Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Anne Rung and Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Tom Sharpe have outlined the seven steps that the administration has completed to implement category management across government.
Rung and Sharpe wrote in a White House blog entry posted Wednesday that the category management approach to acquisition works to strengthen the federal government’s buying power and drive savings, efficiency and performance.
Since the launch of the governmentwide implementation efforts in January, Rung and Sharpe said the administration has released a foundation document or guidance to provide information such as the key participants and their roles and responsibilities in the program.
Category management is now also one of the 15 established Cross Agency Priority goals, while the General Services Administration has improved the Acquisition Gateway online tool and launched the Professional Services Schedule.
Acquisition Gateway works to provide category-based acquisition information and tools to the government contracting workforce, who can also use the new GSA schedule to streamline the acquisition of professional services.
According to the blog entry, the government has also adopted a Spend Under Management Tiered Maturity Model and assigned GSA, the Defense Department, Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management to lead the majority of the Category Management Centers of Excellence.
The new Identity Monitoring, Data Breach Response and Protection Services blanket purchase agreements is an example of a contract with requirements based on category management practices, Rung and Sharpe said.
