Vendors opposing the GSA’s new prices-paid reporting requirements

Small biz survey says setup takes 232 hours; also 38 hrs/month

Federal contractors and two inspectors general are pushing back against the General Services Administration’s recent proposed rule to require GSA Schedule vendors to report transactional data and to partially eliminate the Price Reduction Clause in schedule contracts.

The GSA released the proposed rule on March 4 requiring Federal Supply Schedule holders and other governmentwide contract holders to report 11 transactional data elements from orders and prices paid by ordering activity.

The Coalition for Government Procurement on May 4 submitted comments opposing the GSA’s plan, saying it would impose significant reporting burdens on contractors. The group published its comments on its website.

The coalition surveyed its members, of whom 98% hold GSA schedule contracts. A quarter of respondents were small businesses.

The small businesses surveyed estimated it would take 232 hours to set up for compliance with the rule and 38 hours a month for the reporting. That is 30 times more hours than the GSA’s initial estimate of six hours for setup and 31 minutes a month.

Large businesses surveyed said the rule would take 1,200 hours of setup and 68 hours a month.

The coalition estimated the first-year cost of implementation would be $814 million vs. the government’s estimate of $24 million. The group advised GSA to conduct a pilot test to do a cost-benefit analysis on the new requirements.

The Council of Defense and Space Industry Associations, which also submitted comments, said it was pleased at the changes to the Price Reduction Clause but had “very serious concerns” about the transactional data requirements.

The GSA’s inspector general, in separate comments, also took issue with elements of the GSA’s plan, including:

• GSA did not consider vendors’ costs of changing information technology architectures and systems analysis to collect the data;
• Expansion of transactional data reporting to services–-which make up two-thirds of (GSA) Schedule sales-–will be challenging due to the difficulty of standardizing labor categories;
• The proposed alternative Price Reduction Clause may cause loss of price protections;
• And contracting officers may become too reliant on transactional data at the expense of commercial price analysis, possibly resulting in agencies not getting the best price.

The Veterans Affairs Department IG has expressed similar concerns.

GSA held a public meeting to address the vendors’ and IGs’ fears. GSA officials suggested at the meeting that there is a choice between the “devil you know (Price Reduction Clause)” and the “devil you don’t know (transactional data),” according to a summary of the meeting by Morrison & Foerster LLP ( http://goo.gl/XDvrNb ).

(Editor’s note: also see article in 3/20/2015 Set-Aside Alert )

More information: Federal Register notice: https://goo.gl/PLLICh
Coalition comments: http://thecgp.org/images/Transactional-Data-Comments_Final.pdf
GSA IG comments https://goo.gl/wzeiu2

Vendors opposing the GSA’s new prices-paid reporting requirements

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