General Services Administration (GSA) Acting Administrator Michael Rigas has signed an order establishing the Office of Centralized Acquisition Services (OCAS) within its Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) to streamline the federal government’s acquisition process.
A GSA spokesperson confirmed the new office in an emailed statement to MeriTalk on Tuesday, saying the move was in alignment with a White House executive order signed in March to consolidate the procurement of goods and services.
“By leveraging one federal wallet, GSA will deliver significant savings to the taxpayer, greater efficiencies, and reduced duplication, enabling agencies to focus on their core missions,” said a GSA spokesperson.
Those savings will specifically be delivered through what GSA called “a centralized, enterprise-wide approach.”
GSA said that Thomas Meiron will serve as OCAS’s assistant commissioner.
Meiron recently began serving as the executive director of FAS, starting in July. Before that, he was the acting assistant commissioner for the FAS Office of Customer and Stakeholder Engagement, among other roles at GSA where he has worked for over six years.
President Donald Trump’s executive order designated GSA as the “executive agent” of all governmentwide acquisition contracts for IT, rationalizing the move as helping to eliminate “waste and duplication, while enabling agencies to focus on their core mission of delivering the best possible services for the American people.”
That executive order had also tasked the GSA administrator with coming up with a plan on how to procure common goods and services across domestic components of the federal government.