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About the Better Buy Project/Frequently Asked Questions

Why the Federal Acquisition Process?

On his first day in office, President Obama challenged leaders in government to "use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector." The acquisition process represents one of the most important areas of collaboration between government and the private sector.

Unfortunately, it is also among the most complex and least transparent. The Better Buy Project is an experiment dedicated to the belief that there's a lot of room for improvement in the way government buys products and services. We're testing this hypothesis by asking for your ideas on how to make acquisition process more open, transparent and collaborative.

The best part of this project is that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) GSA would really like to adopt some of your best ideas. Promising ideas will be selected by GSA to be piloted on an upcoming acquisition, where lessons learned will be captured for future implementation. But that really depends on us, and the ideas we're able to produce.

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What Topics Are At Issue?

This project is concerned primarily with the pre-contract-award stages of the acquisition process—the activities that take place before the government "signs on the dotted line" to buy a product or service. Those areas are:

The ultimate goal is to improve how government learns about and chooses what it buys—in other words, to make government a more informed, more effective consumer.

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What Kind of Feedback Are You Looking For?

We are looking for ideas to make federal acquisition more open, transparent, and collaborative. What does that mean?

We believe that making the process more open, transparent and collaborative will make government more likely to end up with the right item at the right price.

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What Is Your Moderation Policy?

This online forum allows you the opportunity to post comments and other information that will remain publicly viewable on this website. The site therefore operates a moderation policy to ensure that comments are appropriate and not harmful to others. Comments which include any of the following may be deleted by site administrators:

Additionally, while we invite open participation and diverse viewpoints to be shared, moderators reserve the right to remove posts which do not address some aspect of the stated purpose of this forum: To collect ideas about using collaboration and social media to improve the acquisition process. We deeply value your time and input, and our desire is to remove as few posts as possible while ensuring that a focused, constructive discussion takes place.

Finally, in addition to this policy, this site allows individual users to flag ideas as being spam, duplicate, or otherwise inappropriate. When an idea is flagged a sufficient number of times, it is automatically placed into a queue for review by moderators. We reserve the right to remove any posting that receives a sufficient number of "flags" to be placed in this queue, though will not automatically do so.

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What Are The Terms Of Service And Privacy Policy?

This site is hosted using a service called UserVoice. You can read the UserVoice Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

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Better Buy is a joint project of the National Academy of Public Administration and the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council in conjunction with the General Services Administration
IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM THE BETTERBUY PROJECT TEAM!
GSA FEDSIM has begun to act on the ideas you submitted by launching two acquisitions with the new BetterBuy Pilot Wiki. The new wiki, which was originally proposed in an idea on this site, will gather and utilize input from citizens outside the traditional acquisition community to improve the acquisition process. Be sure to check back with the BetterBuy Project regularly and continue to submit ideas.
-- The BetterBuy Project Team
How can we use collaboration and social media to make the federal acquisition process more efficient and effective?

The acquisition process – the way government buys goods and services – is among the most complex and least transparent aspects of government. The Better Buy Project is asking for your best ideas on how to make it more open and collaborative! Promising ideas will be selected by GSA to be piloted on future acquisitions. We are looking primarily at the pre-contract-award stages of the process – the activities that take place before the government "signs on the dotted line" to buy a product or service:


Solicitation Phase Forum

Solicitation Phase

  1. 34 votes

    Re-write Buy American Act to be less complex, enforceable. Vendors don't even know if they comply!

    by anonymous | 1 comment
  2. 33 votes

    Improve transparency and ease of submitting questions and receiving answers on solicitations

    Create a platform for industry to solicit questions associated with a solicitation that also enables government to post the answers to the questions. Could use this tool during all three components of the pre-award phase to provide industry with more information to make bid/no-bid decisions and ... more

    by marydavie | 6 comments
  3. 22 votes

    Require bids to be submitted electronically instead of multiple hard copies

    Electronic proposals will save paper, time and money. Industry spends a fortune on nice binders, high quality paper and shipping costs to submit multi-volume proposals. Electronic submission would reduce waste and cut down on production time required for each bid.

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  4. 21 votes

    Create a gov office that provides information about, supports, and then "bids" open source software

    Not enough attention is given to open source software since there's often no organization to submit the software in response to a solicitation. Also, there's often no "throat to choke" if things go wrong so acquiring open source software provides very little political cover.

    by Tim | 1 comment
  5. 14 votes

    Use tools like Adobe Captivate or the Common Craft videos to demo technical aspects of the work

    Show us how to complete forms to save all of us time(both in completion and review!). Also, ease the training of new employees on repetitive tasks and builds a valuable repository beyond specific solicitations.

    by Andrew Krzmarzick | 0 comments
  6. 12 votes

    Use standardized RFQ data to auto-populate task management systems

    This implies that RFQ data will be standardized, but then make use of this data throughout the lifecycle of the task. This implies that multiple agencies would use the same system. They should. There are too many.

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  7. 12 votes

    Past Performance

    The government gives a heavy weight to a firm's past performance. If the firm does not have past performance, it is given an evaluation of zero. Submitted employee resumes should be given some kind of positive evaluation.

    by Robert Ramos | 1 comment

    Can we dig a little deeper into this one? Can Web 2.0 or social media be used (or how can it be used) to make past performance information more useable or more widely available? Are current PPIRS reporting formats adequate?

    Peter G. Tuttle, CPCM Admin
  8. 11 votes

    Using the same past performance questionnaire for multiple submissions.

    by anonymous | 2 comments
  9. 8 votes

    Allow vendors to get solicitation information via RSS feeds.

    So often pre-solicitation and solicitation information clogs our email (both in terms of number of messages and size of files). It would be great to subscribe to a feed for automatic updates as they're made.

    by Andrew Krzmarzick | 1 comment
  10. 7 votes

    Require standard RFQ data to minimize Q&A effort and save time

    All RFQs, regardless of agency, have a set of common standard information. Require the CO or COR to populate this data upon releasing a solicitation. Examples include: 1) Is this a T&M, Cost Plus, or genuine FFP contract type; 2) What period of performance should bidders bid for; 3) Is there ... more

    by anonymous | 1 comment
  11. 6 votes

    Implement current Social-Networking tools into FBO

    This idea seems to have come up here and there. It would be very easy to modify FBO rather than create an entire new GPE system. Requirements posted on FBO should have a twitter function to keep vendors updated and would open up communication about the requirement between the Government and ven... more

    by William | 0 comments
  12. 6 votes

    Apply TrackDailyGoals.com and #dailygoals hashtag on Twitter to implement public transparency

    TrackDailyGoals, while useful for project management and goal tracking, is unused for public accountability and transparency. It could have an amazing impact when a individual wants to see whether a specific person or agency is completing their daily goals and over what period of time.

    The full ... more

    by anonymous | 2 comments

    Could you please add an example of what type of TrackDailyGoals posting would be be meaningful to you as a member of the federal acquisition community? Thanks.

    Peter G. Tuttle, CPCM Admin
  13. 6 votes

    electronic files for solicitations and contracts

    ...require that all agencies maintain and archive their contract files in electronic format, according to common standards.This would save a lot of trees, as well as a lot of storage space for binders full of paper contract files. Signature copies can be scanned in or electronic signatures used, ... more

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  14. 6 votes

    Improve Government and Industry Carbon Footprint

    An Executive Order (10-05-09) entitled FEDERAL LEADERSHIP IN ENVIRONMENTAL, ENERGY, AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE was just released. It appears that a way of improving the Carbon Footprint, thus complying with the intent of the Order, within Government and Industry would be to eliminate the requiremen... more

    by Skip Derick | 0 comments

    Can we dig a little deeper on this one? What ways can the use of Web 2.0 and social media in the acquisition process help government and industry reduce their respective carbon footprint? One example might be to use collorabative meeting technologies instead of face-to-face bidders conferences. What are some more?

    Peter G. Tuttle, CPCM Admin
  15. 5 votes

    cost contracts

    Stop using fixed price contracts as contractors add a 14% contingency charge on average to cover their risk. the government should self insure with cost contracts

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  16. 5 votes

    Allow pre-bid conferences via webinar to be managed by outside source with nominal fee to vendor.

    So often vendors find themselves in a position of seeing the need to attend a pre-bid yet not having the necessary funds to make the trip. The average cost to attend a meeting in 2009 is $1,039. Why not use a facilitator that will provide all participants with an electronic copy of meeting and ... more

    by Green Proposals | 0 comments
  17. 4 votes

    Make better use of online tools to enhance competition.

    Make better use of online tools to enhance competition.

    Competition is good. Online competition is better. Let the bidders come to you as the Federal buyer. Use GSA eBuy and FedBid to enhance competition and get the best deal. Saves work, time, and money. The future is online procurement. ... more

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  18. 3 votes

    Use the same flexible and comprehensive contracts with many qualified primes.

    This will facilitate the ability to standardize data and systems across mulitple agencies, save money on contract development and management, and simplify the process. Keep the contracts flexible so that agency contract officers can modifiy them with their requirements, but automate the basic acq... more

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  19. 3 votes

    Evaluate Re-use Strategy in all IT Procurements

    Re-use drives IT - from COTS, to components, to open source, to SOA, and the cloud. Just as past performance factors into evaluation so too should re-use strategy. OMB-300 asks about re-use but it should be evaluated as a commercial best practice as to how re-use is pursued.

    by Peter Gallagher | 0 comments
  20. 2 votes

    Publish prime contractors' Small Business Subcontracting Plans

    Each large federal contract contains the requirement that the prime contractor submit a written Small Business Subcontracting Plan. At the current time, there is absolutely no transparency to these plans. Subcontractors should have the right to know if their names are included in these plans. ... more

    by Chuck Schadl | 0 comments

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