American Public Procurement

Much experience in public procurement information support has been accumulated in the United States of America. The first law to regulate the federal public procurement system was passed in the United States in 1792, according to which the powers in the field of public procurement were given to the Treasury and Defense Departments.

In general, the system of purchases for national needs in the United States is non-centralized, but purchases directly for government needs are very reminiscent of the Gossnab system that existed in Soviet times.

Currently, procurement for the needs of the federal government in the United States is the prerogative of the General Services Administration - General Services Administration (OSA). On the basis of applications from ministries and departments, UOU organizes large-scale purchases using competitive procedures, primarily tenders. The goods are stored in the warehouses of the UOU and resold to customers at a wholesale price with a small percentage withheld, which serves to ensure the life of the UOU. At the https://pricereporter.com/, you can contact a GSA Contract Specialist for assistance. 

Procurement for the needs of national defense is carried out by the US Department of Defense. Specialized procurement is also carried out by some other agencies, such as the Energy Research and Development Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), etc.

Monitoring of federal procurement is entrusted to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and inter-ministerial coordination in the field of procurement policy is carried out by the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council.

The legislative basis of the public procurement system in the United States is the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations-Supplement (DFARS). These documents regulate the entire system of federal procurement and are distinguished by a very detailed study of principles and procedures.

All laws related to this area can be divided into two categories. The first is federal legislation. It regulates the organization of the public procurement process and establishes legal norms that relate to specific types of procurement that fall within the competence of the relevant executive authorities at the federal level. The second is specific legislation responsible for the procedures and forms of contracts, as well as information support for procurement processes and analysis of their results.

The management of the US public procurement system is based on three main principles arising from the American approach to the functions and tasks of the state:

- achieving fairness, that is, providing conditions for equal participation of contractors in the competition for government orders;

– observance of honesty and the fight against corruption in public procurement;

- savings and efficiency, that is, ensuring the purchase of goods and services of the required quality at the lowest possible prices with minimal procurement costs.

Electronic technologies

The US public procurement system includes about 100 federal departments representing the state, economic and scientific and technical complexes. They annually place orders for goods and services directly through the central federal government, their own departmental centers and 12 regional centers of the federal government, which are located in the largest cities of the country.

US legislation also regulates the activities of bodies responsible for the formation and use of information resources on public procurement. In particular, the powers and functions of the bodies responsible for maintaining the information resource are legislatively defined - collecting, processing and distributing data on procurement, ensuring and managing the functioning of the information database of the procurement data system for federal needs and the Federal Register of Contracts. The Federal Acquisitions Data Center regularly publishes guidance on reporting these data, which contains:

- A complete list of reporting and non-reporting agencies;

– necessary instructions for data collection nodes in each agency;

– clarifications (what data are required and how often they need to be submitted).

In 1994, US legislation was subjected to a major revision as insufficiently reflecting the increased role of procurement of products for government needs. The result of the audit was the emergence of a law on the improvement of federal acquisitions, which led to the modernization of information policy and issues of the formation and use of information resources in the system. The organization of public procurement procedures was also analyzed (by 1994 there were 889 general controlling laws and regulations). Now the federal commissioners for public procurement were given greater independence in choosing the forms, methods and methods of conducting purchases for the needs of the state. The law significantly simplified the contract procedure for small purchases and, in parallel, supported e-commerce.

The new law was to abolish paperwork and record keeping, as required by multiple policies and procedures, for contract purchases under $100,000, allowing simplified procurement procedures to be applied to 45,000 transactions worth $3 billion dollars annually.

Today, every federal agency in America is required to build and maintain a computer database containing unclassified information on all contracts worth more than $25,000 per unit over the past five financial years. All departments must send this information to the Central Information System of Federal Procurement. To provide information on contracts, federal departments use standard forms of documents and unified data formats. In addition to the list provided, agencies must have electronically identified subcontracts for contracts totaling $5 million or more.

The Federal Procurement Information System records information on 400,000–500,000 contracts with a unit value of more than $25,000 and 17 million contracts of small unit value annually concluded by federal agencies (for a total amount of about $200 billion). The Central Information System of Federal Procurement is a source of consolidated information on public procurement.

Reference

The US Federal Purchasing Information System has data on government purchases from 1979 to the present.

Openness and Availability

The data contained in the Central Information System for Federal Acquisitions is used as the basis for generating periodic and special reports to the President, Congress, and the Treasury Office, and is also made available to federal agencies, businesses, and the public.

Based on this information, the Central Information System annually prepares and publishes a report. On a paid basis, reports are provided, compiled according to the individual requests of any consumers. If necessary, the specialist of the Central Information System will assist the client in developing the required structure of the report. The term for preparing the document is five to seven working days. The cost of a special search in the main data bank for one year is approximately $400, information for each additional year is another $100. Special reports, lists and mailing lists are transmitted both in paper form and on magnetic media. When compiling a special request, the following data is required:

- the period of time for which it is necessary to conduct research (the financial year in the United States is calculated from October 1 to September 30);

- data that the client needs to receive in the report (for example, the name of the contractor of the contract, the number and type of contract, the amount in dollars, etc.);

– the structure on which the client wishes to receive information (eg, broken down by years, departments, names of performers, combined options). Also, a separate indication is required if it is necessary to obtain the total amount in the value form.

Electronic trading

The purpose of introducing electronic trading in federal procurement is not only to automate the routine processes of interaction between procurement authorities and potential contractors, but also to reduce the cost of performing procurement procedures and a sharp reduction in the timing of these operations. The use of electronic trading in federal procurement in the United States is currently relatively small compared to its use in business-to-business transactions. Electronic auctions are mainly used for purchases under simplified procedures for contracts worth up to $100,000. This is due to the excessively strict regulation of federal procurement procedures, which fully satisfies the conditions for their conduct using paper documents,

Important conditions for the use of electronic trading are developed legislation in the field of regulating the use of Internet technologies and means of communication, information protection, as well as the availability of basic security standards for computer networks.

Information resources ensure the implementation of the above principles - the publicity of the procurement process for products for state (federal) needs, equality in the procurement process and open access to information on concluded contracts. In accordance with the requirements of the legislation, providing public open access to these resources is carried out by publishing them on a single government portal. The electronic version of the Federal Register of Contracts is also available on the Internet.

The main advantage of the American federal procurement information system is that it provides:

- high efficiency and accuracy in providing Congress, the presidential administration, federal departments and the private sector with data on the state of public procurement contracts;

- allows you to get information on federal procurement in various sections of interest to the user: by years, departments, contractors, etc.

At the same time, the following shortcomings of the system are noted:

– incomplete provision of data by individual federal departments;

- insufficient activity in the use of information resources both by government departments and by the population;

- insufficient information compatibility between the links of the system, etc.