The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued additional guidelines to help ensure the resiliency of the federal acquisition workforce and contractors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michael Rigas, acting deputy director for management at OMB, issued on Tuesday a memo that includes a set of frequently asked questions meant to provide additional guidance and examples from agency activities to assist acquisition professionals as they deal with the impacts of the pandemic.
The questions address acquisition efficiencies, ways to track procurement activities and paid leave for contractor employees under Section 3610 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, among others.
OMB presented several examples of remote strategies to support acquisition work, including virtual industry days, virtual requirements development, video proposals, virtual technical demonstration, remote peer reviews, virtual inspection and remote technical evaluation and source selection.
OMB listed other category management tools and resources that could help agencies identify contract platforms for goods and services to meet the requirements in responding to the pandemic and addressed the use of purchase cards when making open market purchases.
