Two House Democrats released draft legislation Monday that...

for the draft, called the Reforming Federal Procurement of Information Technology (RFP-IT) Act. “Our draft bill puts proven best practices to work by instituting a White House office of IT procurement and gives all American innovators a fair shake at competing for valuable federal IT contracts by lowering the burden of entry,” Eshoo said in a statement. Connolly emphasized that there’s a lot of waste in procurement despite small improvements in recent years. “Our RFP-IT discussion draft recognizes that transforming how the federal government procures critical IT assets will likely require bolstering ongoing efforts to comprehensively strengthen general federal IT management practices with targeted enhancements that promote innovative and bold procurement strategies from the White House on down,” Connolly said. The proposed bill would create an office in the executive branch to assess big IT projects early on and allow smaller businesses to bid on federal IT contracts without the significant sums associated with compliance. In a provision intended to give small businesses simplified acquisition procedures, with less paperwork and fewer layers of approval required, the purchase threshold that triggers higher requirements would be raised to $500,000 from $150,000, the members said in a press release (http://1.usa.gov/1cmN8vb).