State Department To Launch E-Commerce Pilot

With a technical assist from the Army, the State Department next month will launch an electronic commerce pilot.

Using its own Web site as a front end, State will piggyback on the online buying system created by the Army’s Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) at Fort Monmouth, N.J. CECOM will charge State a one-time $30,000 fee. Formal announcement by the Army and State will be made early next month during a ceremony at Fort Monmouth.

The state pilots will let contracting officers create solicitations and receive proposals online, said Robert Dickson, executive director of State’s Bureau of Administration, this month at the Information Processing Interagency Conference in New Orleans.

State’s Office of the Procurement Executive is considering testing the system at an embassy in Europe. If successful, Dickson said, the tests will lead to use department-wide. "We’re going to walk before we run," he said.

The Army’s CECOM spent six weeks and $70,000 creating the Business Opportunity Page, which the service uses to handle $4.2 billion in information technology buys, said Matt Meinert, who runs the project for the Army. If the department decides to continue using the system after the pilot, it will pay the Army a $5,000 annual fee.

CECOM’s system lets buyers search for contracts by the name of the contracting officer, the Commerce Business Daily category or the type of solicitation. The Army built the system with commercial products, including Lotus Development’s Domino Server.

Domino lets buyers use the program without having to download applications or other data from the site’s server. Domino also lets vendors check the status of their projects.

Although the Army is pleased with the program’s success, upgrades continue. For instance, CECOM recently added e-mail notification to alert vendors to upcoming contract meetings, Meinert said.

Dickson said electronic commerce will help streamline the department’s procurement process and decrease reliance on a highly trained procurement staff.