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The General Services Administration in April published a draft outlining standards for software that federal agencies use to write contracts, with the aim to streamline the acquisition process and provide better interoperability among contracting and financial systems.

To write contract and purchase orders, agencies use applications called Federal Acquisition Systems, which are often commercial software. The applications standardize the tasks of writing a contract proposal or request for information by automatically inserting language and clauses required by the Federal Acquisition Regulation. The process includes myriad rules and regulations contained in the FAR, which are highly prescribed and involve distinct courses of action based on the circumstances of the contract and the agency.

The contract-writing applications, developed by several software companies, typically are not compatible with each other or with financial management systems. By establishing a common set of guidelines, GSA hopes the contract-writing systems will be compatible with the financial management line of business, further automating the process from the point of the initial writing of the contract to the final action of payment to the contractor.

"It's much like passing information from one individual to another; it actually loses a degree of clarity unless it's passed the same way all along the life cycle," said Earl Warrington, director of the integrated acquisition environment for GSA's Office of the Chief Acquisition Officer. "Now we are going to start passing this data along a variety of back-office applications," which should ensure greater speed and accuracy.

Warrington said the greatest challenge to writing the draft was getting the technical requirements correct so contract-writing systems could "talk" to the federal financial system and the central contract writing system. Without such integration, agencies are forced to rely on employees manually re-entering information from one system into another, a process that can be both time-consuming and mistake prone.

Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer for the federal consulting firm FedSources Inc. in McLean, Va., said the standards would reduce the need to repeatedly input the same information manually. "Every time you put a human in the process, there is the possibility that something could get" entered incorrectly, he said. "There are horror stories about federal procurement data because there are humans involved."

"If you are going to use a GSA Schedule for instance, you have to write the order a certain way, using certain clauses and conditions," Bjorklund said. "However, it's still a very complex process that requires a great deal of judgment and discretion on the part of the contracting officer or specialist."

Warrington said the guidelines also would allow contracting officers to share contract data more easily by standardizing the format and would provide greater accuracy and timeliness.

Working with members of the federal acquisition community, it took GSA more than two and a half years to write the first draft of the requirements, he said. The agency is accepting comments for the next 60 days, after which it will spend up to 120 days reviewing the comments. GSA will then release a second draft.

COMMENTS

• This sounds like it is something new that GSA is doing but in fact, the Department of State implemented such a system call the Global Financial Management System (Momentum) that has two modular, one for financial transactions and the other for acquisitions that speak to each other. Anyway, just though I drop this note that this is not new. Victor M. Munoz Posted May 13, 2008 9:08 AM
• Just yesterday my manager and I were discussing the need for allowing systems time to update new FAR clauses within the system so that compliance is met. Thirty to forty-five days from the day the clause hits the street would be reasonable or notifying agencies thirty to forty-five days before it hits the street. Updating clauses in a contract writing system is not a one day task. A change request has to be submitted to the contractor and approved by both parties. The task has to be worked into the contractor's schedule, the change has to be made and tested, and then the employees need to be notified when the new clause(s) are available in their system. Ellen Clayton Posted May 13, 2008 8:04 AM
• The only way to improve Federal aquisition process is to get rid of the FAR's and use accepted commercial practices. All new systems do is automate the paperwork in a disturbingly inefficient and ineffective process. The FAR's are the problem with Federal contracting, not the answer. DoD Employee Posted May 12, 2008 9:19 AM