Federal Contracting
posted on: Tuesday, April 28, 2015
If comments at a recent public meeting are any indication, the General Service Administration’s proposed Transactional Data Reporting rule may be in danger of stalling before it even gets started. The proposed rule, announced to great fanfare last month, has been trumpeted by GSA as a “new vision for Federal purchasing.” During an all-day public meeting held at GSA headquarters, however, the proposal was the subject of pointed criticism from industry and government stakeholders alike. Some complaints were perhaps not unexpected given the dramatic changes envisioned by the rule, but the objections from both public and private sources could force GSA to rethink its proposed approach before moving forward with a final rule.
Overview of Proposed Rule
At the heart of the proposed Transactional Data Reporting rule is a shift away from the existing Price Reductions clause to a new framework that relies on the aggregation and analysis of large amounts of transaction-level data to permit horizontal price comparisons across vendors.