GSA Making Headlines: Why You Need to Pay Attention

By Adam Hyman, Director, Government Programs

If you haven’t noticed by now, you may have been too focused on the final season of Game of Thrones. However, it’s definitely time to turn your attention to what’s going on at the General Services Administration (GSA).

Over the course of the last year, GSA has been making headlines across the federal procurement marketspace by reaching agreement with various agencies to pull into the Schedule 70 program (via BPAs), former agency-specific requirements and IDIQs. While some may argue this is simply a grab for additional contract fees, it makes holding a schedule contract a critical prerequisite for even more federal opportunities. Recent and major opportunities have included:

• 2nd Generation Information Technology (2GIT) BPA, formerly NETCENTS (valued at $5.5B)
• Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) BPA (valued at $8.2B)
• Information Technology Supplies and Support Services (ITSSS) BPA (valued at $5B)
• NOAA Mission Information Technology Services (NMITS) BPA (valued at $2.1B)

Approximately $20 billion in estimated business is expected to funnel through the Schedule 70 program. This doesn’t even include GSA’s plans for a DEOS sister BPA or the Civilian Enterprise Office Solutions (CEOS) BPA!

GSA is also making headlines by taking on a variety of major initiatives that aim to change how the government will procure products in the future. These include:

• Four Cornerstone Initiatives (4Cs)
  • MAS Consolidation that will merge the almost three dozen various schedule contract types into one consolidated schedule, which will allow contractors to offer a total solution under its contract – Expected to be rolled out for new contracts in October 2019 and to existing contracts in January 2020.
  • Commercial E-Commerce Portals, which is an effort to modernize how commercial items are procured within the government through the use of commercial on-line marketplaces – Pilot program expected late CY2019/early CY2020.
  • Catalog Management to streamline and organize the millions of items currently offered under the Schedules program.
  • Contract Writing Systems to improve how end users preform their jobs in procuring items.
• Schedule 70 SIN updates
  • Creation of an Order Level Materials (OLM) SIN that provides flexibility on T&M delivery orders for the purchase of needed equipment in support of the overall procurement.
  • Updates to Wireless (132-53) and Cloud (132-40) SINs to continue to align with how such services are sold to the general public today.
  • Consolidation of the Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services (HACS) SINs from 4 to 1 and creating subcategories of types of service offerings.

Furthermore, GSA Administrator Emily Murphy announced at the Coalition for Government Procurement Spring Conference that GSA will be hosting a Federal Acquisition Service Training Conference (FAST 2020) April 14–16, 2020 in Atlanta. While this won’t be the legacy GSA Expo, it will be the first GSA-hosted conference in years and a large turnout for both contractors and customers is expected. More information about this event will be forthcoming.

While we applaud GSA in its attempts to innovate and take on more initiatives, for GSA ultimately to be effective, it must address some of the day-to-day operational issues (e.g., inconsistency) that continue to plague it and the contracting community. And, although it remains to be seen how successful these initiatives ultimately will be, it is nice to see renewed energy from the agency whose schedule sales have been relatively flat for the last several years.

If you want to learn more about these initiatives, reach out to the immixGroup Programs team. 

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