GSA acquisition chief lays out his agenda

“By using the Federal Acquisition Service, the government could procure contracts up to 50% faster,” said Tom Sharpe.

Sharpe was appointed Commissioner for the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service five months ago.

He was a panelist at an AFFIRM luncheon moderated by GovLoop’s Chris Dorobek.

Sharpe told Chris that last year the government obligated $520 billion. “I would argue any organization of that size requires a centralized buyer. The Federal Acquisition Service should be that buyer,” said Sharpe.

GSA’s Top 5 Priorities

1. Deliver better value and savings to customers.
2. Expand opportunities for small businesses.
3. Make government more sustainable.
4. Lead with innovation.
5. Build a stronger GSA.

“We’ve developed a report card that represents Dan Tangherlini’s priorities and the priorities of our leadership team.”

FAS wants to:

• Find savings of $2.1 billion. We are going to meet and beat this goal.
• Want to increase federal strategic sourcing business line. But we are struggling we will need help from OMB to make that happen.
• Want to increase green buildings by 5%.
• We’ve got some internal efficiency targets.
• We have a business control program.

“Last year the FAS marketshare was 12.3%. That’s not the right way to do procurement at the scale that government does. There was incredible duplication of effort and lost savings. We are trying to get to 17%,” said Sharpe. “The fact that agencies are struggling with difficult budgets and furloughs means that they should rely on us more. We can do things faster and in fewer steps.”

One of the ways GSA is hoping to improve is with OASIS. OASIS is a next generation contract vehicle for complex professional services. The vehicle is designed to address agencies’ needs for professional service requirements that:

• Span multiple professional service disciplines;
• Contain significant IT components, but are not IT requirements in and of themselves;
• Contain Ancillary Support components commonly referred to as ODCs;
• Require flexibility for all contract types at the task order level including cost reimbursement; and
• Any one or combination of all of the above.

OASIS will be able to provide both commercial and non-commercial services. The core disciplines of the contract will include program management services, management consulting services, logistics services, engineering services, scientific services, and financial services.

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