GSA to hire outside contracting help

The General Services Administration is planning to hire contract employees to provide acquisition and contract administration support in the agency's 11 regional offices across the country. GSA envisions hiring from a dozen to more than 100 workers, who will fulfill an array of basic duties traditionally performed by federal employees.

The agency outlined its plans in a draft statement of work released Tuesday to potential bidders. GSA will award the procurement, called Nationwide Contracting Support, using a blanket purchase agreement, which lets the agency use a company's existing contract to order certain types of services. The contract will be awarded under the agency's federal supply schedules, a set of prenegotiated deals for goods and services.

Under the draft statement of work, the contractor would provide "advice, recommendations, and document support to multiple offices in all areas of the acquisition requirements phase." Specific tasks include:

• Preparing statements of work, statements of objectives and other pre-award documents, and developing performance measures for contracts and evaluation criteria;
• Providing advice and recommendations for acquisition strategy, including contracting methods, competition strategies, and cost;
• Preparing independent cost estimates, which are the government's own estimates of the cost of a proposed acquisition;
• Conducting market research to identify potential contractors and contract vehicles, whether GSA or other agencies' contracts;
• Assisting in the evaluation of contractor proposals, including the preparation of formal source selection plans and justifications for sole source contracting, when necessary;
• Preparing formal solicitations;
• Assisting government contracting officers in discussions with bidders on specific procurements, and preparing final contract documents;
• Exercising award options and modifications to contracts, and resolving problems.

The new contract could signal that GSA is understaffed and having trouble fulfilling its normal contract administration duties as new work continues to pour in.

"Everybody is realizing across the government that there really aren't enough qualified acquisition professionals," said Ray Bjorklund, a senior vice president with Federal Sources Inc., a government contracting consulting firm in McLean, Va. The staffing shortage isn't unique to GSA, Bjorklund said. Skilled contracting officers and acquisition specialists are a vanishing breed as they reach retirement age and leave government.

"There aren't enough of those kinds of people to go around," Bjorklund said. He added that, in all likelihood, GSA is looking to corporations for help because once many seasoned contracting specialists retire, they take jobs in the private sector. In that case, the government might be re-hiring its former employees.

"The federal government routinely relies on industry to provide acquisition support services," said Mary Alice Johnson, a GSA spokeswoman. "The nationwide [support contract] will enable GSA to better serve the needs of its customers."

But an industry source, who has seen the GSA statement of work, was skeptical that many companies would want to bid on a contract that puts heavy demands on its employees. GSA's regional offices, where the support employees would work, are scattered across the United States. "Who has enough low-priced bodies to send all around the country?" said the source, who asked not to be identified because the GSA procurement is still pending.

GSA has been criticized for how its regional office employees have performed over the years. The agency's inspector general has documented widespread misuse of contracts and violation of procurement regulations by GSA's Federal Technology Service. Most of the job requirements spelled out in the new statement of work are specific areas in which the inspector general found that some GSA employees were deficient.

In the statement of work, GSA also addresses the potential conflict of interest that could arise if corporate employees are involved in the awarding and administration of contracts to companies with which they may be affiliated. Contractors must obtain written agreements from employees that they "will not discuss, divulge or disclose" any contract-sensitive information to outside parties or others in their organization except those directly involved with providing contract support.

The conflict of interest provisions appear especially stringent for a government contract, said Bjorklund, who was shown a copy of the GSA document. It could preclude larger government contractors, such as systems integration firms, from competing, since many of them do such a variety of business with the government that their employees could frequently be in a position to help write contracts for which the companies would bid. Bjorklund speculated, therefore, that smaller companies with more of a niche in government services would be best positioned to compete for the work.

Meanwhile, GSA managers are working on a reorganization of two divisions of the agency. The Federal Technology Service and the Federal Supply Service are being combined, in order to eliminate redundancies and streamline the procurement process. Each organization provides contract support, including many of the same duties called for in the support contract, to other government agencies.

Johnson said the new support contract is not connected to the reorganization.