Source GovExec: For the last several months, the Obama administration has trumpeted its initiative to simplify the federal acquisition process.
The main component of that overhaul is “category management” — sorting agencies’ purchases into the most common groups of products and services. The General Services Administration is currently developing a website to help procurement officers, called the “common acquisition platform.”
The platform will serve as the single access point for agencies looking to purchase goods or services from those categories, each of which will have its own “hallway” of product options, as well as digital services offering advice and information, such as industry trends and existing contract vehicles.
GSA and the other six largest and highest-spending agencies, known as the Strategic Sourcing Leadership Council, met last month to move the development of the acquisition overhaul forward. In a blog post Wednesday, Anne Rung, the White House’s Federal Procurement Policy Office administrator and Tom Sharpe, the Federal Acquisition Service commissioner, spelled out what the categories might look like.