CIO Pushes “Single Door” for Contractors Say hello to the vendor-management organization. Hint: You may not have a choice. Federal Chief Information Officer Steve Van Roekel wants agencies to create the organizations as a “single door” for communication with contractors. But a veteran industry consultant warns that the door could turn into a roadblock. Four agencies have established vendor-management organizations on a pilot basis: the Veterans Affairs, Interior and Education departments and the Patent and Trademark Office. Van Roekel is looking to expand them to other agencies. “We have an infinite number of front doors,” he said, according to Federal News Radio in Washington. “There are multiple things we can do. One is we look, at least at the agency level, having a single door is a good thing with incentives around small business and other things that I think are smart for the country. I think if we just solved it at the agency level and start to get a single VMO for each agency, or at least major agency components, I think that would greatly reduce the complexity of interacting and [would] streamline and produce a buying phenomenon that we don’t see today.” Larry Allen, a consultant and president of Allen Federal Partners, says the single door could hamper interaction between government and industry, even as the Obama administration is urging increased communication. “While the move may be well-intended—how many companies have participated in meetings with government officials only to find out that they weren’t the ‘right’ ones to talk to?—establishing one organization inside each agency allows for the creation of only one path for contractors to meet with customers,” he wrote in his weekly newsletter. “Similar approaches have been tried in the VA and Army Corps of Engineers and this is exactly what has happened in each of those cases. VMO’s not only claim jurisdiction over contractor meetings, but other agency officials use the existence of such an organization as a shield or excuse not to have anything to do with contractors.” Van Roekel said corporate executives on the President’s Management Advisory Council told him that vendor-management organizations have been used effectively in private industry for some time. But Allen warns that such gatekeepers could develop favorites and may restrict competition. He calls the idea “another illustration of how something that looks good on paper may not always work well in the real, 3D world.”