Final coopererative purchasing rule published

The General Services Administration has issued a final rule governing state and local use of its schedule contracts.

GSA has governed the practice, called cooperative purchasing, under an interim rule for the past year. State and local government officials are allowed to use the schedules, but only to purchase information technology products and services.

The final rule is mostly unchanged from the interim rule, but does clarify that vendors can offer additional discounts to state and local governments without invoking the price reduction clause, a provision in the schedules system that could have required vendors to offer such discounts governmentwide.