GSA Unveils Plan for Commercial Online Shopping Portal

Following instructions from Congress to create a new online shopping system leveraging existing commercial practices, the General Services Administration (“GSA”), in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), has released an implementation plan (“Plan”) to begin e-commerce purchases by 2019.  As discussed in a previous blog post, GSA’s Plan is a first step toward implementing Section 846 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2018, which requires GSA to develop “e-commerce portals” – essentially online shopping sites – for commercially available off-the-shelf (“COTS”) item procurements.