Sec. 6. Increasing competition in Federal contracting
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Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall issue guidance, including examples and templates where appropriate, on— when a wider range of projects, such as commercial or non-government, as well as Government projects, should be accepted as relevant past performance, in order to have increased competition among eligible firms with capability to perform a requirement, such as a requirement without much precedent; a means by which an agency may validate non-government past performance references, such as by requiring an official of an entity providing past performance references to attest to their authenticity and by providing verifiable contact information for the references; and use of alternative evaluation methods other than past performance that may be appropriate for a requirement without much precedent, such as demonstrations and testing of technologies as part of the proposal process.
Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall convene a working group or an appropriate existing body (in this section referred to as the working group ), to make recommendations to address the Federal Government’s shrinking vendor base and related matters. The working group convened under paragraph
(1)shall be chaired by the Administrator or a designee of the Administrator and include, at a minimum, representatives from the following departments and agencies: The General Services Administration. The Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Commerce. The Department of Defense. The Department of Health and Human Services. The Small Business Administration. Any other agencies or organizations as determined appropriate by the Administrator. The working group shall obtain input from the public, including from the APEX Accelerators program (formerly known as Procurement Technical Assistance Center
(PTAC)network) and other contractor representatives, to identify Federal procurement policies and regulations that are obsolete, overly burdensome or restrictive, not adequately harmonized, or otherwise serve to create barriers to participation in Federal contracting or unnecessarily increase bid and proposal costs. The working group shall consider the input obtained under paragraph
(3)and any other information determined to be relevant by the working group to identify legislative, regulatory, and other actions to remove barriers to qualified vendors in the procurement process, in order to build the Federal vendor base, increase competition, and address related matters. Not later than 2 years after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall, in consultation with the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, the Chief Acquisition Officers Council, the working group, and other agencies as appropriate, implement the regulatory and other non-legislative actions identified under paragraph (4), as determined necessary by the Administrator, to remove barriers to entry for those seeking to participate in Federal Government procurement. Not later than 2 years after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall brief the relevant committees of Congress on the legislative actions identified under paragraph (4), and the actions implemented under paragraph (5).