Meeting — April 18, 2024

The GSA Acquisition Policy Federal Advisory Policy & Practice Subcommittee convened for a public meeting at 3:00 PM on April 18, 2024, virtually via Zoom, with Luke Bassis, Chair, presiding. 
In accordance with FACA, as amended, 5 U.S.C. App 2, the meeting was open to the public from 3:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. EDT.

Meeting agenda

Committee members present:

Luke Bassis — Chair Port Authority of New York and New Jersey 
David Wagger— Co-Chair Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries 
Richard Beutel — George Mason University 
Nicole Darnall — Arizona State University 
Mark Hayden — State of New Mexico 
Amlan Mukherjee — WAP Sustainability Consulting 
Nigel Stephens — Phoenix Strategies

Absent:

Leslie Cordes, Antonio Doss, Jennie Romer, Steven Schooner, Stacy Smedley, 
Anish Tilak, Kimberly Wise-White

Guest Speakers & Presenters:

GSA Staff Present:

Boris Arratia — Designated Federal Officer 
Stephanie Hardison — Deputy Designated Federal Officer 
David Cochennic — GAP FAC Support 
Bianca McIntosh — GAP FAC Support 
Caryn Broome — Closed Captioner 
Debra Lakebring — ASL Interpreters 
Heidi Cooke — ASL Interpreters

Call to order

Stephanie Hardison, Deputy Designated Federal Officer, opened the public meeting by welcoming the group before reminding the public that there will be time for comments and statements at the end of the meeting. She then performed a roll call to confirm attendance and a quorum. After the quorum was met, she turned the meeting over to Chair, Luke Bassis.

Introductory remarks

Luke Bassis announced that this meeting would be held as a working meeting. During this meeting the goal to be discussed is for the current accomplishments, thought process, and preliminary draft of recommendations for the May 22nd public meeting.

Subcommittee business

Luke Bassis mentioned the concern of having a lack of data concerning the sustainable procurement process and struggling to turn this into an actionable recommendation. He proposed three areas where GSA could improve or increase its data strategy to help advance sustainable procurement. Those three areas are:

• Make informed decisions related to the acquisition of sustainable goods.
• Make defensible decisions related to the selection of vendors.
• Have functional data that would allow for more informed strategic organizational

and executive level decision-making. This will allow GSA or executives to create surgical strategies to achieve sustainable procurement objectives.

Luke further stated that GSA has the ability to have the data to procure sustainable goods because this agency is a state public procurement practitioner. GSA is also well advanced when it comes to the ability to search for, locate, and identify sustainable goods by certifications, or by characteristics. Luke recommended an interoperable approach to implement procurement tools together to make them seamless in the decision making process for a procurement practitioner at GSA. He also recommended that GSA should have a framework that would allow them to assess vendors, and encourage them to encourage more sustainable behavior of the vendor selection process. He then mentioned that measuring some not, all organizational key performance indicators (KPIs) when it comes to spending money is very important. That integral data can be used to monitor and progress and report successes on goods, services, cost-effectiveness or lifecycle costs.

Amlan Mukherjee recommended to focus not just on product selection, but also on vendor selection. When looking at the impact on the environment, it is important to note how things flow between the national environment and the human technical sphere environment. This can also include the impact the environment has on water resources, air quality, and emissions, as well as the different kinds of impacts on health-related aspects. When it comes to material health, all of that data gets turned into what is referred to as lifecycle inventories in technical environments. It is important to archive and understand the lifecycle because lifecycle inventory is connected to emission factors and impact indicators, and most results come from this type of observed data.

Amlan also recommended potentially using AI-based innovation and other innovative software tools to provide GSA decision-makers the ability to make a selection of products and vendors through the requirements that align with the specific procurement. He also advised to set up a system for procurement specialists that helps to develop an API for requirements. This will help the specialist know what the requirements are that GSA has based on those API requirements. He then recommended looking at the data, tools, and technologies GSA is using, and figure out a way to integrate a seamless lifecycle approach through decision-making. Luke Bassis recommended that GSA should start to collect information about the agency vendor pool, to use for a potential tool that would pull in both external and internal data, and help provide a dashboard to measure appropriate KPIs.

Amlan Mukherjee advised to have a competitive space where people can provide more standardized contract writing tools to the acquisition workforce. These tools can be helpful and used consistently across different cases and can identify a useful data infrastructure. Amlan also mentioned the development of the API requirements could ensure a standardized infrastructure for multiple vendors writing these contracts. This would allow multiple vendors to be able to develop tools that can be used across various scenarios.

Richard Beutel recommended using a set of contract writing tools to write APIs and requirements under contract with the two most common systems being Prism and Appian-based contract writing systems. There are some agencies that are increasingly advocating for uniform adoption across the federal civilian agencies in particular. He advised that adopting a uniform contract writing system provides access to full data interoperability. This would allow a focus to be put on price rationalization, price comparison, and obtaining the best cost deal using pricing data and cost data. Amlan Mukherjee advised to have a place for standardization so that GSA can receive the best tools, and therefore, select from the best materials and products to reduce the possibility of greenwashing.

Nicole Darnall recommended to leverage knowledge from private sectors such as CAVO and iBATIS, who have developed similar contract writing tools. Nicole also emphasized the need for developing a general API so that any requirements and standards that are established, any vendor or procurement specialist can respond to.

Luke Bassis recommended to gather responses from the private sector in regards to an RFI or RFP and let GSA make a decision from there.

Nigel Stephens recommended using existing structures in place such as a shared service similar to what the marketplace is developing for HR service, financial, and grants. This will allow commercial best practices to be able to be offered to federal agencies to choose from.

Amlan Mukherjee recommended that GSA declare a clear set of recommendations that can be with appropriate standardization for anyone to respond to and not basing out the recommendations on one product.

Nicole Darnall mentioned that the Acquisition Workforce Subcommittee had an opportunity to talk with the Prism user group within GSA, through a focus group conversation. It was noted that if the rules are in the FAR, then that is what hits Prism, and templates are developed to follow as part of the contract writing process.

Depending upon what happens with FAR part 23 and the rule that is moving forward now, it could be that there is a mandate for intersectionality between Prism and the new rule. Nicole also recommended that GSA could implement something similar by having touch points with those templates where contract professionals have to gather additional information. She also suggested starting to think ahead towards what those revisions may do as they interact with PRISM and how to imagine this process being made easier.

Amlan Mukherjee finally recommended that procurement professionals need to have standardized API requirements so that the contract tools can provide answers to indicate which product is best.

Public engagement

Stephanie Hardison opened the discussion up to the public for comments, but there were none.

Closing remarks

Stephanie Hardison concluded by suggesting that once agencies obtain their own contract writing system, they need to include their own regulations geared towards their specific needs.

Adjournment

Stephanie Hardison adjourned the meeting at 5:00 P.M. EDT. 

I hereby certify that, to the best of my knowledge, the foregoing minutes are accurate 
and complete.

Digitally signed by Luke Bassis 9/17/2024 
Luke Bassis 
Chairperson 
GAP FAC Policy & Practice Subcommittee

Digitally signed by Dr. David Wagger 9/17/2024 
Dr. David Wagger 
Co-Chairperson 
GAP FAC Policy & Practice Subcommittee