GSA’s One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS) has become quite the “go to” solution for procurement of a wide variety of professional services for the federal government.
GSA created OASIS when the saw the need for agencies to procure non-IT services through a convenient contract vehicle. Agencies can still procure professional services through GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules Program. The difference with OASIS is that it consists of standardized labor categories and allows for all contract types at the task-order level, including cost types.
The program has two contracts, OASIS and OASIS Small Business (SB). Both are multiple award, Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts intended to “provide flexible and innovative solutions for complex professional services.”
They span across multiple professional services. They allow for any contract type, including hybrids. They allow the inclusion of “additional support” (Other Direct Costs (ODC) at the task order level. They allow both Commercial and Non-Commercial requirements.
Services include:
- Program management
- Management consulting
- Logistics
- Engineering
- Scientific
- Financial
Labor categories are aligned with occupations and both OASIS contracts offer “apples to apples” proposed rate comparisons at the task order level and cover over 1,000 typical industry job titles.
The program includes an automated estimating tool that can used to build the Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE)! It incorporates statistics based on Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) direct rates and OASIS Awardee indirect rates and prices and can index pricing for up to 640 precise geographic locations.
OASIS manages its SB program and goals through awards in every SB category, allowing customer agencies to receive small business credit. Agencies can reserve task orders for exclusive competition among:
- 8(a) business development participants
- HUBZone SB concerns
- Service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) concerns
- Economically disadvantaged women-owned small business concerns
- Women-owned small business concerns eligible under the Women-Owned SB Program.
OASIS has no program ceiling, a five-year base and one five-year option, and provides for long term planning for complex program requirements.
Further advocating the use of OASIS, on June 16, 2016, the Department of Defense’s Procurement and Acquisition Policy (DPAP) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the General Services Administration to use its OASIS contract vehicles for its non-military “4th Estate” agencies, which includes all organizational entities in the Department of Defense that are not in the Military Departments or the Combatant Commands. (Reference DPAP PowerPoint slide deck on this subject.)
Tiffany Hixson, professional services category executive, said in a statement that “OASIS vehicles will:
- Reduce costs associated with award/admin of multiple IDIQ and/or standalone contracts
- Reduce the lead time and administrative effort it takes to acquire complex professional services
- Promote small business usage within DOD’s knowledge-based services domain
- Gain insight into spend volume and labor types and costs
- Eliminate the need for Ordering COs to evaluate proposals from poor performers”
Well, who wouldn’t love OASIS? Me, that’s who.
First, it takes procurement of professional services out of the hands of the agency contracting officers. It leaves them with virtually nothing to do during the procurement except send out Requests for Quotes and push the button to award a task order. It circumvents the way the process is supposed to work. The procurement team of customer, program manager, and contracting working in unison on a common goal for a requirement that they understand is the heart of federal acquisition. These are the folks that KNOW the requirement. They have to live with the results of the contract once awarded. They have a vested interest in the outcome. The OASIS process removes the stakeholders from the equation and I don’t think that’s a good thing to do EVER!
Second, it’s way too easy. I know, you are thinking “Well isn’t that a good thing? You keep talking about the ill-trained, unmentored, inexperienced people who are today’s COs. Why worry about them doing their job?” Well, because it is their job. A good CO understands his customers and will do everything in his/her power to get them what they need at the best possible price. I’ve spent countless hours figuring out how to work within the system to get a contract awarded while still addressing the end user’s concerns or preferences. OASIS will make these new COs into automatons. Don’t have to learn about defining requirements. Check! Don’t have to conduct a source selection. Check! Don’t have to identify the correct labor categories. Check! Don’t have to develop the IGCE. Check! Don’t have to negotiate. Check! Don’t have to do evaluations. Check!
Let’s talk a little about OASIS and small businesses. Using OASIS allows the government to circumvent the normal process of determining whether the work should go to a small business. While it’s true that multiple award IDIQ contracts have been awarded under OASIS SB, that does not guarantee those small businesses will ever receive one dime of federal money. The “cafeteria” style of OASIS SB allows the ordering activity CO to pick and choose who he wants to go to or solicit. My opinion is that a lot of small businesses who have received awards under OASIS SB are sitting waiting on profits to roll in that will never come.
How about an agency’s small business goals? Well, first of all DOD has met all its socioeconomic goals for the last three years so that’s really not an issue, is it? But for the sake of argument, let’s assume there are still agencies that are not meeting their goals (like GSA itself – but that’s another story). So the agency does get credit whenever they award a new task order under OASIS, but only for the value of the task order itself. So it may take a while for these task order dollars to amount to enough to effect agency’s goals.
Additionally, OASIS pricing homogenizes all the contractors. Everything seems to come down to rates with little regard for expertise, regardless of how the RFP is written. So every contractor bids the lowest rates they can stomach, then every contractor struggles to staff the resulting task order because they can’t afford to pay a competitive rate for talent. How many recompetes have the incumbents lost to lower priced bidders who then offer the incumbent employees their jobs back at a lower salary? And what follows? The most talented folks take their skills somewhere else. Those that stay are disgruntled from day 1.
So OASIS virtually guarantees mediocre performance at best. You get what you pay for. Any agency that uses OASIS can be assured that they’ll get a low price. And all the resulting problems. I understand that sometimes the lowest price is ok. But in your personal life, do you choose the lowest price for everything you buy? Joe’s discount orthodontics for your kids? The cheapest electrician to wire your house? Would you let someone else decide who will perform your surgery based on a system like OASIS? Probably not.
Bottom line is that I am not and have never been a fan of these large overarching “umbrella” contracts under which all agencies can issue orders. These large contracts fall in and out of favor over time. We had many of these in the mid-80s, and then they disappeared because the end result was that they were not doing what they were intended to do. Nothing was more efficient and no one was saving any money. Then the same thing again in the 90s and 00s. So I imagine that OASIS will trend up and down just like similar contracts did in the past.
I still believe the agency CO is the best person (regarding of all my ranting about their inexperience) to be taking these procurements from start to finish.