The Obama administration has laid out seven steps it has taken and is now building on to make category management part of the government's procurement process, an element of a larger procurement reform effort. In a statement, officials emphasized the federal government's place as "the single largest buyer in the world," spending nearly $450 billion a year on goods and services.
"That means that the more we work together to leverage our buying power, drive more consistent practices across our agencies, share information, and reduce duplication, the better the results for the American taxpayers," the statement reads. Tom Sharpe commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration and Anne Rung, chief acquisition officer at the Office of Management and Budget, authored the statement.
Related: Read the statement.
Category management has been a part of the White House's strategy for strategic sourcing since December 2014, when the administration announced a directive to federal agencies to make the practice a priority and renamed the Strategic Sourcing Leadership group; its new name, reflecting its broadened mission, is the Category Management Leadership Council.
Category management breaks down purchases into independent offices specializing in specific products, or categories. The ultimate goal is to streamline the acquisition process by building teams adept at procurement in their categories.
The CMLC identified 10 general government categories; including IT, security, human capital and transportation and logistics, and nine additional defense categories to achieve the category management goals.
To further the goal, the White House announced that it had issued government-wide guidance for category management, established it as one of 15 Cross Agency Priority goals, noted updates to GSA's Acquisition Gateway website and its recent BPA for identity monitoring, among other developments.
Administration officials said in the statement that they expect further policy updates, including to the Acquisition Gateway site and continued development of the acquisition categories.
The seven steps in brief:
- Created a foundation document, "Government-Wide Category Management Guidance.";
- Established category management as one of 15 cross-agency priority goals;
- GSA has further improved the Acquisition Gateway, an online tool for the contracting workforce;
- Using a Spend Under Management Tiered Maturity Model to to evaluate good work already underway in some agencies;
- Identified four agencies — GSA, the Defense Department, OMB and the Office of Personnel Management — to lead at least seven of the 10 Category Centers of Excellence;
- GSA launched a Professional Services Schedule, collapsing eight previous schedules into one;
- Successfully awarded the identity protection BPAs.
