing jobs, I do not believe requiring small businesses to hire staff members to offer information a second time is a worthwhile usage of their dollars or tax dollars, since someone has actually got to spend for this.
Data is not totally free. Companies will choose it is much better to offer separately of GSA, which will improve the government's cost to buy, or the small companies will drop out of the federal market altogether, decreasing competitors. In reality, we have actually already lost over 100 little contractors in the previous two years.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about the impacts of GSA's proposed rule and any option they would recommend to enhance how the federal government purchases whatever it buys. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good early morning.
The GSA schedules have a number of benefits for both suppliers and buying firms. Most notably, it creates an easier system that allows contracting officers direct access to the services and products of numerous companies without the requirement of issuing numerous solicitations for every requirement. For little organizations with minimal resources, relative inexperience navigating the procurement procedure, landing on a GSA schedule can be an essential very first step towards protecting the federal government as a client.
The guideline requires that firms that hold schedule contracts while other government-wide acquisition agreements report transactional information through an electronic system. While it appears that much of this information is already available to the GSA, the brand-new guideline increases the frequency of reporting and expands what details companies are needed to offer. GSA SER Software.
With that, I thank the witnesses for testifying today, and I yield back. Chairman HANNA. Thank you.
What the rule requires is regular monthly reports from a range of GSA specialists. This includes both the schedule contractors, in addition to those who hold IDIQ, indefinite shipment, indefinite quantity contractors, and what we call GWACs, Government-wide Acquisition Contracts, to prepare these monthly reports of all federal sales made throughout the prior month.
For those specialists who take part in the pilot program, they will be alleviated from a concern, what we call the price decreases provision, which is another compliance provision that is in GSA agreements. In the general public meeting that GSA hung on April 17th, I went to essentially. My understanding of that meeting is that everybody in the space had issues about the guideline, including GSA's own inspector general.
There is a records that is expected to be published of that hearing, but I have actually not yet seen that transcript. The proposed guideline raises a variety of issues. There are four which I would like to deal with briefly today. The first, which I make sure you will speak with all our panel members about, is the expense of application and compliance.
I would suggest that for some specialists, it will take 6 hours for them to determine which of their IT systems hold the various information elements that GSA has actually required for this guideline. That does not enable at any time for establishing a report, guaranteeing that the report is precise, and training its personnel on how they will send that report on a month-to-month basis.
This could not possibly enable whenever for the professionals to in fact review the reports to guarantee that the information is correct. There is nothing in the proposed guideline that recommends what would happen if the specialists submit inaccurate data or if they simply eliminate data since it is obviously inaccurate.
The second problematic location is the possible growth of what we call business sales practice requirements. GSA specialists are needed to submit commercial sales practices prior to agreement award and during contract efficiency when particular things occur, like if they go to add products to a contractor's increased prices. The proposed guideline enables GSA to ask for CSPs at any time (GSA Search Engine Ranker Software).
This needs professionals to go into their data systems and take a look at actual discount rates on deals. I indicate, we see press release after news release from the Department of Justice specifying that specialists have fraudulently offered this details when in truth they simply have actually not examined. This is a huge issue.
We understand it is going to cost a lot to collect the information, but what is unclear is what benefit GSA is going to receive from the info. And after that lastly, is the personal and proprietary nature of the details. Transactional data rates has actually constantly been protected by the courts under FOIA, and GSA does not appear to value based on comments made at the conference that this holds true.
GSA recognizes the extra reporting requirement will undoubtedly have a cost for affected companies. SBA's Office of Advocacy and GSA's own inspector general kept in mind that estimates in the proposed rule appear considerably understated.
Or as I frequently hear from company owners, am I going to need to employ someone for this? While GSA contents its reporting option will be user- friendly, our experience is that government information systems are anything.
Typically, however, little businesses offer tailored and innovative options that in combination with competitive rates produce best worth in procurement rather of least expensive price. While GSA suggests that rates will only be one consider identifying finest value, it provides significant weight. The words "cost" or "prices" appear 165 times in the policy, while "finest worth" only appears seven.
This resembles asking merchants selling on Amazon to report to Amazon what it sold on Amazon. This seems to be an inefficient way to gather information. And speaking to the motorist behind this regulation, we continue to be concerned about a vision of government procurement that seeks to classify personalized services into narrow classifications (GSA SER Services).
I am delighted to answer any questions. Chairman HANNA. Thank you, Mr. Stanford. Next, we have Mr. Roger Waldron, who is president of the Union of Federal Government Procurement. Think it or not, we have time. We can break now however I think we do have time to survive. As you can see, there are 400 people who have actually not shown up yet.
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