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.

On the civilian side alone, there are 229 systems.

“That’s just wrong in this day and age where so much is easily procured commercially,” said Eric Ueland, deputy director for management at OMB. He was speaking at the Shared Services Leadership Coalition event on March 5.

The government wants to create Quality Service Management Office focused on acquisition. Commonly known by the acronym QSMO, these organizations are a shared service provider 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 and 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 that the 229 acquisitions systems could be reduced to one, calling the proliferation of acquisition systems “inexcusable.”

“That’s just on the civilian side,” he 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.”