GSA Proceeds With Procurement Consolidation

Following the Executive Order Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement on March 20, the General Services Administration (GSA) is advancing with its consolidation of domestic, government-wide buying. This procurement consolidation has two main goals: 1) Streamlining federal procurement, and 2) creating operational efficiencies.

GSA’s milestones for implementation are:

• Within 30 days (by April 20^th), GSA will be the executive agent for all government-wide acquisition contracts for information technology (IT).
• Within 60 days (by May 19th), agency heads must submit proposals to the GSA Administrator for transitioning their procurement of common goods and services to GSA.
• Within 90 days, the GSA Administrator will submit a plan to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for GSA to begin procurement of all common goods and services

GSA Briefing Outlines Process
A recent internal briefing from GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum and Senior Procurement Executive (SPE) Jeffrey Koses provided an overview of how this consolidation is expected to progress.

Government-Wide Procurement Consolidation

1 of 18

Agencies need to provide and review active contracts; share contract and funding details; coordinate proposed workforce changes with GSA; and identify decision makers. According to the presentation, GSA plans to engage with agencies in the following process:

1. Conduct kick-off meetings, and have agencies populate contract inventory templates;
2. Share agreements, and hold daily stand-ups to review inventory;
3. Finalize the planned migration approach and test file transfers;
4. Set a freeze on contract actions, sign the 7600B form (agreement for intragovernmental reimbursable, buy/sell activity) and align funding obligations;
5. Clone contract files, funds acceptance, and transfer contracts; and
6. Conduct outreach to vendors and customers, and review transfers.

In regard to human capital, agencies “will need to maintain project/program managers (PMs) & Contracting Officer Representatives (CORs).” The allocation of contracting staff “will depend on how the agency structures their support for buying the common goods and services contracts to be transferred to GSA.”

Examples provided in the briefing of “common goods and services” included laptops, cell phones, commercial software licenses, commercial motor vehicles, and consulting services. “Not common examples” included “DoD – Tactical motor vehicles,” and “DHS – Ammunition, security systems.”

For contractors, when the transfers begin, registration in new platforms will be required for invoicing and payments. Contractor-specific resources are available here.

GSA has established a Procurement Consolidation page at https://www.gsa.gov/centralization that will be updated continually.