The General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service is working to streamline the government procurement process through several efforts, including reducing the procurement acquisition lead time, or PALT, Federal News Network reported Thursday.
Mark Lee, assistant commissioner for the Office of Policy and Compliance at FAS, told FNN in an interview how the Commercial Platforms program is helping GSA improve PALT.
“One is our recent award of the Commercial Platforms program, which is like the second generation of the program. Basically this streamlines for purchase card holders the buying process to access commercial online marketplaces,” Lee said. “So we’ve pre-negotiated agreements across the federal government with eight commercial marketplaces, and we’ve seen significant time savings for our customers.”
He cited the use of oral presentations and how it helps GSA facilitate the source selection process as part of its PALT improvement efforts.
“A lot of times we’re using oral and video presentations to do technical evaluation. So rather than get a 200 page volume of technical material for a source selection panel to read through — it’s voluminous — we invite people to come in and they do about typically a 90 minute presentation,” Lee commented. “We’ve seen the use of oral video presentations have dramatically streamlined the source selection process. We needed a better experience for industry partners and this helped us streamline getting to contract award.”
The GSA official also discussed FAS’ efforts to update GSA Advantage, particularly the FAS catalog platform, and initiatives to improve the user experience.