The General Services Administration has issued a plan for the establishment of an e-commerce portal that can be used by federal agencies to buy commercial products and services, Nextgov reported Friday.GSA released the implementation plan Friday and said it will work with the Office of Management and Budget to conduct market research next year with plans to test the e-commerce portal by the end of fiscal 2019 and deploy the platform by fiscal 2020.
The plan includes legislative changes Congress should carry out to facilitate the procurement of commercial off-the-shelf items through the e-commerce portal and one of the recommendations is to increase the micro-purchase threshold for items procured through the portal to $25,000 from $5,000 for the Defense Department and $10,000 for civilian agencies.
GSA asked Congress to change the definition of “commercial e-commerce portal†to include various business models for electronic procurement and modify the application of competition requirements in order to include the methods set by the GSA administrator for the procurement of items through the portal.
“This opportunity to increase competition and improve transparency in the acquisition process can greatly reduce the burden the current processes place on both our acquisition workforce and industry partners,†said Emily Murphy, GSA administrator and a 2018 Wash100 recipient.
The agency created the implementation after it solicited feedback in December 2017 and held a public meeting in January to discuss the proposed e-commerce portal.
