Did It Really Have to be This Hard? My Experience in Government Contracting Research.

This is a repost of a LinkedIn Article that I have posted today.

My thoughts as written by me:

Finally, after all these years I have spotted a great answer posted to a Question and Answer (Q&A) section of a Federal Government Contracting procurement. The Contracting office listed the answer to the incumbent question in the following format: “Contract # and go to www.fpds.gov “ in order to locate the information. I like this answer since it puts the onus on the company to get to the information and gets a very mundane but important piece of information about any procurement out of the way. Thus benefiting the contracting office by saving time and ultimately, in my opinion, limiting the number of submitted questions in the long run.  In my years of Government Contracting (GovCon) research, finding the incumbent was important for every opportunity I had to look in to either through researching opportunities to add into the company’s procurement database for clients to search or for providing support based on client questions/requests.  In a quick conclusion and to restate, this answer saves a lot of time and effort on my side as well as the contracting office side of the procurement.

From my experience, most of the Federal procurement do not state the incumbent information directly in the procurement announcements from Sources Sought Notices to the release of the Request for Proposal (RFP)/solicitation. While there are some of these notices/postings that do provide incumbent information, and always appreciated ones that do, there are way too many contracting offices that have some sort of aversion to providing this information. I am sure that the contracting offices have their reasons, processes, and such but it ultimately is just a way to delay, make things needlessly harder, and even create a competitive disadvantage while submitting proposals. Unless the information is tied to a “black” (classified) program or related Department/Agency, this information is public knowledge and is one reason why the contract document itself is available through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request. The Government also keeps a public database of this information under the website www.fpds.gov (Federal Procurement Database System – Next Generation or FPDS). While great, it is not always possible to verify or tie contract information to a current procurement since data is entered differently on a per record basis.

As for FOIA, in obtaining this information, I have run into numerous Contracting Officer’s who attempted to weaponize this process. I would receive a response that you have to ask this question by submitting a FOIA request. However, FOIA is to obtain documents NOT ask questions. By providing this answer, the Contracting Office is redirecting resources erroneously as well as deflecting workload (I am sure the offices are understaffed and quite busy). This is another reason why I like the Contract # plus www.fpds.gov response, it is quick, gives the information to all, and the Contracting Office gets to move on to more important tasks. Getting back to the FOIA portion of my experience, there were multiple times where I received you must submit a request from the contracting office. I simply replied with, “I have submitted FOIA requests in this manner previously only to get the wrong information which caused a competitive disadvantage. FOIA is to be used to obtain documents and the only way to assure I get the correct document is to include the contract number in the request.” I’d taken the RFP/Solicitation number of the prior contract as a answer before since this is enough information to locate/confirm the procurement history. This was my last resort response since I must play a balancing act by not becoming a pest, since the contracting office contact, could be working on multiple procurements, and getting the information. Unless the program/contract was classified, I consider the FOIA answer lazy and a misuse of resources. It puts the requestor and contracting office at odds needlessly.

It was refreshing seeing the response by the contracting office contact in the Q&A for the procurement I was researching. I cannot help to think how much time it would save if this information was provided in this manner from the start of the procurement posting process or released to everyone at the same time in a Q&A response. I am sure that the contracting office has their reasons for not providing the incumbent info in responses but it does set up for needlessly wasting time, effort, and frustration. As a researcher, I have already tried to find incumbent information prior to reaching out to the contracting office. The whole reason for asking the question is that there was no way to tie information pieces I found together especially for a piece of information that everyone wants or would like to know for every procurement. Just like FPDS, as mentioned previously, there are fields in existence within various Federal Government Contracting (GovCon) applications that can be used to verify information but not every office populates this information which is another reason to reach out and ask questions but that is a different story for another day. I just wanted to write this since I was obviously struck by this simple format that was provided by the Contracting Office after all these years. I hope there would be more to come.

I am done with my experience and point of view. The below revolves more around fact, at least as provided by ChatGPT.