Gov Purchasing
Introduction to Government Procurement
By Richard White
May 19, 2005, 15:20

Fedmarket.com was founded in 1995 with one main purpose: to demystify government contracting and help folks on both sides of the public procurement fence, both vendors AND government buyers. We’ve talked to a lot of government buyers and end-users over our seven-year history, and we’ve found that they often suffer the following problems and headaches:

• Finding quality vendors, particularly those selling obscure products and niche services.
• Creating sufficient competition for public procurements.
• Handling all of the paperwork required to make a purchase.
• Keeping up with a backlog of purchasing requirements.
• Meeting small, minority-, and women-owned business purchasing goals.
• Keeping up with complex and changing procurement regulations.
• Understanding and documenting specifications for complex products.
• Resolving supplier protests and complaints.
• Determining when a requirement needs to be met by a sole source.

The purpose of this new Government Purchasing series is to assist government buyers in solving these and other related problems.

As you know, there is a wealth of information on the Internet that reveals how government buyers and their agencies are dealing with purchasing issues. Indeed the resources are growing by the day, but they’re scattered about and not made available in any practical way. We hope to change all that in the 23 installments to come.

In future installments we will discuss trends in government purchasing and what these trends may mean to buyers on the job. Three major trends that will be analyzed in depth are:

1. Using the Web to Find Vendors

Government buyers can often use help in their market research efforts or in otherwise finding the right vendors, particularly when it comes to small, woman- or minority-owned vendors and obscure products and services.

Every day more and more vendors are posting capabilities information on the Internet.

The trick -- and we hope the trend -- will be for purchasing agencies and commercial firms to consolidate vendor databases and make them more readily accessible and easy to use. We’ll discuss the trends and point you to some helpful resources.

2. Public Bid Posting on the Web

Purchasing agencies have always incurred substantial solicitation "paper shuffling" costs. Smaller agencies also have had difficulty in creating enough competition for their public bids.

The Web has assisted agencies in solving these problems by providing an effective medium for posting public bids. We have identified over 5,000 agencies that are currently posting bid notices on the Web. We’ll take a look at the places that are doing this well and the places that aren’t.

3. Developing e-Procurement Systems

In their daily work, government buyers often experience problems handling required paperwork and keeping up with the always-present backlog of procurements. Public purchasing agencies are relying more and more on e-procurement systems to help make buyers more efficient. We’ll analyze the success stories, look at those systems that are leading the way, and, again, talk about what’s working well and what’s not.

To get more specific, the installments in this series will be as follows (with dates listed through November, topics subject to change):

1. Advertising Public Procurements on the Internet
2. Standards for Posting Public Bids
3. Digital Signatures
4. Government Operated e-Procurement Systems
5. Private Sector Operated e-Procurement Systems
6. Finding Vendors on the Internet
7. Great Procurement Guides
8. Great Procurement Web Sites
9. Best and Final Offers
10. Sole Source Procurements
11. Model Requests for Proposals
12. Contract Negotiations
13. What Buyers Do
14. Buyer Ethics
15. Unsolicited Proposals
16. Supplier Complaints and Protests
17. Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Contracts
18. Use of Past Performance in Supplier Evaluation
19. Establishing Superior Vendor Relationships
20. Small Business Programs
21. Women Owned Business Programs
22. Reverse Auctions
23. Performance Based Contracting

If you have thoughts on additional topics, please let us know.