In its Multiple Awards Schedule (MAS) refresh set to take hold this month, the General Services Administration (GSA) is introducing more defined subcategories under information technology contracting.
A new document from GSA shows that starting in April, Special Item Numbers (SINs) – codes used to categorize products and services to help Federal agencies identify and acquire what they need through pre-approved vendors – under IT contracting are getting more specific with the addition of artificial intelligence, cloud, and cybersecurity-related subcategories.
One new subgroup includes “Incident Handling and Event Management” which will fall under the “Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services” subcategory.
All “IT professional services that are focused on providing the types of services that support the Government’s adoption of, migration to, or governance/management of cloud computing,” will be included under the new “Cloud Services Subcategory.”
Other cloud-related vendors under cloud services include those providing legacy system migrations, development operations, cloud-native application development, cloud solution management and governance, and cloud solution assessments.
Amid expanded IT contracting codes, GSA announced the retirement of 31 SINs which it said will support the overhaul of its MAS program that the agency announced on March 24.
“The retirement of these SINs supports the FAS initiative to optimize the Multiple Award Schedule Program by eliminating items with insufficient market demand or where administrative costs outweigh procurement benefits, making them unsuitable for the MAS program,” said GSA. “Furthermore, many of these items are available through other procurement channels as illustrated above.”
The SINs slated for retirement include 11 in the professional services category and seven in the office management areas. They also include one in the Scientific Management and Solutions category.
In addition to the MAS overhaul, President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this month that aims to consolidate Federal contracting under GSA, including IT contracts.