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Tom Sharpe: Category Mgmt Key to FAS Acquisition Gateway

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Tom Sharpe
Tom Sharpe

Tom Sharpe, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, says that the General Services Administration is looking at category management to drive the implementation of a common acquisition platform across government, Federal Times reported Thursday.

“It means looking at the dollars we spend each year and putting some structure into it, organizing the spending into product or service categories… and then managing each of these categories as a strategic business unit,” he told the audience at ACT-IAC’s 2014 Executive Leadership Conference.

“Category management, when implemented successfully, has the potential to significantly improve our buying behaviors and fix a lot of what is broken today in federal government acquisition.”

Aaron Boyd reports that FAS has piloted a beta version of a new acquisition gateway that will provide procurement information on particular categories or “hallways” such as IT hardware and software and office supplies.

Information include past and current contracts, performance of commercial vendors and expert contract management advice.

FAS expects the gateway to guide contract managers through the program as well as provide a repository of background information, the report said.

Boyd reports that the gateway will eventually add professional services and other hallways as FAS receives user and industry feedback, targeting a total of 24 hallways by 2017.

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