GSA: Expand fee program

The General Services Administration has proposed officially expanding the use of Industrial Funding Fee payments to support programs other than the Multiple Award Schedules.

The IFF is a percentage of reported sales under MAS contracts and is negotiated into the contract pricing. Officials announced Dec. 28, 2012, that they want to amend regulations on their use of the fee to cover expenses for other Federal Acquisition Service programs. The fee’s original purpose was to allow FAS to offer MAS customers a basic level of service. Under the proposed revision to the GSA Acquisition Regulation, use of the fee would extend beyond recovering costs for the MAS program, which include employee training and encouraging more state and local governments to use the schedules. However, GSA would have to notify customers that it intends to use the money across FAS.

“The proposed revisions will reflect the current use of the IFF to include the ability to offset losses in other Federal Acquisition Service programs and fund initiatives that benefit other FAS programs,” the Federal Register notice states.

Officials are making the changes based on the GSA Modernization Act, which became law in 2006. It created FAS by joining the Federal Supply Service and the Federal Technology Service. Furthermore, it granted GSA the ability to apply the net operating revenue from the IFF to more than a simple recoupment of the costs involved in running the MAS program.

In addition, GSA’s inspector general issued a report in February 2012 recommending that agency officials improve transparency by notifying MAS customers about its use of the IFF money to fund initiatives that benefit or offset losses in other FAS programs.