Advisory Panel Report Will Push Competition The federal Acquisition Advisory Panel’s recommendations will emphasize the need for increased competition in procurements, according to the group’s chairwoman. The panel, chartered by Congress to review all acquisition laws and regulations, will release its report soon, Chairwoman Marcia Madsen wrote in the Oct. 2 issue of Federal Computer Week. In eighteen months of hearings and deliberations, Madsen wrote, the panel found: “•32 percent of all government contract dollars were awarded noncompetitively in 2004. “•The number of competitive acquisitions resulting in only one offer has doubled since 2000. “•There is little transparency in the $140 billion in orders issued under interagency contracts. “•The Government Accountability Office has placed interagency contracts on its High-Risk List, finding that orders frequently do not comply with competition requirements.” “Competition is the cornerstone of a free market and the engine of innovation,” she said. Madsen took issue with criticism by several of the largest contractor organizations, who charged that some of the panel’s recommendations “threaten to roll back a decade of procurement reforms.” (SAA, 9/1) “Nothing could be further from the truth,” Madsen wrote. The industry groups object to a recommendation that services be classified as commercial only if they are actually sold in substantial quantities in the commercial marketplace. The current rule says services are commercial if they are “of a type” sold in the commercial market. Madsen said the “of a type” language was added by regulation and does not appear in the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act. She said federal agencies could still procure cutting-edge services without using the streamlined rules for commercial items. The industry groups also objected to the panel’s proposed restrictions on the use of time-and-materials contracts. Madsen said those restrictions are already in place in the Defense Department. She said time-and-materials contracts are seldom used in the commercial sector because the “are resource-intensive [and] expensive to manage properly.” The panel recommended permitting protests of task and delivery orders over $5 million under multiple award contracts. The industry groups said that would cost the taxpayers and slow down procurement. Madsen responded that protests are already permitted on GSA schedule orders, but few have been filed. The Advisory Panel’s 14 members are equally divided between the government and private sector. Madsen said one of their mandates was to study how commercial buying practices could be incorporated into government procurement. “Commercial buyers of services rely on head-to-head competition as a bedrock principle of their services acquisition process,” she wrote. The contractor groups generally endorsed the panel’s recommendations for improving competition. The panel said civilian agencies should adopt the Defense Department’s requirement that buyers attempt to get at least three bids on all task orders under GSA schedules and other multiple award contracts. The industry statement was endorsed by the Information Technology Association of America, Professional Services Council, Contract Services Association, Aerospace Industries Association, National Defense Industrial Association and Government Electronics and Information Technology Association.