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Federal Market Intelligence for Small Business |
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Set-Aside Alert exclusive research:Many GSA Interact industry pages not regularly updatedOnly 14 out of 34 pages updated within last 30 daysThe General Services Administration’s Interact Website was revamped a year ago with a spiffy new look and links to Interact pages expected to feature regular updates on dozens of GSA contracting communities. The site, initially created in 2010, was named “Interact” because it is intended to foster better communication between GSA and industry. However, most Interact community pages are not being updated regularly, Set-Aside Alerthas found, based on a recent review of the 34 public Interact community pages. Furthermore, there have been complaints about the need for users to click through more pages to obtain information that previously was more readily available. If the patterns continue it may hinder GSA from achieving its goals of improved communication. Frequency of updates Set-Aside Alerton June 14 reviewed the 34 Interact community pages available for viewing by the public. There are 46 such pages in all, public and private, for contracting communities including “OASIS,” the Multiple-Award Schedules and Category Management programs. Only 14 of the 34 public Interact community pages reviewed had been updated within the last 30 days. More than half--20 out of 34 Interact sites reviewed--were updated more than 30 days ago. That included 9 Interact pages not updated since March 2023 or before. There were three Interact pages not updated since 2022, one not updated since 2021, and two that had no updates at all. Here is the complete list of most recent updates as of June 14th:
Larry Allen, a longtime small business consultant and president of Allen Federal Business Partners, on June 5 bemoaned the lack of regular Interact updates in his blog: “As of today, the OASIS+ Interact site has gone 30 days without an update, even though OASIS+ needs to move quickly to a new RFP that will now contain a new contract level pricing component about which industry has officially been told nothing,” Allen wrote. “The Polaris site for GSA’s ill-fated small business IT contract has gone over 40 days without an update, leading to speculation that the next update may include an internment notice. Alliant 3, which will face the same issues as the first two contracts, hasn’t been updated for 90 days.” Other vendor complaints The Interact redo has won some praise as well as criticism. It “has some new features and now sports a clean design that is easy to navigate,” FedSched consultants wrote in a blog entry. At the same time, dashboards enabling users to view updates from multiple pages easily were removed in the June 2022 redo. “If you follow multiple groups, this is the most disappointing and inconvenient change on the new website,” the FedSched consultants wrote. GSA officials were not available at press time.
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