The General Services Administration is on the front line of the battle to streamline federal procurement. GSA is trying to incorporate more public policy objectives, such as cybersecurity, sustainability, and socioeconomic sourcing requirements, into their acquisition vehicles up front to make it easier for agencies to comply.
GSA has also engaged vendors, contracting officers and customer agencies to more fully understand their user experiences in identifying ways to effectively automate and streamline processes.
PALT (Procurement Action Lead Time) is a metric that we all watch closely as a measure of efficiency and timeliness in moving a purchase request to delivery or performance. One of the initiatives pursued by GSA is the expanded use of oral and video presentations for technical evaluations. GSA believes these presentations can “dramatically” streamline the source selection process. USAID and other agencies have used oral presentations for years to facilitate the technical evaluation process. It still requires extensive preparations on the part of the offerors and can entail greater expense than a written proposal if global travel of a team is required. It remains to be seen if the government will expand its use of oral presentations, especially if they have an impact on PALT.