Six leading trade associations representing thousands of companies supporting the federal government said today that some recommendations offered in a study on government acquisition of commercial services and products would unwisely restrict the ability of government agencies to benefit from efficient and cost-effective access to the commercial market. The multi-association group warned that, if certain recommendations were adopted and implemented, the results would be long delays in acquisitions and reduced innovation in government services – and ultimately lower satisfaction and higher costs for taxpayers.

The study panel was created by section 1423 of the 2003 Services Acquisition Reform Act (SARA) to review acquisition laws and regulations. In 18–months of study, the panel of government and private-sector appointees conducted research and received inputs from various quarters, including numerous cautions from the multi-association group regarding serious specific concerns about the panel's areas of focus and attention.

"Some of the SARA panel recommendations would reverse more than 20-years of bipartisan procurement reform that expanded the federal government's use of commercial products and services," said Phil Bond, president and CEO of the Information Technology Association of America, one of the multi-association group's members. "It would be a mistake to roll back so much of that progress."

"Although the final working draft of the SARA panel includes many useful findings and recommendations with which the associations agree, some of their conclusions are flawed," Bond continued "The overriding effect of their suggested actions would be to create delays, chill innovation, limit flexibility and impede competition in federal contracting – reversing two decades of progress in procurement reform."

Based on the panel's final working draft, the associations today called on the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) and Congress to:

• Reject the recommendation to change the definition of commercial services. This change would restrict the federal government from procuring services that are similar but not exactly like those offered in the commercial market.
• Reject the recommendation to require the development of objectives and requirements before using a time and materials (T&M) contract. This would directly contradict existing government guidance that specifically restricts the use of T&M contracts to those instances when the requirements cannot be developed sufficiently or whenever there is insufficient time to adequately develop them. Implementing this change would jeopardize the government's ability to perform critical missions without interruption, a danger recognized in the SARA panel's own findings.
• Oppose expanding protests of task and delivery orders on multiple award contracts. The FAR already provides special circumstances where protests are permitted. To further open protests at the task and delivery order level would create new delays, add to the burden of short-handed contracting officers and their agencies, and ultimately raise costs to taxpayers. The appropriate time for challenging the award of a contract is at the time of the award.

Leaders of the multi-association group recommended increasing competition and restoring public confidence in government contracting, not through new laws and regulations, but through better application of existing laws and regulations along with actions to correct serious staffing shortfalls in the government acquisition workforce.

The associations commended the panel's attention to staffing and skill-level shortages in the federal contracting workforce and welcomed its recommendations in this area. As the panel noted, near-term retirements of many experienced federal contracting officials will make this shortage more acute than ever. No other issue has greater importance if government agencies are to be good stewards.

The associations also applauded the panel's recommendation to encourage the use of performance-based acquisition (PBA) when appropriate. In one of its many inputs to the SARA panel, the multi-association group offered examples of PBA solicitations that failed to describe outcomes and the measures expected to achieve them, leading the panel to agree that PBA's full potential for transforming government and saving taxpayer dollars is largely untapped.

Working together, the multi-association group monitored and made inputs regularly to the SARA panel since its inception. Representatives of the associations and their member companies provided the panel with testimony, presentations and more than 1,000 pages of comments and supporting documents. The multi-association's complete commentary on the final draft report can be found at the following link: http://www.itaa.org/upload/es/docs/MA%20Response201423%20Panel%20-%20FINAL.pdf

The multi-association group includes the following organizations representing thousands of companies across multiple sectors and types of services:

• Aerospace Industries Association
• Contract Services Association
• Electronic Industries Alliance
• Government Electronics and Information Technology Association
• Information Technology Association of America
• National Defense Industrial Association
• Professional Services Council