ASIA specs

The provisions of the Acquisition System Improvement Act would, among other things:

Create an acquisition exchange program to permit temporary trades among agencies and private-sector companies. Acquisition professionals would gain first-hand experience and insight into how the entities on the other side of the fence operate.

Add more initiatives to share-in-savings contracts to increase their use. Under the agreements, contractors take on more of the financial risk of projects, and potentially reap greater rewards if they succeed in saving money for their customers.

Create simplified acquisition procedures for commercial items. The legislation would extend until Jan. 1, 2009, the streamlined provisions for the award of contracts valued at up to $5 million for commercial items.

Provide redundancy in procurement of telecommunications services. As much as possible, agency officials would have to ensure that telecom services include physically separate entry points into buildings and are routed over a variety of local network facilities to make sure that the failure of a single component or entry point would not cripple the network.

Allow agency-level acquisition protests. The legislation would provide a stay of the award for 20 working days so that the agency could rule on the protest.

Consolidate various agency boards of contract appeals into two boards, one at the Defense Department and one at the General Services Administration.

Source: House Government Reform Committee