Federal acquisition is getting a shared services makeover

The Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration are taking concrete steps to shrink the number of acquisition systems operating in the federal government.

Civilian agencies alone have 229 systems.

“That’s just wrong in this day and age where so much is easily procured commercially,” Eric Ueland, deputy director for management at OMB, said Thursday at an event hosted by the Shared Services Leadership Coalition in Washington, D.C.

The government wants to create a new Quality Service Management Office focused on acquisition. QSMO organizations are shared service providers that agencies use to acquire standardized services such as financial management, cybersecurity and grants management.

A QSMO focused on acquisition would give agencies access to tools such as contract writing systems, data analytics, best practice templates, training and support.

“Our acquisition workforce across the federal government needs this shared service focus,” Ueland said. “I’m happy to say that in partnership with GSA, we’re going to launch a QSMO.”

An early focus will be on “what’s easy to use, easy to understand, and easy to execute,” he said.

Ueland said the 229 civilian acquisition systems could be reduced to one, calling the proliferation of acquisition systems “inexcusable.”

“That’s just on the civilian side,” Ueland said. “I can’t even begin to give you a guesstimate on the non-civilian side. But as time unfolds, we anticipate tearing into that as well.”