{"id":21047,"date":"2018-09-17T20:08:46","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T20:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/09\/17\/3-big-problems-continue-to-dog-federal-procurement\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:53:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:53:17","slug":"3-big-problems-continue-to-dog-federal-procurement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/acquisition\/2018\/09\/17\/3-big-problems-continue-to-dog-federal-procurement\/","title":{"rendered":"3 big problems continue to dog federal procurement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Congress and the executive branch have worked for years to improve the quality of and reduce costs for federal acquisition, but some problems continue to hamper many agencies, according to a Sept. 12 Government Accountability Office report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAcquisition reform has been on everyone\u2019s agenda for many, many years, decades. There have been proposals in the Congress, there has been changes to the regulations. This has been a very, very active area for a long time,\u201d said Bill Woods, director on the Contracting and National Security Acquisitions Team at GAO, in an agency podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report evaluated federal agency acquisition improvements against 89 recommendations made by the Acquisition Advisory Panel in 2007 and divided the areas of improvement into three \u201cbuckets\u201d that represent the acquisition life cycle: requirements and definitions; competition and pricing; and contractor oversight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“One is in the requirements, definition process of actually deciding. What is it does the agency want? What does it need, and what\u2019s the best way of getting what we need?\u201d said Woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe second area that agencies tend to struggle in is competition. How do we get enough vendors interested in fulfilling our requirement that we can have a robust competition, that we can really drive the best solutions, that we can get the best price for those solutions possible? And then the third area that\u2019s common to agencies is contract oversight. Once the contract is awarded, then the problem becomes, \u2018How do we make sure that that contractor actually delivers and satisfies the customer, and we get what we want at the price we agreed to pay?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t