TOP 100: CGI Federal’s Stephanie Mango on navigating Trump’s ‘dynamic environment’
"This administration is trying to have an effective and efficient government, we can’t really argue with that as a good goal," says CGI Federal President Stephanie Mango. CGI Federal
By
Nick Wakeman
The leader of Company No. 34 on our 2025 Top 100 discusses a wide range of topics, including the General Services Administration's letters to "consulting" firms like CGI Federal and the potential for more outcome-based contracts.
Our 2025 Washington Technology Top 100 launch event on Monday started with the unveiling of the rankings and then we sat down with CGI Federal's president Stephanie Mango.
CGI Federal is Company No. 34 on the rankings with $1.2 billion in prime contract obligations.
The conversation focused on doing business in what Mango calls a "dynamic environment." That involves the General Services Administration's letters to companies it calls consultants, the Trump administration's push for more outcome-based contracting and the Federal Acquisition Regulation rewrite.
Below is our Q&A, edited for length and clarity.
WASHINGTON TECHNOLOGY: What everyone wants to know is, what’s it like doing business under the Trump administration?
MANGO: I have a leadership calendar with leadership quotes and last Wednesday the quote was: "Jump of the cliff and build your wings on the way down." That’s a little bit of where we are right now.
I was talking with my friends at Google; the mantra is "Nothing’s broken and everything can be better." It’s a great time for that right now.
There are people hunkering down and there are people whose companies and lives have been damaged. It’s a dynamic environment.
WT: CGI received one of the General Services Administration's letters targeting consulting firms. Walk us through what you did when you received that letter.
MANGO: I’m not kidding. The first thing I did was go to your list and I was like, we're number 35 (in 2024). I don't understand how we got on this list.
But I think what the administration wants to do makes sense. I’ve been in this market for about 30 years. My father was a career civil servant and taught me that government is where the rewarding work is. We all care about the government.
This administration is trying to have an effective and efficient government, we can’t really argue with that as a good goal.
Now, the tone and tenor of some of the messages coming through were not nice. And for me personally it was a bit challenging, but we’ve transitioned away from that.
The good news is we were one of the companies that leaned in. You want more outcome-based contracting, great, we love outcome-based contracting.
WT: What does outcome-based contracting mean to CGI?
MANGO: For me there can be many ways to get to outcome-based contracting. GSA’s view is that it means everything is fixed-price, but I put the idea out there about cost-plus incentive.
You cover your costs but then there’s an incentive if you do well. No incentive if you don’t do well. To me that’s outcome-based contracting.
But I think GSA’s goal is to get to more firm-fixed-price. That can work in a lot of areas, but it’s challenging if you are doing system development or using agile methodologies. It is hard to figure out how to firm-fixed price that.
Industry needs to speak up and be honest about what makes sense and what doesn’t.
If you want to do it right and you want it to drive down costs, you need to be really clear about your outcomes, which is hard.
WT: People say that you start off cost-plus and then evolve to fixed-price or outcome-based. Is that a good strategy?
MANGO: Absolutely. That’s used a lot in the commercial world. You start with an effort-based contract but as the client and service provider get to know each other more and understand the environment they are in, then you can move to firm-fixed price.
WT: A big initiative for GSA is the overhaul of the Federal Acquisition Regulation and the OneGov program. Will that impact the way you do business and the opportunities you see ahead?
MANGO: The hardest hit will be the resellers because the goal of the administration is to eliminate resellers and get rid of that layer. Those companies will be challenged but it will also change the structure of some of the opportunities.
If you are always going directly to the OEMs for the products you need, the integrators and the IT services folks will have to do things differently because the reseller role was baked into the deal.
So how we structure deals will be a little different. How we leverage strategic partnerships with the OEMs will be different. I think there is a lot of opportunity to have good partnerships, and we need to do that to do well in this market.
WT: Do you think contracts will flow faster when the reforms are put into place?
MANGO: One thing I’ve learned from talking to my commercial brethren is that when you do a commercial outsourcing project, the customer talks to a lot of companies. You have some interactions and then as they narrow down the companies, you talk more.
As you get closer to a final procurement, the client and the service provider talk even more because if you want firm-fixed price, you need to understand each other and know how you’re going to work together.
By the time you narrow it down to one, you have a really strong working relationship between the service provider and the client.
In the government we do it exactly the opposite way. The closer we get to a procurement the less we talk.
My hope is that FAR 2.0 will help address that.
WT: When you are out talking to customers, what signals are you listening for?
MANGO: Right now, a lot of people are focused on what’s going to happen next. Am I going to be OK? Is my agency going to be OK? There is a lot of hunkering down.
The signal I’m looking for is when people say -- "OK, I see it now and I have a plan and I want to go forward." We aren’t there yet with a lot of government folks.
So, we have to move out of this phase and get back into doing the business of government.