Cover Letter - Amended.pdf

Federal Acquisition Service

January 8, 2020

Per our letter dated December 17th, GSA is taking corrective action to the Commercial e-Marketplace

Acquisition solicitation package. The attached amendment is made in response to a pre-award agency-level protest, which was dismissed on November 26th. Included in this cover letter are a summary of the changes made, and are intended to clarify ambiguities and strengthen the focus on seeking the commercial practices that meet GSA’s desired outcomes. As stated in the Amended Solicitation, only offerors that submitted a response before the close of the November 15, 2019 solicitation will be allowed to revise their Volume 1 and Volume 2 proposals under this Amended solicitation.

New proposals will not be accepted by the government.

Changes to the solicitation do not affect Phase I proposals but will affect what is to be submitted and evaluated in Phase II proposals. As such, we are not requiring a revised Phase I proposal from offerors, however you may submit an updated proposal Phase I within one week (by January 15, 2020 by 2:00 PM, EST) to Dominic.Lackey@gsa.gov and Sarah.Duncan@gsa.gov should you wish to make adjustments after reviewing the amended package. In the event you choose to submit an updated package, please provide a ‘tracked changes’ or red-line edit version so evaluators can easily identify what has been updated.

Phase I evaluations will conclude within a few weeks of the amended solicitation close date. Offerors will be notified of their Phase II eligibility and the deadline for Phase II proposals after conclusion of

Phase I evaluations. At that point, successful offerors who have met the Phase II eligibility requirements will have fourteen (14) days to submit their Performance Work Statement and Live Test Demo outline.

Summary of changes to solicitation package 47QSCC20R0001:

Request for Proposal:

● Section C.1: Several clauses were updated or removed:

○ 52.208-9, Contractor Use of Mandatory Sources of Supply or Services, has been removed.

○ 52.226-3, which was listed as Restrictions on Certain Foreign Purchases, has been removed.

Restrictions on Certain Foreign Purchases is still included as 52.225-13.

○ 52.212-4(c), Changes, has been added.

● Section D, the RFP package contents were reordered to reflect the order of importance of the documents:

○ Attachment 1 – Statement of Objectives (SOO) mailto:Dominic.Lackey@gsa.gov mailto:Sarah.Duncan@gsa.gov

○ Attachment 2 – E-Marketplace Platforms with B2B Capabilities – Prospective Offeror

Requirements

○ Attachment 3 - Live Test Demonstration (LTD) Guidance

○ Attachment 4 - “Platform Provider Click-Through Text” Language

○ Attachment 5 – Ordering Procedures for Commercial e-Marketplace Acquisition

● Section E.2: Mandatory Sources has been removed.

● Section E.3.5.1(g): The timeline for Questions and Answers has been described as well as stating that all questions will only be accepted from those offerors who had submitted proposals by

November 15th, 2019 at 5:00 PM Eastern Time.

● Section E.3.5.1(l): The data rights language is revised to provide additional clarifications.

● Section E.3.5.2.2: Factor 1 has been updated that offerors must demonstrate how its proposed e-marketplace platform currently meets all of the B2B e-marketplace requirements listed in

Attachment 2 to the solicitation.

● Section E.3.5.3: Organizational Conflict of Interest will be evaluated in Phase II (instead of Phase I).

● Section E.3.5.3: Federal Prison Industries is removed from the PWS requirements (though will be required for Buyers to ensure compliance with the Ordering Procedures).

● Section E.3.6.2: The evaluation factors were updated:

○ Factor 2 (Prior Experience) are revised from confidence levels (‘High Confidence / Some

Confidence / Low Confidence’) to relevancy (‘Very Relevant / Relevant / Somewhat

Relevant / Not Relevant’)

○ Factor 3 (PWS) and Factor 4 (LTD) are revised from ‘Acceptable/Unacceptable’ to

‘Outstanding/Good/Acceptable/Unacceptable’, indicative of the wide ranging commercial practices that exist in e-marketplaces today.

Attachment 1 - Statement of Objectives (SOO):

● Most sections of the Statement of Objectives were updated to focus on GSA’s goals and to move away from telling contractors how to accomplish those objectives. The intent is for the contractor to explain how their commercial practice will meet the stated outcomes.

○ Examples include:

■ No longer directing portal providers as to what products should be visible / not visible, instead focusing on the outcome of restricting the purchase of prohibited products or from prohibited vendors

■ No longer dictating the mechanism by which portal providers determine tax exemption, but instead focusing on the outcome where taxes are not collected for

Government purchases

● Requirements regarding contractors outlining their capabilities related to identifying small businesses have been revised in Section 4.B.iii.

● Requirements regarding AbilityOne and ‘Essentially the Same’ (ETS) items have been revised in

Section 4.B.iv.

● Requirements regarding Federal Prison Industries have been removed (though buyers will still be required to ensure they are compliant with FPI for purchases over $3,500, as noted in Attachment

5 - Ordering Procedures).

● Under Supply Chain Risk Management section (4.B.ii), further clarity is provided regarding prohibited products and excluded vendors. Additionally, GSA will provide a list of those products and vendors at the time of award, and thereafter as new exclusions are added.

● Removed the requirement to notify Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) suppliers of their need to comply with the Price Reduction Clause.

● Provided additional details on the Fee Remittance process under Section 4.D.iv.

Attachment 2 - E-Marketplace Platforms with B2B Capabilities – Prospective Offeror Requirements:

● Updated to reflect e-marketplace providers must currently meet all of the requirements at the time of solicitation closing of January 15, 2020.

Attachment 3 - Live Test Demonstration (LTD) Guidance:

● The following sections were updated to reflect changes made in the Statement of Objectives:

○ Small Business identification

○ AbilityOne and ‘Essentially the Same’ items

○ Data Analytics

● The Federal Prison Industries section was removed altogether and is now included in the Ordering

Procedures for buyers.

Attachment 4 - “Platform Provider Click-Through Text” Language:

● Instructions for use of this language were clarified to match the appropriate section in the

Statement of Objectives.

Attachment 5 - Ordering Procedures for Commercial e-Marketplace Acquisition:

● A clarifying note was added to the top of the attachment making contractors aware that the attachment is provided for information purposes only.

● A section was added to address buyer requirements related to Federal Prison Industries.

If you should have questions regarding these changes, please contact Dominic Lackey at dominic.lackey@gsa.gov or Sarah Duncan at sarah.duncan@gsa.gov. Thank you for your participation in GSA’s Commercial E-marketplace Acquisition.

Sincerely, Dominic Lackey

Contracting Officer

General Services Administration mailto:dominic.lackey@gsa.gov mailto:sarah.duncan@gsa.gov