Market & IT Data Intelligence
The ITVMO combines collections of data to form predictive narratives and increases use of disparate data through guides and how-to aids to better IT acquisition decision-making, governmentwide.
Market & Acquisition Research
Overview
The ITVMO plays a pivotal role throughout many stages of the acquisition life cycle. At the front end the ITVMO can assist in providing resources that evaluate new technologies against past purchases and future needs. It enhances the purchasing process through vendor relationships. And in the latter stages the ITVMO can utilize historical data to aid in the vendor selection and purchasing of replacement technologies.
Our market and acquisition research services leverage the government’s many data sources to help agency buyers, federal IT suppliers, and governmentwide acquisition vehicles make informed decisions to drive their federal IT acquisition strategies forward.
Evaluate and Assess
The ITVMO starts where the acquisition life cycle begins, which is with a clear understanding of the business need, use cases, and requirements. Business analysts and business leadership need to communicate with technology analysts and technology leadership to brainstorm viable paths forward. It is also the primary point to look for innovation opportunities to improve process, performance, and productivity. It is with this understanding that the intersection between the business needs and the technical environment comes to consensus on appropriate technologies to create the solution. The solution does not necessarily imply a 100% new approach. It should leverage existing assets, software, services and technologies to maximize the value to the organization.
Procurement
The procurement stage utilizes the requirements and objectives laid out in the assess phase. It identifies the necessary technology assets and the logistics/timeline of required purchases, as well as the funding sources/investment for them.
The appropriate contract vehicles and qualified vendors are evaluated to determine the pool of suppliers that can best fulfill the requirements. Vendor evaluation criteria must meet (but not limited to) the standards of a vendor health assessment which determines:
It considers resource availability, funding, timeline and other constraints to execute the established plan and move the initiative forward to contract and negotiation.
Negotiate
In the negotiation stage it is important to look at the big picture and understand contracts and contract term periods. This is the stage where consolidation can occur and economies of scale can be leveraged for the organization.
Although oftentimes impractical, it is useful for the contract period to align with the funding period. It provides for smoother transactions on the financial side over time.
Studies, Research, and Guides
Data User Stories:
-
What vendors provide cloud based services that are FedRamp certified?
-
How do I find new Entrants in the Federal Marketplace
-
Does my agency have any duplicative contracts, or multiple contracts with the same vendor for similar services?
-
How to find Vendors Specializing in an IT Subcategory?
-
What is the OEM and vendor spend by agency?
-
What product and vendors are available via BIC solutions?
Market Equity Studies:
Waiting For updates
Data User Stories:
Data User Stories:
-
What vendors provide cloud based services that are FedRamp certified?
-
How do I find new Entrants in the Federal Marketplace
-
Does my agency have any duplicative contracts, or multiple contracts with the same vendor for similar services?
-
How to find Vendors Specializing in an IT Subcategory?
-
What is the OEM and vendor spend by agency?
-
What product and vendors are available via BIC solutions?
Contract Guidance
Overview
Currently, contract data does not accurately represent spending on IT products and services. This is in part due to issues with data inputs that do not provide an appropriate representation of the IT products and services that are being purchased, which limits the ability to provide meaningful analytics and reporting.
Understanding these fields and the downstream impacts to information that is reported can help stakeholders improve the quality of their inputs to contract writing and purchasing processes. As a result, the proper entry of codes and descriptions provided by users during the acquisitions process will enhance data quality.
Stakeholders need the ability to analyze spending based on reliable data, in order to support data driven decisions and manage the complexities of IT spending.
This guide was developed to enable consistency and enhance data for agencies as they draft contracts for IT spending.
Purpose
- Cost Transparency: Identify components and contributors that enhance cost transparency and management of IT spend.
- Better Data: Develop guidance to help stakeholders understand the uses of contract data and how to improve the information that can be derived from them.
- Insights: Provide sample insights into current spending based on updated PSCs and key data points. Supports more informed and focused purchasing decisions.
To view the full content with examples and full list of data fields and tips, please visit:
Contract Data Elements Guidance report
Guidance
FPDS is the primary source and system of record for contract data. FPDS is populated with information directly from agency contract writing systems. The government uses the reported FPDS data to measure and assess the impact of federal procurement.
FPDS contains more than 150 data elements. This guide focuses on the data elements that have the most impact on downstream analysis of IT obligations. The elements in the sections below are those that are most frequently shown in the Dashboard Analytics section.
The PTAI is a collaborative initiative between government and industry, sponsored by the Chief Acquisition Officers (CAO) Council, with support from federal agencies. The tool aims to raise awareness of proven innovative business practices and technologies, encouraging their testing, adoption, and adaptation in line with agency policy, the FAR, and applicable law.
This section of the guide provides a list of common fields that are related to cost or period of performance (PoP) during the acquisitions process. It provides specific terms of the contract and how best to complete the fields to enable more detailed analytics, such as benchmarking.
| Cost/PoP Related | Guidance on Completing |
|---|---|
| Period of Performance (PoP) Dates |
Ensure accurate date is entered and broken out into line items for specific deliverables to measure and track performance; see example below.
|
| Referenced IDV | Do not omit if contract is a derivative. |
| Total Obligated Amount | System generated total that identifies the amount of the contract that has been ordered or received, but which has not been disbursed.
|
| Unit Price and Quantity | Choose a quantity and unit of measure to describe each deliverable that
corresponds to how you will measure and track performance.
|
This section of the guide provides a list of common fields that describe the type of contract. This includes any type of special designations like small business or socio-economic. It also provides insight into localities and other vendor information and guidance on how best to complete these fields. This data is used to analyze agency small and socio-economic business utilization performance.
| Entity/Contract Type | Guidance on Completing |
|---|---|
| Place of Manufacture | Identifies if products are manufactured inside/outside the US. Used to determine adherence to “Buy American Act" (See FAR 25.1). |
| Principal Place of Performance |
For Services, the predominant place of performance at the time of award or where subscription/software licenses are used. For Goods/Supplies, use manufacture site or location item was taken from inventory. |
| Small Business Designations | Don’t forget “CO Size Determination” even if not a small business (select “Other than Small”). |
| Socio-economic Designations | Flags vendors by special interest groups and type of small business. Select all applicable small business fields. |
| State of Incorporation | Identify the state the business is registered in. |
| Vendor Information | Ensure consistent input of Vendor Name for proper analytics; can
reference Unique Entity Identifier (UEI #), but for large businesses, there can still be multiple options.
|
This section of the guide provides a list of key Technology Categorization fields that require very specific and important information. They identify the types of technology being purchased and how. Completing these data fields accurately and thoroughly will improve data quality and enable enhanced analytics, which will aid in informed decision making. The table below lists the fields and guidance on how best to complete them.
| Technology Categorization | Guidance on Completing |
|---|---|
| Principal NAICS Code |
NAICS Codes designate the major sectors of the economies of Mexico,
Canada and the US for a given business entity. It is used for statistical analysis, to certify businesses by industry type, and to determine eligibility for specific government contracts. Update Product Service Code (PSC) slightly: " Select the most accurate PSC to reflect the scope of contract. See resources:
|
| Product Service Code(PSC) | Select the most accurate PSC to reflect the scope of contract. Resources to help with proper selection: |
| Description of Requirement |
Description of Requirement field should be detailed and
consist of keywords that describe what is being purchased.
Used for various filtering, sorting, and categorization of spend.
Add details describing the following:
|
Suggested Format for 'Description of Requirement' Input Field:
MFG/OEM : Vendor/Reseller : Product Name/SKU/Part # : Unit of Measure : Description
Service Examples:
ServiceNow : CarahSoft : Implementation : Hour : Contracting for a block of 500 hours for the phase I implementation of ServiceNow.
- N/A: HP Enterprise Services: Hosting: Rack: Data center service associated with hosting and operation of the open payments program system.
- N/A: Example Technologies: Help Desk Support Services: Hour: IT and Telecom - End User: Help Desk Tier 1-2, Workspace, Print, Productivity Tool.
Product Examples:
Microsoft : Dell Marketing L.P. : O365 License : Per User : Enterprise agreement for 92,000 user subscriptions of Microsoft Office 365, Windows 10 Enterprise
- ServiceNow: CarahSoft: IT Service Management License: Per User: ServiceNow service desk 1000 user licenses.
- Cisco: XYZ Technologies, LLC: Switches and routers #LG-54401: Each: Cisco infrastructure switches and routers.
Suggested Format for 'Description of Requirement' Input Field:
By using
Agency Profile Report (2.0)
, agencies are able to:
- View spend by Vendor, Contract Type, or Cost Category.
- Compare Total Obligations YoY and Spend Under Management.
- Understand the overall quality of the data for compliance and accuracy.
It provides an overall summary of acquisitions by Department and enables peer to peer or Government-wide comparisons.
Category Management Dashboards use Tableau on the D2D platform to create rich visualizations. The data is sourced from the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Procurement Tables, based primarily from the FPDS data source, but also enriched with contract and categorization data. These dashboards are available to all stakeholders. They provide a multitude of perspectives and filtering capabilities that empower stakeholders to perform traditional and advanced analytics, ranging from agency specific to government-wide.
Small Business & Common/Defense-Centric Spend
The
Small Business Dashboard
provides small business designations as well as vendor-attribute designations based on the vendor information and socio-economic flags.
For additional guidance on navigating the D2D Dashboard analytics, please visit our Studies, Research, and Guides Studies, Research, and Guides on the earlier page for more.
Data Tools
Product Service Codes Guide
In FY21 a new structure was collaboratively derived to address both the IT Community need to identify the spend and type of technology resource being acquired, and the acquisition community need to identify the method of acquisition. This retained the existing 4 character code limitation without interfering with any other existing PSCs in use. To identify the type of technology resource being acquired, three different PSC types were specified: * Technical and Professional services, which represents contract labor * Capability as a Service to represent cloud-based services acquired on a term or subscription basis * Hardware and Software products acquired on a permanent or perpetual basis
Product Service Code Manual with resources
North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
NAICS was developed under the auspices of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and adopted in 1997 to replace the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. It was developed jointly by the U.S. Economic Classification Policy Committee (ECPC), Statistics Canada, and Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia, to allow for a high level of comparability in business statistics among the North American countries.
Data Analysis Dashboard (D2D)
Government-Wide Category Management Reporting and Analytics maintains a series of dashboards and tools to support stakeholders in the full CM lifecycle. The D2D Portal is the gateway to data-driven decisions. It is a data analytics portal that is used to share business insights, including visualizations, reports and datasets. The D2D Portal enables users to search for, access, and share dashboards, datasets, and other content supporting data-driven decision-making across a broad range of stakeholders.
Acquisition Analytics
IT Dashboard
The IT Dashboard provides Federal agencies and the public with the ability to view details of Federal information technology (IT) investments online and to track their progress over time.
The Federal IT Dashboard helps the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) meet their statutory collection and reporting obligations by streamlining data submissions and transforming the Federal IT Data collection into a coherent, modularized ecosystem. This ecosystem is centered around an improved data collection effort that better supports partner agencies and OMB. In addition, the modernization of the Federal IT Dashboard includes the enhancement of visual renderings through an updated user interface. This will act as a premier user-centric site, allowing for integrated metrics, enhanced analytics, and decision support tools.
