Orlando - Within three years, the White House wants all government purchasing to be done electronically. But if today's state of affairs is any indication, it may take a lot longer than that.
In fact, small and mid-size businesses are already giving up selling opportunities because conducting electronic commerce with the government is too complicated and disjointed. Ever since last fall, when the government gave up on a single electronic commerce initiative, the electronic data interchange (EDI)-based Federal Acquisition Commerce Network (FACNET) agencies have all been going their own way.
Despite the three-year commerce goal, government electronic commerce mandates are already coming. For instance, by June 1, all suppliers that want to do business with the Department of Defense will have to be registered in the official contractor registration database for electronic commerce.
"It's complete chaos - someone has got to take control," said John Pendrak, a consultant at the Electronic Commerce Resource Center in Atlanta, one of 16 government funded centers around the country whose job is to help government contractors get registered and active in electronic commerce programs. "You should see what these agencies are handing to the small businesses. And they're responding, `It just isn't worth it.' "
FACNET had required that certain EDI transaction sets be used for purchase orders and bids. But now that no one has to follow any rules, anything goes.
The U.S. Tank-Automative & Armaments Command (TACOM), for example, has developed its own EDI gateway, "so you don't have to go through FACNET," said electronic commerce/EDI program manager Pat Dempsey-Klott.
In other cases, things are even more confusing. Instead of using real EDI that lets you map data into back-end business systems, some U.S. Air Force bases wrap faxes for purchase acknowledgements in EDI envelopes.
The Defense Supply Center recently confounded the electronic commerce resource centers, places where companies can register as government contractors, when it demanded government suppliers use an EDI transaction set of which no one was aware.
"It turned out that this 989 transaction set was a standard they had proposed in the late 1980s, but it was never implemented as a standard," Pendrak said. "But now they decided, hey, it's a good time to use it."
In addition, agencies are moving rapidly to post up Web-based electronic catalogues so government employees can buy directly off the World Wide Web using procurement cards. While this certainly will spur electronic commerce in the long run, businesses that want to sell to the government are unsure about how to get in on the action.
Government officials trying to manage the post-FACNET era admitted there are problems now, but they promised that life will get better.
According to Paul Grant, co-chairman of the Federal Electronic Commerce Program Office, the government intends to put up a Web site, called Commerce Business Daily Plus (CBD+). CBD+ will display every agency solicitation, uploaded fresh every day, from all the agencies.
However, the CBD+ Web site, which would provide a central view of agency procurement activity, probably won't be finished until year-end.
