On January 9 the Coalition will begin our “2013 Myth-Buster” Forum series. The Forum, “Continuing the Dialogue: Planning for the GSA Expo 2013” will be held at the Crystal Gateway Marriot from 8 am to 11:30 am. The 2013 GSA Expo is scheduled for the week of May 13 in Orlando. The GSA Expo is one the leading acquisition training and marketing events. The GSA Expo provides thousands of hours of acquisition training for government and contractor acquisition professionals. Historically, it has also been a wonderful “Myth-Busters” event fostering important dialogue among and between GSA, its customer agencies and contractors! Given the budgetary challenges we are facing, the Expo provides an efficient and effective means to train and engage all sectors of the procurement community to improve the operation and use of GSA’s government-wide contracting programs. The Expo is GSA’s opportunity to demonstrate its positive role and contributions to the whole federal procurement system!
On January 9, Tami Riggs, FAS Assistant Commissioner for Customer Accounts and Research (CAR) and her team will provide an update on GSA’s planning for the Expo. This month booth sales will begin for the Expo floor—and Tami and her team will provide updates on the Expo floor layout, booth availability and pricing, registration costs , events and training. In addition, as the Coalition has heard from throughout the procurement community, significant attendance and participation by GSA’s acquisition corps is vital to the continued success of the GSA Expo. We look forward to an important and engaging discussion with Tami and her team!
As next week will be the first full work week of 2013, the Coalition will be kicking off the year with a blog post that will list “Thirteen Thoughts (with predictions) for 2013.” The focus will be on thirteen key thoughts regarding the operation and management of our procurement system. Here’s an initial thought: As our federal government addresses ongoing fiscal challenges, GSA and its government-wide acquisition contracting programs (e.g. the Multiple Awards Schedules, GWACs, and travel contracts) continue to provide a streamlined, efficient and competitive process for customer agencies to acquire service and product solutions to their requirements. By leveraging the contracting resources at GSA, customer agencies can save time and money! However, there remains unfilled potential for GSA’s contracting programs to deliver best value solutions to customer agencies. GSA has an opportunity to focus on simplifying the contracting and task order competition process to obtaining additional value and savings for customer agencies, taxpayers, GSA and its contractors. More on this in my “Thirteen Thoughts (with predictions) for 2013” next week!
