GSA Schedule is Favorite of Federal IT Buyers For the first time, more than half of federal computer systems were bought through the GSA Schedule in fiscal 2002, according to a report by the market research firm INPUT. The report shows that IT equipment purchases on the GSA Schedule have nearly doubled since 1998, largely because of procurement reforms in the mid-1990’s. “Procuring computer systems through the GSA IT Schedule is increasingly becoming the norm for agencies due to the speed and ease of this acquisition vehicle,” said Lauren Jones Shu, senior analyst at INPUT. Large outsourcing contracts are also changing the dynamics of the federal computer systems market and have implications for the way vendors sell to the federal government. Shu explains, “Vendors must have a partnering strategy to work through outsourcers and service providers to offer computer systems, in addition to traditional direct selling, as more and more agencies look to outsourcing to provide desktop and network services.” Input forecasts federal spending on computer systems will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 8% from $13.8 billion in this fiscal year to more than $20 billion in 2008. The report shows that the government buys more computers when it hires more employees, and federal employment levels are growing for the first time in a decade. “Homeland security initiatives are contributing to the increase in federal employment levels (and IT purchases) in the short term,” Shu said. “However, the increasing rate of retirement eligibility among federal employees may mitigate some of those increases over the next five years.” The leading computer systems vendors last year were Dell, with 18% of the federal market; Northrop Grumman, 8%; and GTSI, 6%.