E-Commerce portal worries

      The General Services Administration last week released its Phase II plan to implement an e-commerce portal for federal agencies to purchase commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) items.

      It is likely to meet with concerns from small business advocates, who have pointed out the probable negative impacts of setting up an online portal that potentially competes with GSA Schedules and other types of existing contracts.

      GSA is proposing that only one e-commerce solution will be tested in the initial proof of concept, and that purchases will be limited to those beneath the micropurchase threshold of $10,000.

      However, the GSA also is asking Congress to raise the micropurchase threshold to $25,000.

      The plan implements Sect. 846 of the national defense authorization for fiscal 2018, which addressed the complaint that agencies find it burdensome to buy COTS items.

      GSA intends to release a solicitation by June 30 for a portal provider and to have the proof of concept running by Dec. 31.

      Small business advocates have raised objections to the e-commerce plans, mainly that they likely will compete directly with small vendors holding GSA Schedules contracts and other contracts. Small business contracts account for about 35% of the schedules spending.

      Roger Waldron, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, recently wrote to GSA saying the portal likely would create a “parallel procurement universe.”

      Currently, vendors of commercial items to the government must comply with numerous requirements, including the Trade Agreements Act. In the e-portal, vendors would sell items from China and other countries that are not compliant with the trade act, Waldron wrote.

      “This new, seemingly non-compliant procurement universe would establish a channel to the government market that competes directly with existing programs, such as the GSA Schedules, without accepting standard compliance and other government-unique requirements that exist for those programs,” Waldron wrote in the letter to GSA.

More information:
GSA plan: https://bit.ly/2vG76Qq
Waldron letter: https://bit.ly/300e2pt

(URLs in Set-Aside Alert have been shortened by the bit.ly URL shortener)

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