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Home > About USPS & News > Forms & Publications > Postal Periodicals and Publications > Supplying Principles and Practices > Summary of Changes
Effective July 30, 2007, the Postal Service is revising the Supplying Principles
and Practices. We use revision bars to indicate new or revised material.
Readers are reminded that the Supplying Principles and Practices are not
binding regulations of the Postal Service and are intended to provide
flexibility and discretion when applied to specific business situations. The
Postal Service's purchasing regulations are found in Title 39, Code of Federal
Regulations (CFR), Section 601. For further information on the Supplying
Principles and Practices, see the "General Overview of the Postal Service
Supplying Principles" and the "Introduction to the Supplying Practices."
Revisions are as follows:
1. Throughout. We deleted references to Contracting and related
authorities for the managers of Supply Management Infrastructure,
Supply Operations, and SCM Strategies.
2. Contracting Officers' Qualifications. Effective July 30, the Postal Service
only considers individuals possessing baccalaureate degrees from
accredited colleges or universities for appointment as a Postal Service
contracting officer, resulting in a series of revisions. We revised the
People and Culture Principle to reflect this change and added a new
General Practice entitled "Appointment and Selection of Contracting
Officers". This new General Practice describes the qualifications for all
levels of contracting officers, and also addresses professional
certifications, waivers and interim appointments, continuing
professionalism, and termination. These items had been previously
discussed in various sections of the SPs and Ps.
3. In the General Practice titled "Supplier Disagreement Resolution", we
revised Flow Chart #2 to define an interested party as an actual or
prospective offeror whose direct economic interests would be affected
by the award of a contract or the failure to award a contract.
4. Privacy Considerations. We revised the Privacy Considerations
General Practice and Clause 1-1, Privacy Protection. We revised the
General Practice to reference the protection of employee information,
and to state that, in most cases, a supplier must turn over customer or
employee information in its possession upon completing a contract.
These changes are also reflected in a revised Clause 1-1, Privacy
Protection, which is revised to discuss the use of security plans,
security breach notification, and the Postal Service's right to audit the
supplier's compliance with the requirements of the clause.
5. Endorsement of Noncompetitive Purchase Requests. In the Determine
Extent of Competition topic, we lowered the threshold for the requesting
organization's VP endorsement of a noncompetitive purchase from
$1 million to $250,000.
6. Clause 4-1, General Terms and Conditions. We revised Clause 4-1 to
delete the language in paragraph l (Termination for Convenience)
regarding (1) the nonapplication of cost accounting standards and
(2) the statement that the Postal Service does not have the right to
audit the supplier's records.
7. Supplier Disagreement Resolution. We deleted the secton Questions
for Consideration.
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