The year 2015 saw GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) embark on new programs and prepare for the implementation of others.  A full reckoning is not possible, but three initiatives, collectively, give a good analysis of where the service is headed, and what it might need to change, in order to achieve their stated goal of providing more commercial acquisition services to more agencies. 

Consolidation of all Multiple Award Service Schedules:  Led by Tiffany Hixson, GSA accomplished the consolidation of multiple service contracts into one comprehensive Professional Services Schedule.  This makes it easier for customer agencies to use Schedule contracts for complex, multi-faceted projects and should make contract management easier for GSA.  Few, if any, serious complaints have been heard from industry, largely due to the outstanding and frequent communication from the transition team.  Overall, FAS gets an “A” for this project.

Staying with the schedules program, another major initiative was the attempted establishment of a “Prices Paid” database. The intent of this database is to allow agency customers to see the prices other customers paid for the same or similar items. The plan has received strong resistance from industry siting its expense and potential workability. In the meantime, other agencies, such as NASA, are implementing similar price analysis solutions.  Significantly, these do not require additional cost or action by contractors.  In 2016 GSA will have to seriously consider whether this initiative continues to make sense or if other, more cost effective solutions are available. There should be no reason to rush headlong into a program that does not work just to meet a desired political outcome. The Prices Paid initiative gets a grade of “Incomplete” with a recommendation to consider other paths.

Last stop for the FAS report card is a look at GSA’s popular Alliant program. Alliant leaders are hard at work on the 2nd iteration of this program and it should be an active place to be in 2016. The Alliant team has done a lot of things of things right.  Central to this is the understanding that communication must be a dialog among all stakeholders in order to make it work. The big question that FAS leaders need to ask themselves is if programs like Alliant and OASIS are well managed and popular with both customers and contractors, what needs to be done so that the Schedules program obtains the same reputation.  The Schedules are much larger than all of GSA’s GWAC’s combined.  Imagine how large and popular it could be if the same principles applied to GSA GWAC’s were applied to the Schedules program.  Alliant gets an “A” and a request that they share their best practices with their Schedules co-workers.