GSA Advantage, e-Buy Get More Muscle The General Services Administration has announced improvements to its online purchasing tools, GSA Advantage and e-Buy. The changes are designed to attract more buyers and sellers to the sites, which have not been popular. Advantage allows government buyers to order electronically from GSA schedule vendors. E-buy allows buyers to e-mail requests for quotation automatically to all qualified schedule contractors. GSA schedule contractors must register with Advantage before they can sign up to receive RFQs through e-Buy. A key improvement is in Advantage’s search capabilities, said Donna Bennett, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Supply Service. GSA officials have said the limited search function was the number-one customer complaint. One buyer searched for “ergonomics,” looking for a service contractor, but was deluged with listings for office furniture, FSS’s deputy assistant commissioner, Tina Burnette, said earlier this year. (SAA, 2/6) GSA said the changes to e-Buy will help agencies find contractors and obtain quotes faster. “The enhancements offer a more efficient and user-friendly experience, while ensuring users ‘get it right’ when purchasing from GSA schedules,” Bennett said. The online innovations have suffered from a classic chicken-egg problem: too few vendors to attract buyers and too few buyers to attract vendors. Only 13,000 RFPs were posted on e-Buy in fiscal 2003, according to GSA. Last year the General Accounting Office reported that only about 12% of schedule contractors had listed their products and services on Advantage, even though the site has been in operation since 1995. Vendors told GAO auditors that it didn’t make sense to spend the hours and thousands of dollars to load an online catalog if agency buyers were not making use of the site.