Category Management & Acquisition Gateway in the News
In GSA’s CAPO (Common Acquisition Platform), a whole lot of difference can be made in just one year.
The Gateway tool is now an established tool, just after a year after it was launched by GSA with 3 hallways and some government-wide contracts. It is buying faster and smarter. With the data found on the gateway, they navigate the cluttered federal acquisition marketplace with confidence. This information usually pertains to details like business practices, transactional data, market trends, existing government contracts and so on.
[divider][/divider]Contractors Could Gain Access As The GSA’s Acquisition Gateway Grows.
Detailed information is made available on the gateway. The information ranges from the best practices in IT to paid prices and implementation of contract templates. The purpose of all these remains to help federal contracting officials get better deals and to also help them draft better requirements.
As a result of the sensitivity of possible procurement, the public as well as federal contractors are not allowed by the gateway to see the information posted there.
It doesn’t have to remain like this. in a blog post on Nov 5, a senior innovations specialist, John Felleman of the Acquisitions Gateway stated that the GSA is still searching for techniques to permit non-federal observers to look through the hallways. The interest in the resource keeps growing among suppliers to the federal market and this is increasing the pressure from vendors for access.
[divider][/divider]17 Group Hallways Are Currently Live On The Acquisition Gateway.
The Acquisitions Gateway has evolved into an important tool that aids professional in buying faster and smarter and this has been achieved only a year after its modest launch with just 3 categories and only a few government-wide contracts. The groups/category hallways now on the Acquisition Gateway are:
• Card Services
• Workplace Environment
• IT Services
• Travel
• Tools and Hardware
• IT Security
• Motor Vehicles
• IT Software
• Freight
• Cleaning Supplies and Chemicals
• IT Hardware
• Employee Relocation
• Small Package Delivery
• Talent Development
• Telecommunications
• Professional Services
• Administrative Support
[divider][/divider]An Update to Drive Category Management Government-Wide.
The White House is happy to let you know 7 important steps that have been done by us in order to implement category management more efficiently.
• Launch of government-wide BPA’s in response to recent data breaches
• Launch of GSA’s Professional Services Schedule (PSS)
• Identified leading agencies for some Categories
• Capturing of current policies, metrics, etc.
• GSA has made even more improvements to the Acquisition Gateway
• Established category management as one of 15 Cross Agency Priority (CAP) goals
• Guidance Document
