Jason Bakke posted the post below to the Public Spend Forum community.
“NASA has issued a proposed rule to create “award terms” for superior performance extending beyond the typical base-plus-four contract. The intro states:
While there are similarities between an award term and an option, such as funds must be available and the requirement must fulfill an existing Government need, the key difference is that an option may be exercised when the contractor’s performance is acceptable, while earning an award term requires sustained excellent performance.”
Does anyone think this will motivate contracts to sustained excellent performance from their previous acceptable? Isn’t that what a recompete is for? Will this streamline NASA acquisition? Could we see this catching on across the the government?”
My comment to Jason was: Wow…shouldn’t “sustained excellent performance” be an expectation of for any option award. It’s really a shame that our expectations are so low and option awards are so automatic, that there really is no measurement. We need to up the bar if we’re going to do justice for our taxpayer dollars. So Jason, no, this will do absolutely nothing.