Commercial Platforms RFI - February 2023.pdf

Federal Acquisition Service General Supplies and Services

Commercial Platforms Request for Information (RFI)

RFI Number 47QSCC23N0005

Associated with Request for Proposal 47QSCC23R0002

1800 F Street NW Washington, DC 20405

1.0 Purpose

On December 13, 2022, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) posted RFP 47QSCC23R0002 soliciting participation from commercial business to business (B2B) online platforms who can meet the needs of agency Government Purchase Card (GPC) holders for the purchase of routine, commercial items.

The solicitation is referenced as the Commercial Platform (CP) solicitation.

Following a solicitation protest filed by a group of plaintiffs led by the National Industries for the Blind (NIB) before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, GSA is seeking the following additional information from all interested parties. The purpose of this RFI is to understand the feasibility and legality of certain changes to the solicitation that are being sought by the plaintiffs. Responses to this RFI will be used to assist the Government in determining whether the current RFP should be left unchanged, amended, or canceled. This RFI does not promise or commit the Government to any particular course of action or to make award to any party, nor will it impact any existing proposals received.

2.0 Background

The RFP section 4(b)(iv) currently requires the following as regards items listed on the Procurement List maintained by the U.S. AbilityOne Commission and “Essentially The Same” (ETS) items:

An important Government objective is an ability to mark or provide notification of restricted ETS items, as well as to prevent the sale of ETS items to Government buyers and to promote the purchase of the AbilityOne item instead. To that end, platforms must either:

1. mark or restrict, “Essentially the Same”1 (ETS) items on the platform during the shopping experience to enable Government buyer compliance with the requirements identified in FAR Part 8; AND/OR

2. have the ability to identify, highlight, and promote AbilityOne products that are offered by authorized distributors.

Additionally, the platform provider shall outline their capabilities to remove listings from vendors attempting to sell AbilityOne products but who are not an authorized AbilityOne distributor (as applicable). GSA will be tracking the sale of AbilityOne items as a key metric for the program.

The plaintiffs seek to have the solicitation require awardees to add a “block and substitute” feature to their platforms, i.e, a feature that will promote the purchase by Government buyers of products on the Procurement List and prevent the purchase of “Essentially The Same” (ETS) items by blocking the display of ETS items and substituting Procurement List items.

1 Federal agencies with a requirement met by an item on the AbilityOne Procurement List must purchase the AbilityOne items exclusively from the sources authorized by the U.S. AbilityOne Commission.

3.0 Required Information

GSA is interested in collecting the following additional information from interested parties:

A. Feasibility of the proposed change

● What commercial practices exist related to the marking of individual products, such as those that are ETS or AbilityOne items, if a list is provided by the Government?

● In traditional Government-managed channels, a ‘block and substitute’ feature is used to block the sale of an ETS item, and substitute the appropriate AbilityOne item.

○ Is “block and substitute” an available capability for your platform?

■ If no, why not? How difficult would it be to implement?

■ If yes, what, if any, are the challenges with its implementation in preventing the purchase of ETS items?

○ Is just “blocking” (rather than “block and substitute”) a commercially available capability?

■ If yes, why “blocking” only?

■ If not, why not? How much development effort would be required in order to implement “blocking only”, while also having AbilityOne items labeled, highlighted, and identified?

○ If “block and substitute” were a requirement under the CP program, would your company be willing to add this feature to its commercial platform solely for Government purposes?

● Are there other commercially available capabilities aside from “block and substitute” or “blocking” that could help ensure that purchases comply with the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act, 41 USC

8501-8506 (JWOD)?

B. Legality of the proposed change

The plaintiffs assert that the change is required by JWOD, and its implementing regulations at 41 CFR 51-5.3(a). The CP program implements Section 846 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018, Pub. L.115-91, 41 USC 1901 note, as amended by Section 853 of the NDAA for FY 2022, Pub. L. 117-81.

Please comment on the following:

● whether the “block and substitute” feature is affirmatively required by JWOD;

● whether the cost and effort required to add the feature to an existing commercial platform, as well as the impact on the platform’s standard technology, would constitute “configuration” as permitted by Section 846(d) or whether it would go beyond configuration and require substantial modifications to the platforms, their commercial practices, and their standard terms and conditions

● what impact, if any, would the addition of the “block and substitute” requirement have on the Government’s ability to comply with the requirements of Section 853 to begin testing additional commercial e-commerce portals, including the ability or willingness of platform providers who do not traditionally do business with the Government to participate

4.0 Responses

Responses to this RFI are due by 10:00 AM, Eastern Standard Time (EST) on February 23, 2023 to Contracting Officers Dominic Lackey (dominic.lackey@gsa.gov) and Sarah Duncan (sarah.duncan@gsa.gov).

All responses to the RFI must be submitted via email. Each response must be single-spaced and typewritten in 12-point Times New Roman font and in the English language. Each response must be in .doc, .docx, or .pdf format with every page of the response separately numbered. Also, each response must be no more than twenty-five (25) 8½” by 11” pages in total (excluding applicable diagrams and charts) and all pages must be combined as one attachment. Please note that the limit for attachments is 25MB. GSA accepts no responsibility for incomplete and/or late submissions due to technical difficulties in transmission of messages and/or documents exceeding the 25 MB limit.

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This announcement is not a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a Request for Quote (RFQ). The information provided in the RFI is subject to change and is not binding to the government. The U.S. government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this RFI; all costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested party’s expense.

All submissions become government property and will not be returned. This RFI does not constitute a solicitation for bids, proposals or quotes and will not be used by the government in any evaluations for existing or future requests for proposals/quotes.

Any document submitted in response to this RFI that contains confidential information must be marked on the outside as containing confidential information. Each page upon which confidential information appears must be marked as containing confidential information. The confidential information must be clearly identifiable to the reader wherever it appears. All other information will not be treated as confidential.

All information marked confidential in RFI responses is only for the government’s use. Confidential information may be reviewed by contractors subject to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) including, but not limited to, commercial or financial data obtained from the respondent’s submitted documents.

mailto:dominic.lackey@gsa.gov