Effective June 23, 2016, General Services Administration (GSA) has issued the final rule to amend GSA Acquisition Regulation (GSAR) to include clauses that require vendors to report transactional data from orders placed against certain Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contracts, Government-wide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC), and Government-wide Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) Contracts.
Transactional data refers to the information generated when the Government purchases goods or services. It includes details including descriptions, part numbers, quantities, and prices paid for the items purchased. GSA has determined that collecting transactional data is important to improve competition, lower pricing, and increase transparency.
The purpose of the Transactional Data Reporting rule is to transform price disclosure and related policies for these types of GSA contractual vehicles and “improve the value taxpayers receive when purchases are made using these vehicles.” Participating vendors will no longer be subject to the existing requirements for Commercial Sales Practices (CSP) disclosures and Price Reductions Clause (PRC) basis of award monitoring. Vendors have identified CSP and PRC as some of the most burdensome under the Schedules program.
The rule contains new clauses that require vendors to electronically report certain specific details on transactions that GSA will use as additional market intelligence to make “smarter buying decisions and share the information with its agency customers so they can also make smarter buying decisions when using GSA’s various contractual instruments.” Per GSA, switching to the transactional data reporting will result in a “substantial burden reduction” to its vendors. GSA states that the overall net burden reduction will be $29 million a year when accounting for all vendors who will be subject to the rule.
GSA will introduce the new Transactional Data Reporting clause to its FSS contracts in phases, beginning with a pilot for select Schedules and Special Item Numbers. The pilot will involve eight Schedules reaching approximately 30 percent of GSA’s FSS contracts that account for more than 40 percent of the GSA FSS sales volume. The eight schedules in the pilot are:
• Schedule 58 I, Professional Audio/Video, Telemetry/Tracking, Recording/Reproducing and Signal Data Solutions: All SINs
• Schedule 72, Furnishing and Floor Coverings: All SINs
• Schedule 03FAC, Facilities Maintenance and Management: All SINs
• Schedule 51 V, Hardware Superstore: All SINs
• Schedule 75, Office Products: All SINs
• Schedule 73, Food Service, Hospitality, Cleaning Equipment and Supplies, Chemicals and Services: All SINs
• Schedule 00CORP, The Professional Services Schedule: SINs 871-1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, and 7 (Professional Engineering Services)
• Schedule 70, General Purpose Information Technology Equipment, Software, and Services: SINs 132-8 (Purchase of Hardware), 132-32, 33, and 34 (Software), and 132-54 and 55 (COMSATCOM)
GSA has also created a Transactional Data Reporting clause for all new GWACs and Government-wide IDIQ contracts and may apply the clause to any existing contracts in this class that do not contain other transactional data requirements.
FSS contracts managed by the Department of Veterans Affairs are not included in the pilot and therefore will not be impacted by changes made by this rule.
As with any newly implemented rule or regulation that is supposed to make government contracts smarter, leaner, and less burdensome, I always question whether they really do. Only time will tell whether this new process lives up to the hype. I suspect that current GSA vendors who have converted all their systems to accommodate the CSP and PRC methods will not be very happy to change over to the new and “improved” transactional data reporting method.
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