The General Services Administration selected three e-commerce companies—Amazon Business, Fisher Scientific and Overstock.com—to experiment with online portals for lower-cost federal purchases through its Commercial Platforms program, the agency announced Friday.
The digital purchasing providers will participate in a proof-of-concept with the agency for up to three years, through which GSA hopes to help modernize government procurement by offering federal officials the capability to more easily buy products priced under the $10,000 micropurchase threshold via an agency-approved, streamlined e-marketplace. Increased spending insights and a new view into open-market online spending, outside of in-place contracts, are also being sought in the process.
The platforms will likely be available for use in the next 30 days, according to the agency, and the pilot will “start small” but be perfected through recurring testing along the way. There will also be continued opportunities for stakeholder feedback as it evolves.
“The e-commerce portals proof-of-concept is an important step in offering a solution for purchasing commercial products online that protects our federal supply chain against malicious and counterfeit goods, furthering our national security,” GSA Administrator Emily Murphy said in a statement.
The move directly supports one of four cornerstone projects within the agency’s Federal Marketplace Strategy, and its original impetus traces back to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. Section 846 directs GSA to produce a procurement program through which agency officials can purchase low-cost products through commercial e-commerce portals. Though Congress initially called for a $250,000 acquisition threshold, the agency lowered it to the $10,000 maximum after garnering insights from industry and others.
But GSA’s ..
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