Why Ethics Exist in Business: When dealing with the government, or really any industry, people should be very conscious of ethics codes. The United States Office of Government Ethics (OGE), which is primarily concerned with the executive branch of government, clearly identifies what private companies are and are not allowed to do for government workers. For example, there are specific restrictions on paid travel, bribery, gifts, and payments. Likewise, there are repercussions that follow violations of any of these rules. The reason behind such strict regulations is the government attempts to protect the integrity of our companies and government officials.

Background: On Thursday, June 21st, 2018 my colleague Andrew Wahlgren and I attended a GSA Industry Day at GSA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. to discuss “Procurement through commercial e-Commerce portals.” The talks were very informational, with unique perspectives from the General Services Administration (GSA) representatives, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) representatives, and high-stake company executives.

For nearly a year, GSA has been working on their vision for an updated System for Award Management (SAM.gov) website by directing beta testing and conducting focus-group testing with industry stakeholders on the website's functionality. In October of 2017, the Integrated Award Environment for GSA launched beta.SAM.gov as a test site.

What Best-In-Class Actually Means Government contract vehicles labelled “Best-In-Class” (BIC) are deemed the highest preforming contracts by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). There are currently over 30 BIC contracts, which help individual buyers to narrow their scope when looking to onboard or subcontract.

GSA recently identified security vulnerabilities in its Vendor Support Center (VSC) system, in which contractor usernames and passwords were compromised. As an immediate course of action against this threat, GSA has now implemented a Multi-Factor Authentication to protect information and make it more secure. The enhanced security applies to multiple GSA portals, which include: eBuy, the Advantage Spend Analysis Program (ASAP), the Schedules Input Program (SIP), Reverse Auctions, and the 72A Quarterly Reporting System.

We’re halfway through 2018, and technology remains king over at the General Services Administration (GSA). GSA wants to get state of the art technologies to federal agencies faster, so GSA now allows IT companies with fewer than two years of experience onto IT Schedule 70 through the Startup Springboard program.