The General Services Administration has begun to seek bids for a blanket purchase agreement in support of first phase discovery and assessment initiatives under the Centers of Excellence program.
GSA said Tuesday the request for quote includes a challenge question to assess a vendor’s technical capabilities in a functional area; a scenario question to evaluate a vendor’s ability to collaborate with federal employees and other contractors in a cross-functional team; and another factor to test a contractor’s ability to send a response with regard to one functional area.
The agency said those are the three changes in the RFQ that are based on industry comments from the request for information and seek to expand GSA's opportunity to work with contractors to meet the CoE program’s technical objectives.
“The CoEs are focused on establishing a model of private/public relationships for IT modernization efforts that will prove fruitful to both sides of the partnership, and obtaining and incorporating industry feedback is a key way in which we hope to achieve that objective,†said Bob De Luca, executive director of the CoEs.
“We are striving to set best practices in all aspects of our work, from the technical aspects to the procurement process itself, including both pre- and post-award related work.â€
GSA will accept questions through March 19 and responses to the RFQ through April 1.