ANALYSIS: GSA's new procurement strategy begins with consumer tech
Gettyimages.com/Sarayut Thaneerat
By
Ross Wilkers
The General Services Administration's push to become the government's single buyer for most IT products and services starts with a focus on some of the most common tools we use in our daily lives.
Even the name itself, OneGov Strategy, tells us enough about how the General Services Administration wants the federal government to become a single buyer of technology products and services.
Late Tuesday afternoon, GSA unveiled a blueprint of the OneGov Strategy that will emphasize more direct engagements with original equipment manufacturers, or in other words brand name tech providers.
GSA, in speaking on behalf of other agencies, notes in its original announcement that agencies have “historically purchased software through resellers” that provide licenses and ancillary support.
Federal systems integrators are part of that ecosystem too and often work with the resellers to make IT hardware and software usable at scale for agencies.
It is notable that Laura Stanton, assistant commissioner for GSA’s IT category, wrote in a blog post that GSA’s goal with OneGov is “not eliminating the value-added support that resellers and integrators provide,” but instead is about “modernizing how those roles are defined, and who holds the contract with the government.
Just as notable, when putting on the business hat, is how GSA’s announcement and Stanton’s blog both specifically highlight the agency’s agreements with Google and Microsoft for access to their products. Think the Office 365 and Workspace cloud email and collaboration tools, respectively.
Whether those pacts are a one-off, or in this case a pair of one-offs, is worth watching as GSA tries once again to make IT product and license purchases more streamlined for all of government.
Those also may be the most straight-forward enterprise agreements for GSA to reach with any brand name tech provider when considering what Google and Microsoft provide.
Set aside the fact that they are global commercial tech names, then consider them as *consumer* tech brand names. Microsoft Office and Google Workspace are key to many of our daily personal lives, so it made sense that private industries moved fast to bring those tool suites into the workspace on a licensing model.
It then makes sense that GSA wants to take the same approach for those consumer-facing technologies, and of course on behalf of other agencies.
As Stanton pointed out in her blog, GSA is starting OneGov with enterprise software “because that’s where the need—and opportunity—is most urgent.”
GSA for all intents and purposes started the bigger theme behind OneGov with Google and Microsoft because of how those offerings scale across organizations, almost without limits, and the perceived lack of customization needed.
Want the government to be more of a single whole customer, as we went over on our WT 360 podcast after GSA and Google signed their discount agreement?
The starting point naturally is cloud email, collaboration and productivity tools that everyday consumers use. They are often called “the low-hanging fruit” when agencies start moving to the commercial cloud.
It’s almost as if those tools warrant their own line of dialogue surrounding how the federal government can be a better buyer of commercially available software. Other tools like those for workflow management and human resources functions look more complicated to make suitable for government use.
Microsoft and Google simply stand alone at the top of the cloud email and productivity tool market. The rest of the so-called “low-code/no-code” software landscape seems up for grabs, but it’s worth remembering that all of those providers rely on the commercial cloud.
For all of GSA’s OneGov dreams to come true, original equipment manufacturers must have the desire to directly engage with the federal government and make the investment needed to do that.
Some of those in global commercial tech prefer to work with the integrators and resellers. Like with commercial versus custom-built, the debate and decision on which path to choose is not a binary one.
Google and Microsoft have been willing to do that and have said such. Whether many of the others will do the same or not is an open question, and a mystery all of us in and around GovCon will try to solve.
As for the future of federal systems integrators and technology product resellers in the market? That is a second mystery all of us will try to solve, and likely the federal customers too, with the knowledge that companies in those two groups certainly have a future.