Contractor Groups Urge Congress: Don't Over-Regulate GSA Schedules House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) says a restructuring of the General Services Administration should give the GSA administrator “direct control” over regional offices. At a March 16 hearing before the committee, GSA Administrator Stephen Perry said he expects to have a draft reorganization plan ready by the end of May. He said the reorganization will include merging GSA’s Federal Supply Service, which manages the schedules, and the Federal Technology Service, which provides advice to other agencies on IT purchases. Davis plans to introduce legislation to implement the reorganization. “Two separate buying organizations operating out of different funds has become a barrier to coordinated acquisition of services and the technology needed to support the total solutions agency customers demand,” he said. The planned overhaul is an outgrowth of a series of investigations that found violations of procurement rules and laws in FTS. GSA’s inspector general found improprieties in several of FTS’s regional offices. Contracting officers report directly to the regional administrators, who are often political appointees. The lack of central authority over the regions “is the most immediate and serious problem facing GSA today,” said Vic Avetissian of Northrop Grumman, chairman of the public policy council for the Contract Services Association of America. Contractor groups generally supported the reorganization, but urged Congress not to bog down the GSA schedules with “an endless layer of new procedures,” in the words of Mike Davidson of Canon Corp., testifying for coalition for government procurement. GSA’s “Get It Right” initiative, begun last year after the inspector general’s reports, has imposed new reviews and controls on some schedule purchases. “The actions of a few have been allowed to set a chilling tenor for the entire agency,” Davidson said in prepared testimony. “As a result, routine business has dramatically slowed and a climate of paralysis has crept into all of FTS and much of FSS.” However, Richard N. Brown, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, testified, “The rank and file employees at GSA vehemently oppose a merger” of the two services. The union believes its members’ jobs are threatened because GSA has been hiring private contract support people to keep up with demand in the face of a shrinking government acquisition workforce.