Billions are on the line as DOGE, GSA increase scrutiny
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By
Nick Wakeman
A new analysis by TechnoMile looks at how exposed the General Services Administration's top 10 consulting firms could be, based on unexercised contract ceiling across three major spending categories.
As the General Services Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency scrutinize consulting contracts, a new analysis says GSA top 10 consulting firms have exposure of $94 billion in unexercised contract ceilings.
In its analysis, TechnoMile evaluated the ceilings and options on the contracts held by the 10 companies GSA has identified as the federal market's largest consulting firms:
- Accenture Federal Services
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- CGI Federal
- Deloitte
- General Dynamics IT
- Guidehouse
- HII Mission Technologies
- IBM
- Leidos
- Science Applications International Corp.
In aggregate, these are the three largest categories of unexercised ceilings:
- Management and advisory services: $25.3 billion
- Application work: $13.6 billion
- Technical and engineering services: $8.7 billion
TechnoMile identified another $1 billion in ceiling spread across needs such as technology base, equipment modification, IT management, IT outsourcing, systems development and security services.
That $1 billion figure also includes research-and-development, social services, equipment maintenance, logistics support services, operational systems development and ammunition and explosives.
Management and advisory services is probably the category that most aligns with what is traditionally thought of as consulting. As we have pointed out, there is no simple way to identify consulting work by using PSCs and NAICs codes.
While TechnoMile has one set of numbers, GSA presented a different number when it named the 10 companies with consulting work. The agency said these companies stood to reap $65 billion in consulting fees.
IBM and Accenture have reported contract cancellations because of the focus on the so-called consulting contracts. Leidos has said it has identified just 1% of its revenue as falling into the consulting category.
There may be different opinions about which numbers to use, the real message I get from the TechnoMile report is how exposed these companies could be and how much leverage the government has over them.
Regardless of how the numbers are categorized, $94 billion in unexercised ceiling is a lot of unrealized value and potentially a lot of risk.
