The General Services Administration is working to update the schedule catalog and plans to host industry days in the next few months to get insights on how to advance the effort, Federal News Network reported Friday.
Erv Koehler, assistant commissioner of the office of general supplies and services at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said the catalog should be based on a market basket at the item level.
“If I can get a smaller catalog that is easier for me to manage and easier for you upload and manage too, then I have to be faster on the modifications side,” he told FNN in an interview. “I want to use the order level materials authority to allow orders to process without being on schedule.”
Koehler noted that he is trying to employ existing authorities to make that happen and that he is open to other suggestions.
GSA also aims to reduce the number of listed products in the catalog as part of efforts to enhance E-Buy and the GSA Advantage.
“There’s a lot of things out there that we need to manage better. We realize there’s a little bit of risk associated with that, so we’re going to go through the analytics side of it and once we get the code cracked, we’ll be moving out [to whittle down the number of products in the catalog],” Koehler said.
He also talked about the efforts GSA has initiated to modify schedule contracts and adjust prices to keep up with inflationary changes.
