Congress Considers Tweaking IT Spending

On October 5, the Senate Finance Committee sent a letter to commercial information technology providers requesting information about “whether federal agencies, to the fullest extent possible, incorporate preexisting, commercial and non-developmental IT solutions into their modernization efforts and if not, the barriers to their doing so.” Noting that the federal government spent about $80 billion on IT in FY 2015, the committee requested “recommendations” sent to ITContracting@finance.senate.gov by November 2, 2016, for how competition for IT contracts could be broadened by increased use of commercial contracting procedures and fixed-price contracts or changes to evaluation criteria and source selection factors.