New app for accessing labor rates in fed’l contracts

The General Services Administration is testing out a new Web application that displays the hourly rates for various labor categories and occupations.

The Contract Awarded Labor Category (CALC) tool is available in beta form online to federal agency contracting officers and to the public. It can be used for market research on 48,000 labor categories from recent GSA contracts.

The tool enables a search of awarded hourly rates on several GSA professional services contracts, including “MOBIS”, “LOGWORLD”, “AIMS”, environmental, Professional Engineering, Language and the consolidated schedule.

More information: CALC website http://calc.gsa.gov

SAP threshold increase advances

The House Armed Services Committee approved an increase in the simplified acquisition procedures ceiling to $500,000, from $150,000, in the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal 2016.

The proposed legislation is expected to come before the House soon.

New: OpenFOIA portal

The General Services Administration’s 18F innovation unit launched the new OpenFOIA website to make it easier to submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to federal agencies.

The website, which is in development, allows users to search for information on where and how to make FOIA requests.

Users are invited to send comments to 18f-foia@gsa.gov.

More information: OpenFOIA website https://open.foia.gov

POGO wants Price Reduction Clause to stay

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) watchdog group wants the Price Reduction Clause to remain in place. The GSA is proposing to partially remove the clause and to require contractors to report prices paid by the government instead.

Under the clause, contractors must provide the government with the same discounts offered to their most favored customers. Without it, the government will lose savings, POGO contends.

“The proposed rule will remove pricing safeguards and only require that contractors to disclose what another federal agency paid for the item or service; they would no longer have to report how much they sold that item or service for in the commercial market,” POGO wrote in a statement.

Scott Amey, POGO director, added that contractors, in practice, rarely provide all their commercial pricing data to the government.

More information: http://goo.gl/axngsY

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