Michael Wooten, administrator of the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), has released a memo outlining frictionless acquisition strategies agencies can implement to reduce procurement administrative lead time (PALT).
For the acquisition planning and presolicitation phase, OFPP cited the use of a facilitator to help the integrated program team develop performance work statements and other key requirement outputs and adoption of the acquisition requirements roadmap tool, according to the memo released Thursday.
The memo, which establishes a common definition of PALT, calls for agencies to conduct interactive question-and-answer sessions with vendors prior to the release of a solicitation and provide target or estimated price in solicitation during the second phase of acquisition.
For Phase 3 of the procurement process, frictionless strategies that agencies can implement include technical demonstration, product demonstration, video proposal, on-the-spot consensus, confidence rating, advisory downselect, streamlined documentation, comparative evaluation, highest technically rated offeror and performance evaluation modernization.
For the final phase, OFPP urges agencies to test how robotics process automation could help a contracting officer reduce the time in determining that a potential awardee is responsible.
