OFPP: Take our survey...please

To get a better picture of how the government uses reverse auctions, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy is conducting a survey. To help ensure it gets a good sample, OFPP is asking agency officials to have their employees respond to the survey. “We need your cooperation,” Paul Denett, OFPP administrator, wrote in the Nov. 27 memo. “We need the widest possible dissemination to all agency contracting professionals, regardless of their level of experience with reverse auctions.” The agency’s Integrated Acquisition Environment program office will send out a survey link in the next few weeks. In a reverse auction, the primary objective is achieving the best overall price as bidders bid down the prices. The Internet has reduced the time it takes to conduct auctions because it provides a means for accomplishing anonymous, real-time bidding in hours. Officials want to determine if online buying methods are being used to the maximum potential and where there is room for improvement, according to an August Federal Register notice. Officials hope the information will show what types of items sell well online through services such as reverse auctions. In addition, officials want to gather data on  features that should be provided by online procurement services that agencies use.