GSA MAS Consolidation – Streamlining Government Purchasing

By Adam Hyman, Director, Government Programs

Over the next two years, the General Services Administration plans to consolidate the agency’s 24 Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contracts into a single schedule. This change offers IT vendors an opportunity to expand their offerings beyond Schedule 70, without maintaining separate contracts — and this is a good thing.

The benefits to both vendors and government are many; eliminating duplication, providing a single set of terms and conditions, reducing “out of scope” issues and enabling greater flexibility for providing a total solution to government customers – to name just a few.

Currently, GSA organizes schedules by specific supply and service types into “categories.” Most of us are familiar with Schedule 70, the Information Technology category. But, in acquiring a total solution, our government customers have sometimes been required to use schedules from other categories to purchase everything they need. Categories that bleed over into IT solutions often include Office Management, Security & Protection, Total Solutions for Law Enforcement and even Facilities & Construction.

In theory, under the new initiative, vendors will only be required to hold one schedule contract and will be able to add any product and services category to that same schedule. If implemented correctly, this will reduce the administrative burden on the contractor, the government customer and GSA.

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