e-Commerce Is Buzzword For GSA Schedules GSA plans to accelerate the use of electronic commerce on Federal Supply Schedules. “To us, the future of doing business is paperless,” said Neal Fox, assistant commissioner of GSA’s Federal Supply Service, which operates the schedules. He spoke Nov. 9 at an Arlington, VA, conference sponsored the Coalition for Government Procurement, an organization of schedule contractors. He cited four electronic initiatives that will become more important: eOffer. The website, www.eoffer.gsa.gov, allows vendors to respond electronically to solicitations on Schedule 70, the IT schedule. GSA describes it as one of the first paperless contract award options in the federal government. “We’re going to push this very hard,” Fox said. eMod, which is available through the eOffer site, allows vendors to submit requests for contract modifications electronically. The capability is now available to contractors on all schedules, and Fox said it will speed up the approval of modifications. GSA Advantage, the main online shopping mall for buyers, has been upgraded with more powerful search capabilities, responding to what Fox called the number-one customer complaint. Advantage allows government buyers to order electronically, but only from vendors who have posted their product and price lists at the site. Fox said vendors should update the keywords in their listings now that the search capability has been improved. Advantage has been around since 1995, but has been slow to catch on because few vendors posted online catalogs and few buyers used the service, the General Accounting Office reported last year. (SAA, 4/4/2003) e-Buy, which allows buyers to e-mail requests for quotations to registered vendors. The number of RFQs posted in 2004 nearly doubled, but still totaled only 25,500. Like Advantage, e-Buy faces a classic chicken-egg problem: too few buyers to attract vendors’ interest, and vice versa. GSA is projecting 40,000 RFQs through e-Buy in fiscal 2005. Fox said e-Buy fits into GSA’s “Get It Right” campaign, because it ensures that a large number of vendors get to compete for contract opportunities. In the first full year that state and local governments were permitted to buy through the IT schedule, those customers spent only about $75 million, but Fox predicted that will grow rapidly. “State and local purchasing is the next big thing,” he declared. Obstacles remain, however. Many state laws require that buyers favor in-state vendors. Some states require full competitive bidding. The market research firm Input also found that many state purchasing agents believe they can beat the schedules’ prices through competitive bidding. (SAA, 6/11) Purchases through GSA schedules grew by 20% in fiscal 2004, the third consecutive year of at least 20% growth. “Customers are voting with their dollars,” Fox remarked. Schedule purchases totaled $32.7 billion, more than 10% of all government procurement. About 34.5% of that went to small businesses, said Donna Bennett, commissioner of the Federal Supply Service. Small firms’ market share has been around one-third of the total for the past several years. Purchases of general products grew by 70% over the previous year. Professional services spending grew 42% and IT spending was up 21%. IT accounted for the majority of purchases through the schedules. “Whether you’re selling lawn mowers or sophisticated IT, GSA schedules are growing,” Fox said. He projected that schedule purchases will reach $50 billion within three years. The number of schedule contract holders rose by 13% in 2004, to nearly 16,000. Three-fourths of them are small businesses, Fox said.