The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report that was made public on October 9, 2014, concluding a two year study of the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) to closely examine how these agencies use market research.  Their findings indicated that the market research guidance of all three agencies studied, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), was consistent with federal regulations but all failed to acceptably collect and analyze market information about vendor capabilities in the three most important phases of a procurement’s life cycle: Presolicitation (before developing new required documents and before soliciting offers), Preaward (during the proposal evaluation process to determine price reasonableness) and Postaward (before awarding task).

The use of Profound.com can be a powerful tool for anyone in the Public Sector looking for accurate and unbiased research from key industry experts or to help them write case studies, white papers or cite additional sources for agency publications. Profound is an online business information service from MarketResearch.com that conveniently aggregates more than 200 leading publishers with coverage spanning approximately 28 verticals and 700 industry segments. So, how exactly can those in the Public Sector benefit from Profound? Why is Profound the right information retrieval application for your agency? What is the cost/benefit tradeoff from purchasing the solution?