Tag Archives: category management

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. 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.

Lisa Hershman, chief management officer at the Department of Defense (DoD), said the CMO office’s new review of operations and spending within DoD’s “fourth estate” agencies has resulted in $11 billion in cost reductions.

The General Services Administration (GSA) has launched a web-based tool in a move to consolidate information on the agency’s governmentwide contracting activities and visualize the allocation of contract obligations.

Laura Stanton, deputy assistant commissioner for the information technology category at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service, will serve as acting assistant commissioner of ITC in June, Federal News Network reported Monday. She will take over the responsibilities of Bill Zielinski, who will step down from his role on June 5 after three decades of federal service to serve as a chief information officer of a large city on the west coast.

The U.S. Air Force prepares to roll out a dashboard designed to support the management of custodial services across installations. Air Force Installation Contracting Center will implement the custodial services dashboard that allows base operators to manage costs and categories of essential services and goods, USAF said Monday.

The U.S. Army has generated $1.2 billion in savings through the use of a new data-driven, category-based procurement process, said an executive within the service branch.

Michael Wooten, administrator of the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy, said he intends to expand the practice of data sharing between federal agencies and cloud service providers, FCW reported Tuesday.

Michael Wooten, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy within the Office of Management and Budget, said he has a set of priorities to advance and transform the government acquisition process. One is to build on current efforts to leverage the purchasing power through category management, Nextgov reported Monday.

Soraya Correa, chief procurement officer at the Department of Homeland Security, said DHS’ component agencies need to identify acquisition programs to be suitable for their operations amid the federal government’s increasing focus on “best-in-class” contracts, FCW reported Friday. 

The Department of Health and Human Services is preparing to transition to the production phase its “Reimagined - Buy Smarter” program, which uses artificial intelligence to accelerate data analysis to identify cost-saving concepts and help with price comparisons, Federal News Network reported Friday. “Buy Smarter is an innovative opportunity for HHS to look at our category management, break down some stove pipes, and consolidate our requirements across the department,” Lori Ruderman, senior adviser and co-lead for Buy Smarter, said on the network’s Federal Monthly Insights - Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning.