|
Federal Market Intelligence for Small Business |
|
|
|
|
Agency procurement forecasts for FY20: good info, hard to findMany agency FY20 forecasts have broken or incomplete Web links from Acquisition.gov; not all are user friendlyWith the fiscal 2020 budget finally approved by Congress in December, many federal agencies released their fiscal 2020 procurement forecasts online around the same time. As of late January, 19 civilian agencies and 14 defense agencies had posted their fiscal 2020 acquisition predictions online. Many have good information. However, many are difficult to find and when found, not always easy to utilize. Acquisition.gov The agencies recently published ostensible Web links to their 2020 forecasts on the Acquisition.gov website, which is a central repository of Web links to the annual forecasts. However, for fiscal 2020, many of those links did not lead directly to the forecasts. Many of those forecasts required additional research to locate, and some were not available at all. See Set-Aside Alert’s FY2020 Procurement Only three of 22 Defense Dept. agencies had Web links on Acquisition.gov that led directly to their forecasts. The civilian agencies performed better, with 11 of the 21 agencies posting Web links on Acquisition.gov that led directly to their 2020 forecasts. With additional research, Set-Aside Alert located many of the hard-to-find forecasts and is publishing the links in this issue (see the list to your right). Planning tools The annual procurement forecasts have been a resource for federal contractors for many years. The documents showcase new and renewing opportunities. Offered primarily in digital formats, the projections for the year ahead offer a wealth of information and allow contractors to get a jump start on developing opportunities. Multiple formats and timetables But the forecasts are not always user friendly. The annual forecasts are published online with different titles, multiple document formats and at multiple online locations. They also are released at different times of the year, with some covering multiple years, and some a single year. Some of the formats are static, while others are interactive. Some agencies publish the annual predictions as Adobe Portable Document Files (pdfs), others utilize Microsoft Excel, and several agencies offer their own online searchable tools to view future opportunities. The search tools vary in their ease of use. Defense agencies Agencies within DOD prepare Long-Range Acquisition Forecasts, some of which are for multiple years. For example, the Army Corps of Engineers Military Construction procurement forecast was released in July of 2018 to cover two years. Some DOD agencies’ fiscal 2020 forecasts were not available online as of last week, but some of their forecasts from 2019 include some fiscal 2020 information. Agency tools Meanwhile, on the civilian side, several agencies are offering interactive search tools for their forecasts so that users can hone in on specific types of upcoming procurements. The General Services Administration, Interior Dept. and Labor Dept. are all using the GSA Forecast of Contracting Opportunities Tool on the Acquisitions Gateway website. It offers users the ability to search multiple forecasts by agency, place of performance, NAICS code, fiscal quarter of expected award, type of contract and type of set-aside. Search tools are also offered by the Homeland Security, Commerce, Transportation and Veterans Affairs Departments as well as the Defense Logistics Agency. Each has its own format. More information: Forecasts website: https://www.acquisition.gov/procurement-forecasts
|
Washington Insider:
|
Copyright © 2020 Business Research Services Inc. All rights reserved.