GSA’s OneGov agreements gain traction as agencies compete to be early adopters

The General Services Administration’s OneGov strategy for centralized tech procurements is gaining momentum as agencies increase their use of the program and are even competing to be early adopters, according to GSA officials.

Laura Stanton, deputy commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said she attended an event earlier this month where government officials on the stage boasted about being the first to use the OneGov to buy solutions for their agencies.

“I was sitting in the audience cheering this on,” she said at Washington Technology’s Dec. 11 event on Navigating Disruption and Redefining Opportunity. "I wanted to yell, but I decided that would be rude.”

The early round of OneGov pacts mostly focused on cloud and productivity tools but have expanded into other areas such as cybersecurity with the recent agreement with Tenable.

"We’ve been able to get some very large savings, but what we also want is we want the privity of contract where it makes sense,” she said.

Privity of contract means having a direct relationship with an original equipment manufacturer instead of a reseller.

“We recognize the value that the resellers add but when we’re all buying the same type of products it makes sense to have a privity of contract with the OEM and to shift the reseller relationship,” she said.

At one event, an industry executive event joked with her that he was “envious” of government pricing when it came to artificial intelligence licenses for a $1.

“That’s not what you usually hear from someone in industry,” Stanton said.

GSA's strategy behind OneGov is to drive better terms and get the government to act like a single buyer, rather than a fragmented one.

“You get individual solicitations from us. It might have various tweaks on term and conditions and deliverables, but it is 80% or 90% the same,” Stanton said. “Yet that additional change costs money. We aren’t getting treated as the world’s largest buyer.”

The next step is getting more agencies to use OneGov,. Stanton said she is happy with the early results after hearing agency officials talking at the ACT-IAC conference on Dec. 5.

The Transportation Department, for example, signed a contract during the shutdown with Google Cloud through OneGov.

As GSA pushes forward with OneGov, it is also working to make changes to existing contracts to incorporate changes brought by the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul. All government-wide acquisition contracts and multiple-award contracts will receive refreshes implementing FAR deviations by the end of January, Stanton said.

GSA has updated 53 clauses and provisions for the Schedules. The agency also added five new ones and eliminated 36.

“If you are a schedule holder, please look at it very closely,” she said.

A solicitation for five new domains on OASIS+ will be released in January. This will be open to existing contract holders who want to make modifications to their contracts as well as new bidder.

OASIS+ will also gain authority for blanket purchase agreements, following Alliant 2's example.

"All of those, you're going to be seeing similar refreshes by the end of January," Stanton said. "So, in the next six weeks."

Stanton’s description of the pace of change and the need to change the culture of procurement echoed comments by Kevin Rhodes, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, who spoke in the prior session.

“I thought that Kevin Rhodes’ point about culture was tremendous,” Stanton said. “The only way we’re going to get the benefits of the changes is when contracting officers are using them.”

Stanton said that getting there will take leadership, education and support, and some hand-holding.

“There is a lot of comfort in doing what you’ve always done,” she said. “You in industry have the opportunity to bring some of this forward and help explain to the government at times where there’s opportunity.”