Examination of the Open Market Corridor

Abstract

Present procurement practices for the purchase of commercial, commercial off-the-shelf, and non-developmental products and services can take anywhere from thirty days to sometimes years to procure and deliver to the end user. Federal Government contracting offices spend costly amounts of time advertising the actions and preparing formal solicitation documents for each purchase order generated by the end-user. This translates to high administrative costs, high prices, and, at times, marginal performance. In an effort to ease the administrative burden on the contracting system by capitalizing on current technologies, a new system was recently developed by Professor Ron Tudor and students at the Naval Postgraduate School. This new program is currently under testing by a prime contractor under the auspices of the Department of Interior. The new on-line contracting/procurement program, known as the Open Market Corridor, will allow Federal, State and local Government users to purchase supplies and services on-line through the use of electronic catalogs and embedded contract templates accessible via the Internet. This thesis project will review various aspects of the new program evaluating current efficiencies and recommend modifications in an effort to improve the current procurement and logistics process.