The General Services Administration moved to extend for another two weeks the deadline for responses to its solicitation for e-commerce platforms after it received more than 70 questions from industry regarding the request for proposals, Federal News Network reported Monday.
Laura Stanton, deputy assistant commissioner for category management at GSA, told the publication about the agencies’ interest in the proof-of-concept for the e-marketplace initiative.
“About 6-to-8 agencies is what we are looking at to launch this. That gives us a good number and a good diversity without it being too overwhelming to work with each one closely,†Stanton said of the e-commerce platform concept.
She noted that the proof-of-concept intends to gain access to agencies’ spending data valued at approximately $6B and provide agencies better business-to-business capabilities.
“This is not a mandatory program so they are basically raising their hand and saying ‘we see benefits’ in leveraging the government’s buying power, which translates into discounts or tiered pricing on the B-to-B prices available on these platforms. It also means that they get the B-to-B capabilities, including workflow management, approval processes, spend data and analytics,†Stanton added.