Technology vendors that provide products or services beyond software and cloud may soon find a path into the General Services Administration’s (GSA) OneGov initiative, senior agency officials said on Tuesday.
“Our focus at this time is really on cloud and software – that said, plans for OneGov are constantly evolving, we’re having lots of discussions … [on] what the interests are, and we’re working to accommodate those in the future,” said Kyra Stewart, acting director of the IT Vendor Management Office at GSA, during the Federal Networks event on Sept. 16.
OneGov was launched by GSA in April to modernize and streamline federal IT acquisitions through standardized terms and pricing, which the agency said would benefit original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
For agencies using OneGov, Lawrence Hale, acting assistant commissioner of the Office of Information Technology Category at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said there are multiple benefits, including having a dedicated staff to find the best technology and deals, as well as helping agencies get what they need to meet their mission.
“Software, licensing, delivery, and pricing models have changed significantly over the last decade; federal procurement processes have not,” said Hale.
Since April, a flurry of OneGov deals have been struck, including those with Oracle, Elastic, Google, Adobe, Salesforce, Docusign, OpenAI, Box, Anthropic, and Microsoft.
But what happens when the year-long agreement for agencies to use OpenAI’s ChatGPT for $1 expires? Stewart said that OneGov is asking OEMs to be flexible about what happens at the end of the discounted period.
“We are getting smarter about these deals as we go along, and one of the things that we are really focused on with some of the new discounts … is on what happens [when the deal] expires,” said Stewart, adding that this includes going back to providers who have already signed an agreement.
“We don’t want agencies to see OEM creep within their infrastructure, because this was a great deal at the time and they’re not able to afford what now they’ve come to need and can’t survive without,” she continued.
To help plan for that, Stewart said that OneGov has been working to stretch shorter-term agreements, such as turning a six-month agreement into three years, to help accommodate for that expense risk.
“We also have secured some commitments to revisit as you approach the end of that term,” Stewart added.
For those worried about whether or not their agency still has the flexibility to find product or service providers outside of OneGov, Hale said, “I don’t anticipate that we’re going to become a mandatory source.”
In other GSA news, a panel of members from GSA said that there are no plans to extend the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract vehicle – for enterprise telecommunications and networking services – beyond its current sunset date in July 2032.
“There will not be an extension of EIS contract,” confirmed Tamika Spencer, program manager and director of GSA’s Business Management Division.
“That is what the expectation is. We’re going to plan for the next solution, for our agencies and for the vendor community,” said Spencer.
GSA said in July that it was looking at potential successors to EIS, after working to slowly migrate federal agencies to EIS for the past several years – a transition that is typically measured on the FITARA Scorecard.
While there’s no news yet on what that successor will look like, Spencer said that GSA “will be having communication about what those things are in the near future.”