GSA May Eliminate Some Schedule, FTS Contracts The General Services Administration has announced a reorganization of its two biggest contracting arms, the Federal Supply Service and the Federal Technology Service, and will review the two services’ information technology contracting vehicles to determine whether some are duplicative and unnecessary. Some contractors have complained of the expense of marketing to similar contracts run by FSS and FTS. FSS Commissioner Donna Bennett said the reorganization “creates a process for addressing duplication in contracts.” GSA is establishing a Contract Vehicle Review Board this month. “The Board will review GSA’s IT contracting vehicles to assess their continued value and effectiveness and determine the need for modification or replacement,” the agency said. Under the reorganization, government-wide assistance contracts that are currently in FTS will be combined into FSS contract development centers. The contract development and maintenance functions for GWACs of the four FTS Solution Development Centers in the regional offices in Atlanta, Kansas City, MO, Fort Worth, TX, and San Francisco will be transferred to the FSS GWAC centers within the same four regional offices. GSA said it will combine and realign FSS and FTS Market Research, Marketing, Customer Account Planning and Sales functions relating to the procurement of IT and professional services. “This will eliminate overlaps and provide a better focus for GSA interaction with customer agencies when determining and responding to their needs for procurement of IT and professional services,” the statement said. FSS will have primary responsibility for Market Research and Marketing, including IT and professional services as well as all products and services. FTS will have primary responsibility for Customer Account Planning and Sales relating to the procurement of IT and professional services and will be the primary point of contact with customer agencies for their procurement of IT and professional services. The reorganization follows recommendations of a study by the consulting firm Accenture. The study said GSA should “rationalize overlapping IT contracts In its report last spring, Accenture said, “The GSA model basically works: GSA essentially has the right mix of products and services necessary to serve federal customers. However, there are opportunities to improve service to customers and to address inefficiencies that increase costs for industry partners.” At a congressional hearing in April, Larry Allen, executive director of the Coalition for Government Procurement, expressed contractors’ concerns this way: “The overhead incurred by contractors to pursue these competing vehicles can be substantial, yet few companies want to be seen a ‘bad partners’ or miss out on a new project promoted to be ‘it.’” GSA Administrator Stephen Perry, testifying at the same hearing, said the existence of overlapping contracts is “appropriate” because of the differences in how FSS and FTS operate. FSS is a “self-service” store for commercial products and services, while FTS offers “assisted service,” advising federal customers on how to meet their needs, the Accenture study said. (SAA, 4/19/02, 5/17/02) About $17 billion worth of IT products and services were sold through the Federal Supply Service and Federal Technology Service in fiscal 2001. The Coalition for Government Procurement has recommended appointing an associate administrator to oversee both FSS and FTS, but GSA did not do that.