Commercial Platforms Initiative

GSA and OMB have issued their joint implementation plan for the 2018 NDAA Section 846 Procurement Through Commercial e-Commerce Portals. The implementation plan satisfies phase one of the legislation and is attached to this Interact post.

To inform the development of the implementation plan, GSA engaged industry stakeholders throughout the process, including hosting a public industry day with more than 200 in-person and more than 300 virtual attendees from a wide array of stakeholder groups. GSA also reviewed and incorporated key best practices from industry and engaged with several federal agencies to better understand their perspectives.

As part of the phase one implementation plan, GSA is recommending four legislative changes the agency views as necessary to begin the implementation of purchasing through e-commerce portals.  They are:

• To increase the micro-purchase threshold to $25,000 to facilitate simple comparison shopping for purchases made under this program;
• To empower GSA to develop modernized competition requirements for the program;
• To authorize GSA to take advantage of contractual arrangements that maximize efficiency for buyers, portal providers, and sellers; and
• To clarify and broaden the definition of ‘commercial e-commerce portals’ to take advantage of both current and future business models.

At this time, we are not soliciting comments on this plan via Interact; however we do intend to host a follow-on industry day in FY19. Stakeholder engagement will remain GSA’s highest priority throughout all phases. Please subscribe to this Interact group for further updates regarding this events and other communications related to this important initiative.  

For the full press release, please click here.