Compusearch debuts portal for e-acquisitions

Compusearch, a provider of federal government acquisition software and solutions, has unveiled an Internet portal that ties vendors into an electronic acquisition process through secure and auditable links.

The FedConnect portal works with an agency’s acquisition system in a secure environment to manage transactions and interactions among vendors, a company announcement states.

Using the portal, agencies will be able to electronically post opportunities, including all related attachments from their acquisition management system; vendors can search, review and respond to them, as well as include an unlimited number of supporting documents, according to company.

All information is retrieved electronically by the agency’s acquisition system, eliminating the need to manually key vendor data or file vendor submissions outside the electronic acquisition folder. Awards, modifications, communication and announcements take place inside the secure, bidirectional portal, providing a complete audit trail of all activity, the announcement states.

Reid Jackson, Compusearch president and chief operating officer, said FedConnect is being installed at two agencies. One of them, the U.S. Postal Service, would only say that “FedConnect is a proposal under USPS’ strategic [electronic solicitation] business case and is a recommended solution.”

Jackson said FedConnect is similar to Federal Business Opportunities, the single entry Web site for government procurement. “It’s an additive to what FedBizOpps does in that it integrates directly with back office procurement and contract writing systems to allow documents to be sent back and forth,” he said.

“We have an enterprise license,” Jackson said, “but we’ve put in a usage-based pricing model against that enterprise license so that agencies that are just piloting it or are using it for one or two specific programs don’t have to pay for an entire enterprise license.”

FedConnect will be free for all vendors and available on an around-the-clock basis.