Where GSA sees resellers fitting into its unified procurement strategy

Across the federal technology industrial base, value-added resellers have long been a primary avenue for federal agencies to acquire commercial IT products and especially software licenses.

Many companies out in the commercial tech ecosystem do not employ staff that sell directly to the federal government, instead having made business decisions to work primarily with resellers and integrators as channel partners.

But the General Services Administration has taken a different approach in recent months through its OneGov unified procurement strategy that has resulted in pacts with companies such as Google, Adobe and Salesforce. More OneGov arrangements are in the works, and GSA also has a separate, but similar, master agreement in place with Microsoft.

So as GSA looks for more direct dealings with those global tech companies and others, where do the resellers fit into the larger ecosystem, and what will their roles be?

Lawrence Hale, assistant commissioner for the IT category at the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service, said on a Wednesday webinar that GSA is trying to essentially “flip” the relationship agencies have traditionally had with resellers.

OneGov reverses the traditional dynamic, which has seen resellers hold the prime contracts, to one where the original equipment manufacturers become the primes. OEM is the terminology GSA is using to describe companies that currently participate in OneGov or will in the future.

“We’re not eliminating resellers. We’re simply restructuring how they participate,” Hale said on the webinar hosted by George Mason University’s Baroni Center for Government Contracting. “While the contract may be with the OEM, there’s still a vital role for resellers and integrators to play as subcontractors, authorized partners, and that these businesses can continue to provide high-value services like onboarding, integration and training.”

As Hale pointed out, GSA and other agencies have primarily engaged with resellers when problems such as cybersecurity issues arise with software and other IT products. The contract structure largely prevents the agency from going directly to the brand name provider.

Hale said one of the big questions informing GSA’s OneGov strategy asks whether it is fair to “put small businesses in the position of having to answer to the government about potential vulnerabilities in a major manufacturer’s software, when that small business is simply serving as a reseller.”

The government market’s emphasis on compliance with cybersecurity mandates, small business goals, the FedRAMP authorization program and other regulatory frameworks drove many OEMs toward a strong preference for working with resellers.

Hale said the OneGov strategy aims to provide some clarification on those items and pricing matters in the form of more ”consistent terms and conditions” and “consistent cybersecurity standards.”

“The [OneGov] contracts now include clearer enforceable obligations on data protection, encryption and incident response,” Hale said.