Terms of Participation

Terms of Participation and Moderation Guidelines

Thank you for participating in the National Dialogue on Reducing Barriers and Burdens in Federal Procurement. This dialogue is an essential part of the President’s Management Agenda for the US Federal government and will help lay the foundation for creating a 21st Century government that delivers better results to American citizens. Visitors to this site are invited to submit ideas, comment on ideas, vote for the ideas they think are the most impactful, and flag posts as “off topic.” This online dialogue allows you the opportunity to post comments that will remain publicly viewable on this website. The site therefore operates a moderation policy to ensure that comments are appropriate and not harmful to others. Thank you for taking the time to read this and we welcome your participation in the discussion and look forward to an exchange of ideas. These Moderation Guidelines and Terms of Participation may be amended or modified in the future.

User Participation

Anyone can view the ideas on the site and view the public discussion as it develops, but if you want to take an active part yourself, you must create an account on the site by registering as a user. Once you register you can then submit, comment on, vote on, or flag ideas. Your participation in this dialogue is voluntary. No payments or gifts will be made to respondents. Any content you submit is in the public domain and may be reused.

All data is stored on a third party provider storage media, managed , which is not a Government site. You should also review the IdeaScale privacy and use policies, available here as they are applicable to your use.

Your user name: You must register with your email address. The toolset will strip away all identifying information you submit and replace it, internally, with a computer generated record ID for system use only. If you return to the site, this will allow the system to identify you as a previous user for reporting statistics, but no one will be able to contact you or even ask you a follow-up question on your comments. Your email address will not be displayed.

Moderation Policy

Moderators reserve the right to move posts which are not “on topic” (are not addressing some aspect of the dialogue), or that violate the terms of participation. Some posts may be removed while others may be moved to the Off Topic Comments page. The intent is to remove as few posts as possible while ensuring that a focused, constructive discussion takes place. If you have any questions or comments about this policy, please send an email to natdi@omb.eop.gov

Privacy Policy

We are committed to ensuring the privacy of our users. You can view and search ideas without logging into this site but the dialogue does require you to log in to submit, comment on, or indicate that you like or dislike an idea. You can log-in by registering for an account through submission of a valid, working e–mail address. We will not display this e-mail address on the site or share it with anyone outside the Government site administrators. As the site is managed , a non-Government entity, you should also review its privacy policies as they are applicable also.

We collect no other Personal Information about you, other than that which you choose to provide as part of the registration process. It is our policy to not make personal information available to anyone unless it is required by law or as otherwise described in this policy. We do not sell, rent, exchange, or otherwise disclose any of this information about our site visitors, nor is the data regarding email addresses or first and last name, if entered, exported for any reason other than if required by law or to track down repeated abusive behavior on the site.

This is not a system of records subject to the Privacy Act. Your comments and ideas will not be stored under or retrieved by your email address.

As all information that you enter into the site is stored on servers owned and maintained , and although your e-mail address may be visible to Government personnel who are administering and moderating this dialogue, the U.S. Government does not collect, disseminate, or maintain this information.

Information gathered indirectly to analyze general traffic patterns: In order to analyze general traffic patterns for the purpose of making these dialogs more useful to participants, the following information is logged and temporarily stored:

• IP addresses, which are the locations of computers or networks on the Internet;

• The types of browsers and operating systems used to access the dialog tool;

• The date and time of visits to the dialog; and

• The address of Websites from which our visitors link to the dialog.

We do not gather, request, record, require, collect, or track any user's personal information through these processes, and they are only reported in the aggregate.

Children's privacy

Because we care about the safety and privacy of children online, we comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). COPPA and its accompanying FTC regulation establish United States federal law that protects the privacy of children using the Internet. This site does not knowingly contact or collect personal information from children under 13. This site is not intended to solicit information of any kind from children under 13.

Duplicate ideas

Please check existing ideas before you submit your own. Do not submit your idea if a similar one has already been posted, instead add your comment to the original. Duplicate ideas will likely be consolidated or merged to ease the flow of conversation, comments, and voting.

Comment Policy and Terms of Participation

Your ideas and comments are publicly visible so these Guidelines and Terms of Participation are intended to support open discussion while ensuring a respectful exchange of ideas. This site is being monitored to watch for areas that are in need of clarification and for submissions that may be offensive or off topic. All views that will further the dialogue are welcome. In those instances where the terms of participation are not respected, moderators reserve the option to remove comments that do not develop the discussion in a positive manner. These instances include:

• Threatening, slanderous or obscene language

• Personal attacks, or incitements to violence

• Discriminatory language (including hate speech) based on race, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion or disability

• Sexually explicit material and other material that would violate the law if published here

• Ideas or comments that promote services or products (but non-commercial links that are relevant to this web site are allowed)

• Embedded media, such as videos or photos (but hyperlinks to such media are allowed)

• Spam or undecipherable language (gratuitous links will be viewed as spam)

• Copyright or other intellectual property rights infringement

• Solicitations, advertisements, or endorsements

• Language that defames or impersonates persons or organizations

• Personally Identifiable Information (e.g., social security numbers, postal and email addresses, phone numbers)

• Information posted in violation of law, including libel, or comments that suggest or encourage illegal activity

• Comments that reveal classified information or might affect the outcome of ongoing legal proceedings

Ground Rules

• Openly share your ideas, comments and perspectives.

• Show respect for other people and use appropriate language in your ideas and comments.

• Comment on, make suggestions to, and challenge ideas that are posted here, not about the individuals who post them.

• Keep your ideas and comments on topic. We reserve the right to move a comment to an “off topic” area for comments which are not aligned to the main topic areas for later evaluation.

• Keep an open mind when reading other participants’ points of view

• Moderators will do their best to keep this a constructive and productive space for ideas.

User Moderation

Users have the ability to flag inappropriate material. We aim to review and take action on any flagged material within two working days. If you are aware of any content that breaches our terms and conditions please inform us by flagging or sending an email to natdi@omb.eop.gov. We will review and take action if appropriate.

Voting

By participating in this online community, you agree that any idea or comment you submit may be rated by someone else through the use of agree or disagree voting. The rating score is displayed next to the idea. A positive rating increases the score and a negative rating decreases the score. We expect everyone to follow honest voting practices. You should respect the principle of one person, one vote (you can vote for any idea, including your own, but you cannot vote for any idea more than once.) You should not enter a vote that is coerced or paid for.

People will be able to see how many votes (the net number of votes) each idea gets.

Cookies

A persistent cookie is a piece of data stored by a user's browser that helps a website or service such as this dialog tool to recognize that user's unique computer, and thus to "remember" you on return visits. You can remove or block cookies by changing the settings of your browser.

IdeaScale uses an optional persistent cookies in this tool to recognize returning participants so they do not have to log in each time they visit the site. IdeaScale uses persistent cookies to save user login information (the user's login ID) between sessions, and this information is not shared with any other entities. The user is given a choice (an "opt in" approach) to check a box to stay signed in. This is an optional convenience to you if you do not want to have to remember your login information each time you visit the site. No personal information is collected or saved , nor can these cookies be used to track user activities across other websites. This is a Tier II usage according to OMB Memorandum M-10-22.

Internet security

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this web application employs a number of generally accepted security programs to protect the security of the infrastructure, to monitor network traffic, and to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Archived Campaigns

All Ideas
1. Reporting and Compliance

Campaign 1: Reporting and compliance requirements - Currently, the Federal Government requires businesses to fill out a lot of complicated paperwork to do business with us. We know we can do better. We want to know what you are seeing – where can we reengineer paperwork and systems, eliminate duplicative reporting, reduce the frequency of reporting, and/or change outdated requirements? Please help us with our improvements by providing ideas and input on the following questions:

Question 1: What reporting or other compliance requirements are most burdensome and why?

Question 2: How would you streamline reporting and compliance requirements? (please cite or describe specific examples if you can)

Question 3: What other compliance information are you providing to the federal government outside the procurement process that could be used to reduce duplication?

14

28

Expired on 05/05/2014
2. Procurement Rules and Practices

Campaign 2: Procurement rules and practices - We know entities doing business in the private sector have best practices and we’re anxious to learn about and replicate in the Federal Government wherever possible. We want to hear about innovative approaches to contracting that align with your business practices.

Question 1: What are the most effective ways to encourage innovative offers and best solutions?

Question 2: How can we reduce the cost of transactions for contractors?

Question 3: What are the best ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of acquisitions for information technology?

Question 4: What procurement rules or practices are most effective and which are least effective and why?

64

107

Expired on 05/05/2014
3. Small Business Participation

Campaign 3: Participation by small and minority businesses and non-traditional government contractors - We know many businesses lack the resources and expertise to participate in the Federal marketplace. We welcome feedback – especially by entities that are not participating in Federal contracting – to understand what steps we can take to make your participation possible.

We welcome feedback on how to increase participation in Federal contracting.

Question 1: How can we make doing business with the government easier and less costly for small businesses, minority businesses, new entrants, and non-traditional government contractors?

Question 2: If you are a small business, minority owned business, or new entrant, what features of the federal acquisition system are most helpful and which are least helpful to you?

40

55

Expired on 05/05/2014