§8503 Duties and Powers of the Committee

Summary

The Committee must keep and publish a procurement list of products and services the federal government should buy from qualified nonprofit agencies that employ blind or other severely disabled people. The Committee can add or remove items by following the federal rulemaking steps in 5 U.S.C. 553(b)–(e). It must set fair market prices for those items and update those prices when market conditions change. The Committee also must name one or more central nonprofit agencies to help divide federal orders among the qualified nonprofits. The Committee can make rules about product specs, delivery times, and other details. It must make a rule that gives buying priority to products from agencies for the blind. The Committee must keep studying and evaluating its work to run the program well and look into employment problems and production methods to use more blind and severely disabled workers.