General.Zhukov

The answers to your questions depend on the governing FAR Parts. Many of your problems go away if this IT is commercial (Part 12), and it is exempt from FAR Part 6 (Part 13). The hardware delivers ~120 days after award and the software license/support term begins at hardware acceptance, even a 12-month license term would extend the contract beyond 12 months from award, exceeding the FAR 6.302-2 limit unless we obtain HCA approval. [Correct me if I am wrong wifcon]: I think a reasonable person would determine that the lead time between delivery of a product, and the start date when the software needed to use the product is turned on, does not count towards the one year "total period of performance". Typically, in my agency, a contract for this would have two Line Items (we don't do sub-CLINs). CLIN 1 for product with a delivery date and $. CLIN 2, not separately priced, for the software. If the overall requirement is for the product, and you have to categorize the entire thing as a single value- like PSC for category management, or NAICS for non-manufacturing rule , or whatever - use the product's value. Often the buyer cannot 'shorten the PoP.' Many software-sellers cannot or will not do this. Typical response: "Sure, government customer, you can limit your PoP to 274 days as you like, just uninstall our software, but the contract will state, and you will pay for, 365 days, just like all our other customers." A reason to know if this is commercial. If you can separate out the software, and buy it separately through normal procedures, without FAR 6.3, you would of course want to do that.

So best value is the answer to the question "How do (or should) buyers, with multiple criteria, decide what to buy?" Answer: By selecting the proposal that represents best value. I propose that 'best value' is simply the federal acquisition application of an enormously rich and influential school of economic thought - decision theory. Many Nobel prizes have been won by economists studying this topic. At its broadest, decision theory is the study of how actors make economic decisions. The pioneers of decision theory, Von Neumann & Morgenstern (1940's), would define best value as the (source selection) decision that maximizes expected utility under constraints. So Best = Maximum Value = Utility Before you object to me kicking the can down the road when it comes to defining 'value' I will quote the great Jeremy Bentham.. By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered: if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community: if a particular individual, then the happiness of that individual.

I agree with that. For a large risky IT project - which consolidating >100 separate HR systems into one, for ~2,000,000 employees, in 18 months, after having fired the staff of the agencies upon which the success of this project depends, is indeed - the thing that matters is what the offeror has done. A good 1102 CE exercise is to have student/class pick some very familiar software (like MS Word, Gmail.) and attempt to describe it in a "technical approach" style and notice how woefully that compares to just showing how the software works. Would you, as an evaluator, know more about MS Word's ability to do what you want after 10 minutes of using MS Word, or after having read a 100-page pdf about MS Word?

Good: 119 HR systems is too many. Consolidation seems like a good idea. Bad: It is the intent of government for all agencies to go live by July 4, 2027. Completing the transition for the entire federal government - both civilian and military - in 18 months is impossible. Everyone involved knows this. That this ludicrous goal made it into the solicitation is a very bad sign. Terrible. FFP. Given the complexity, large dollars and ludicrously short designed-to-fail delivery schedule, there are very high risks of many types of bad to catastrophic failure, which the contractor will be nominally absorbing. So this is going to cost...a lot. A FFP contract is going to be galactically expensive (now or later). The GVT cannot actually transfer risk of a mega-project like this onto the contractor, so it's getting the costs of FFP, but not the benefits.

The main use case is when you have a requirement that can be met by some non-MAS IDIQ, but isn't a good fit for an order. An indefinite delivery vehicle (FPDS's term, not mine) would be better. Under the old FAR, you have three options. First, use an MAS to establish a BPA, even if the other IDIQ is otherwise superior. Second is to wield the innovation hammer and beat your indefinite requirement into a definitive order - usually with lots of dubious options, bloated scope, and forgoing future competition (see below). Third is to do an IDIQ. Now, you have a fourth and far superior option - the IDIQ-BPA. Consider the Best-in-Class sources. OASIS, EIS and NASA SEWP (to name but a few) are all big multiple award IDIQs that effectively issue second-tier IDVs which have been beaten into something which I suppose meets the legal definition of an 'order.' So yes, this can be done - and has been done for years. But just allowing a second-tier IDV and doing away with the subterfuge and complexity (aka 'innovation') would be much better. Generally, the self-administrated IDIQ is the last resort, anything else is preferable. There are some agencies that are awarding their own IDIQs which could have been an MAS BPA, but not too many of them. This isn't common, or a big problem. At least according to a cursory look at FPDS data. Also according to common sense - IDIQ's more effort than a BPA, for basically the same result. People aren't doing this for fun, or to spite the FAS.

Having read the relevant USC and GAO case, I agree @FrankJon that a BPA issued against a multiple-award IDIQ is exactly the 'second-tier IDIQ instrument' which will remain inconsistent with statute regardless of what's stated in FAR 16.5. From B-411699; B-411796: The FBI’s contemplated award of a 5-year second-tier IDIQ instrument to a single contractor is inconsistent with the requirements of the applicable statutes and FAR provisions regarding what constitutes a “delivery order.” Those requirements are, at a minimum, that the delivery order be defined as to quantity, place of delivery and schedule. In essence, the two orders contemplated under these RFPs will deprive all the other TacCom contractors of a fair opportunity to compete for each of the delivery orders that will be issued in the future ... How was statement true then, but is not true now, given the applicable statutes haven't changed? Caveats: 1) I am not an attorney, and definitely not a federal contract attorney, nor an expert practitioner. 2) I think second-tier IDIQ instruments are a great idea, and the prohibition against them is red tape.

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1) This meets a fairly widespread need. You have a long-term requirement that with relatively broad but stable scope, although the specifics will change over time and are unpredictable. This is ideal for an IDC/IDIQ/BPA. You can't meet this need with any GSA MAS-holders, but you could with some other multiple-award IDC contractors. Now, with RFO, you can use that other multiple-award IDIQ to establish a BPA. 2) The fact that of all the multiple-award IDIQs out there, only FSS/MAS could be used for a BPA - that feels like an anachronism, which the RFO has finally gotten around to correcting. Like striking out the text about facsimiles. 3) Ex post fasto legalizing SEWP 'Catalogs'. I hope this is the real explanation. SEWP Catalogs are great, my agency loves them. It greatly reduced time and effort of procuring routine IT hardware. A tremendous saving.

Final comment while I wait around to close out the fiscal year. In HHS, somewhere between 60 - 80% of contract actions are never posted to sam.gov. What goes out on sam.gov are some large non-commercial actions for medical-biological-R&D type stuff, and lots of small procurements of products that aren't available from existing sources (like obscure scientific instruments). The vast majority of services and something more than 95% of IT don't go on sam.gov.

My take is that refers to those GWACS that are exclusively for 8(a). For example, GSA has got a few of them (including BMO,). This isn't anything new.

A greater portion of contract actions will be exempt from the requirement to post on GPE (sam.gov), as they are channeled to centralized sources like GSA, while the total number of actions goes down. This is a double whammy. Same caveat: The federal acquisition market is large, and circumstances vary tremendously.

Caveat: The federal procurement landscape is large and diverse. Yes, there is a sharp drop in awards. Everyone involved in federal procurement knows this. Impact differs tremendously based on agency, market, etc. In particular, if you are relying on sam.gov for small $ commercial solicitations, you are going to have a bad time. No, the certs are not hurting. At least not for any contracting office like mine. At end of year, 8(a)'s get a lot of last-minute awards. However, these are typically larger awards that wouldn't be <SAT + LPTA. I doubt 8(a) matters. Check you past performance, references, certs, SB status, etc. Maybe it's just random chance, bad luck.

This may be so obvious as to have been unstated, but....outside of DoD, civilian agencies like mine routinely purchase both commercial and non-commercial biometric products and services, especially DHS and FBI. Biometrics are available via GSA, particularly under Security and Protection. So straight FAR based methods like Part 35 R&D or the usual suspects - FAR 8.4/12/13/15/16.505?

It was just a quick demo - showing that even a really basic prompt can do a decent job, a pretty good first draft. I entered your prompt and uploaded results. You can see the difference. If I were to run the same prompt again, with changed punctuation and capitalization, the result would also be different. AIs are weird. Regarding commercial - I didn't think about it. We buy lots and lots of small $ stuff for our many bio-pharma laboratories. These products are 100.00% commercial. Commercial is the water in which we swim, so us fish don't think about it too much. Also, I don't actually write BPAs these days. But you are correct. AI-generated BPA 17.09.2025 - Commercial.pdf

Agree. I did this using our in-house AI (a version of Claude) for a FAR 13 BPA, with minimal prompting and no reference material (our AI does much better with references). We do this a lot in my office, exploring AI's capabilities. If you are curious, I uploaded it. AI-generated BPA 16.09.2025.pdf

AI makes the process much, much easier. The upside is both huge and obvious, I think. AI-assisted SOWs/requirements documents are much, much better. "AI, here are 7,000 contract files. These 27 have caused major problems, and these 350 minor problems. Analyze the contract files and determine what are the risk factors for problem contracts than can be identified pre-solicitation and pre-award." - AI is really good at answering questions like this. Its good at reading a 50-page contract and finding stuff like this (real example) - "The place of performance is Hawaii, but you have EST office hours, that might be a mistake." I am, however, more cautious about the benefits of applying AI/LLMs to the document-intensive proposal -solicitation - evaluation process, specifically. AI may drastically increase the number and 'quality' of proposals. Every vendor can now, or soon will be able to, write a perfect proposal in seconds. Search theory suggests this fact may make both buyers and sellers take longer to make decisions, aka paradox-of-choice. In other markets - dating, college, jobs - this has been a big problem. We'll figure out how to deal with the tsunami, eventually, but it'll be a pain short-term. Some CS is foolishly going to use sam.gov and get 1,000 proposals for her $100K 're-paint the parking lots' solicitation. All proposals will be perfect, which will make differentiating them difficult. The fundamentally important but implicit assumption - better offerors write better offers - will no longer be true (although it never was completely true). This will be hard to deal with. Different evals maybe - the welcome death of "understands the requirement" as an evaluation factor? My pet solution is face-to-face meetings where the offerors can't BS you by typing your questions into ChatGPT, aka 'oral presentations.' When real-time video deep-fakes become undetectably good, if this hasn't happened already, in-person meetings. In every profession, AI is best at doing the tasks that junior people did at the start of their career. The career and expertise pipeline, as it has existed for decades, is or soon will be broken. This will have to be dealt with. This a huge deal with software developers and lawyers right now, today, so we will learn from them before it hits us full-on.

Serious question. The RFO has created a new thing, commercial construction. What is the advantage of this? As I think about the payments issue, much of the apparent advantage of commercial contracts compared to construction is illusory. As I understand it, a commercial construction contract is really construction first, and commercial second. A commercial construction contract will much more closely resemble an old-school FAR 36 construction contract than a purchase order. For Commercial construction, clauses for construction vs. commercial services conflict. When they do, I assume that 36 trumps FAR 12, so clauses like 52.232- 5 Payments under Fixed-Price Construction Contracts are added to a commercial construction contract. Conflicting payment terms are lined out The customary practices of construction lean much more towards FAR 36 than 12. FAR 52.212-4 would have to be heavily tailored for construction (for T&C not in a construction clause). Other clauses and statutory requirements found in FAR 36 and 22 don't conflict with FAR 12, rather they were not applicable to commercial services. Now they are applicable, if its construction. Things like Davis-Bacon. RFO means less benefit for using commercial vs. construction. The RFO Part covering construction has removed a lot of text, which presumably translates into streamlining construction procedures. This narrows the gap between using FAR 12 vs. FAR 36. The people actually writing these contracts will probably continue to be construction-specialists. In the contracting offices I am familiar with, construction contracting is separate tract, and quite different from other sorts of contracting. I know of very few COs who evenly work on both construction and standard commercial services contracts. When the very wise and experienced user base of wifcon says "don't do it", as they are when it comes to 'commercial construction', you probably shouldn't do it. On the other hand...my department did a lot of well-drilling recently. This is a completely commercial service and construction. If the customer were a private citizen or business, the deal could have been made in hours, not weeks. So if, somehow, we could have used mostly standard purchase orders for well drilling, that would have been great and saved many people a great deal of time and effort for exactly the same result.

I haven't looked, but I'd suspect there is or soon will be a class waiver or other work around for services like construction that are and should remain (IMO) non-commercial. If not, this approval is, ironically, not that big a deal thanks to other EOs. For most or all agencies (not just DHS), most or all new contracts have to go through five to ten SES/C-Suite approvals anyways, - something like CO, HCA, Agency COS/CFO/COO, Agency Head, Department Acquisition Staff, anonymous approver not in Department, SPE. Sometimes this happens twice, solicitation and then again for award. Adding another SPE J&A is just adding a few more freight cars onto the train. Still true for even more SPE J&As (like for contracts instead of using GWAC/GSA). It all reminds me of Catch-22's loyalty oaths. Agree, don't go first with commercial construction. I'd probably let the experts - Corps of Engineers (1,000 construction contracts last year, $3B), GSA or DOT (each with few hundred worth ~$1B) - take lead here.

Good point. Counter-point: The single-award IDIQ contracts should be used less often - if there is a GWAC or GSA contract. OMB: The FAR Council will issue new text for FAR 8.004, requiring “that if a commercial product or service meeting the agency’s requirements is available on an existing contract awarded for government-wide use by GSA or another agency, the agency must use the existing contract vehicle instead of awarding a separate new contract, unless the head of the agency provides an exception.

Why Aren't GSA Schedule Contracts Used More? HHS-Specific Analysis After examining this issue, I've found it's less problematic than it initially appears. Many procurement situations either cannot use GSA schedule contracts or have legitimate reasons for using alternative sources. Situations Where GSA Schedule Contracts Cannot Be Used We immediately recognize that GSA schedule contracts are unavailable for non-commercial requirements or services categorically absent from GSA offerings. For example, we cannot establish a GSA BPA for expert witnesses—often esteemed professors of chemistry or biology from prestigious universities—because GSA contractors do not offer these specialized services. We frequently utilize mandatory sources or various SBA socio-economic programs like 8(a). HHS relies heavily on IDIQs and 8.4 BPAs. Agencies rarely use open market procedures (FAR Parts 15 or 13) for requirements available through existing IDIQs or BPAs. While this occasionally occurs, it is not a significant issue. My department makes minimal use of FAR Part 13 BPAs, BOAs, FAR Part 14, and other alternative procurement methods. Reframing the Question Given these exclusions, the real question becomes: Why aren't GSA Schedule Contracts used more instead of agency IDIQs? Analysis by Category For HHS and my agency, opportunities to use GSA instead of agency IDIQs fall into three broad categories: 1. Information Technology For IT hardware and software, the most common alternatives to GSA are other Best in Class sources like NITAAC and NASA SEWP. This represents a non-issue, as the number of agency IDIQs for IT products also available through GSA, GWACs, or other BIC sources is minimal—possibly zero. 2. Industrial/Scientific/Medical Products Agencies use GSA approximately 50% of the time for these millions of products. Medical procurement goes through VA. For the remainder using agency IDIQs instead of GSA, I have two competing theories: • Duplication Theory: The IDIQs overlap with GSA offerings and could be replaced by GSA BPA calls/orders for identical services. This represents problematic duplication. • Legitimate Gap Theory: Agencies have ongoing needs for products or requirements unavailable through GSA or other existing sources, necessitating separate IDVs (IDIQs or BPAs). This is not duplicative. 3. Professional Services This category represents the core issue, where agencies use GSA least despite GSA's extensive professional services offerings. While data is limited, several factors explain this pattern: Line Agency Control Requirements Complex or high-risk procurements require direct line-agency ownership of the procurement process. Third-party involvement (GSA) can undermine agency control and dilute accountability, which is unacceptable for certain contract complexities or risk levels. Since end-users handle enforcement, GSA becomes an unnecessary intermediary. Transaction Costs vs. Competition Benefits When contract transition costs exceed potential competition-driven savings, agencies have incentives to use their own IDIQs to minimize order-level competition and contractor turnover. The incentives are misaligned for direct government employees who bear the transaction costs (time and new contractor management) but receive no direct benefits from competition-driven savings. If this theory is correct, agency IDIQs should demonstrate minimal order-level competition—either single award or otherwise structured to limit competition. Requirement Specificity "Professional Services" is an artificial category—specific requirements matter more. Having numerous GSA professional services schedule holders is irrelevant if none possess expertise in your specific requirement. While program managers frequently cite this reason, I suspect it's less often true than claimed. I also suspect GSA's claim, that this reason is almost never true, is also wrong. Institutional Inertia Agencies continue using IDIQs for specific services simply because they have always done so, rather than evaluating whether GSA alternatives might be more effective

Pricing isn't the trade-off. I have compared ALTs for comparable commercial products which were purchased via one of three methods - 1) an order (from GSA or some Best-In-Class source), 2) purchase order (FAR 13 but over MPT), or 3) Micropurchases (FAR 13, < MPT). Methods 1 & 3 are indeed faster - a lot faster. But if you examine why the ALTS are longer for purchase orders of commercial products - those reasons aren't price-related. Why not? These commercial products have abundant price data. Fair and reasonable pricing determination is (usually) equally trivial for all three methods. The large majority take less than a day. Roughly 95% take less than a week. The biggest difference in ALT is in the pre-solicitation phase, and I am not sure if FAR 13 is the cause. My data doesn't cover that.

Indeed, here are some slightly heighted 1102 comments I have read recently about professional services requirements <$100K which, I think, suggest these probably shouldn't be treated as micropurchases handed off to an 1105. 1) These contractors will have access not only to facilities, but to [an IT system] and so the contract and contractor personnel need [a whole lot of cybersecurity-related stuff]. 2) Meetings are not deliverables. This "SOW" has no actual deliverables. What are we paying them to do, and how do we know they have done the thing for which we pay them? 3) You cannot realistically award this contract and have these [very specialized] contractors start the next week. Thats not how it works. Since this lead-time wasn't on your plan, and you have a hard start-work date, we will have to make up the time elsewhere in the acquisition process. 3) Your IGCE is literally just the sentence "2 x Specialist III at $150/HR, 2,000 hours/year is $600,000." 4) I understand that you do not like either of the two offers received, nor can you afford them, but that doesn't mean I can take you up on your suggestion to "just sole source it" to that vendor you like.

In my graduate school, the professors of public administration emphasized that administrative leadership is different, a lot different, than the private sector. To simplify, your mission and resources are mostly fixed. My contracting office's mission is to help my agency do its mission, protecting public health, and that isn't changing. Resouces - most importantly people and IT - are usually fixed. My HCA can't just simply hire who she wants. Thus, the most opportune time for public leadership are those rare times when the mission or resources are not fixed and in flux - like now. Your room for success or failure in (most) government is (usually) much more limited compared to the private sector or military. If GSA fails, nobody is going to die, and it isn't going to declare bankruptcy. But not always. Even in contracting, poor leadership does sometimes cause failure that does mean death, or real harm, By elimination, culture is a really one of the main tools a public leader has.

For HHS , under these new definitions, ~ 60% of all awards in HHS could be classified as micropurchases. (up from 6%) ~ 97% of all awards could use FAR 13 (commercial and under $50M) (up from 76%) That might have an impact or might not. HHS rarely uses FAR 15 anyways, and so there isn't much that under these new thresholds could switch to FAR 13. Like everyone else, HHS already makes extensive use of FAR 8.4 and 16.505 (about half of everything is a TO/DO in HHS) and these changes don't have much or any impact here. Micropurchases have a bunch of restrictions on them that aren't going away, and they don't exempt much of the work that is done b/w $10K and $100K. In IT world, which I know best, cybersecurity is always a major consideration, takes a while, and price doesn't matter. So I am skeptical of the impact. WIll it help? Yes. A lot? Probably not. Maybe. I am skeptical of FAR procedures being a major source of inefficiency, and thus skeptical of the potential benefit of moving around the boundaries of FAR procedures. I note that my agency, like most if not all agencies, now has five additional approvals for nearly everything. For us, its SES x 3, Agency Head x 1 and Department x 1. For many things, this happens twice, so ten approvals. This process is why DHS didn't send search and rescue after the Texas floods. It is the opposite of streamlining - it has introduced big new inefficiencies in the system. So let's stop digging first, before we start figuring out how to get out of the hole.

There is a vast literature on corporate culture, institutional change, why some places are better to work at than others, how to make your workplace a better place to work for you and others, etc. Specific to acquisitions, I think the mission part is very important. Making the agency's mission a prominent part of the acquisition culture is good. The two people I know who are Contracting Officers and who tell me they have a great corporate culture worked in NASA and the Corps of Engineering. For both of them, the specific mission (something to do with satellites, hydroelectric dams) was important to them personally and very prominently part of corporate culture. If you go into the acquisition office and you are just buying widgets and professional services with the attitude of a hired hand, that's a bummer. The Europeans, and Italians in particular, have some relevant research on a related topic- how does culture effect procurement (as they call it) outcomes? Not exactly your topic, but close. Two important papers. BUREAUCRATIC COMPETENCE AND PROCUREMENT OUTCOMES, Decarolis (Italian), 2019 Summary: Bureaucratic competence leads to significant reductions in delay, cost, and re-negotiations. Competence is defined as three factors 1) cooperation among employees, 2) incentives, and 3) skills. Cooperation is most important. Caveat: To get to this conclusion, the authors make some bold and maybe unwarranted assumptions with data I know very well (FPDS and FEVS). Relevance: Cooperation is similar to your concept of 'Centering People, and is very important. Active and Passive Waste in Government Spending: Evidence from a Policy Experiment, Bandiera (also Italian), 2008 Summary: For public procurement outcomes, inefficiency is very important. Highly efficient buyers produce much better outcomes. They argue it's the governance structure that matters, rather than the individuals. Autonomous small agencies with narrow mission do best. Large centralized hierarchical government organizations do worst. Caveat: You need a MA in Economics to read this paper published in the very prestigious and math-heavy American Economic Review. Relevance: Culture matters. A 'good culture' directly leads to better outcomes like lower prices paid.