At the recent Professional Services Council’s Vision Conference, one of the presentations on acquisition trends highlighted as many as 10 agency specific multi-award technology contracts that have been cancelled or put on indefinite hold.
These included COMET 2 from the General Services Administration, the Army’s Modern Software contract and the IRS’s digital services blanket purchase agreement.
The leaders of the vision team said agencies made the decision to cancel these and other contracts based on the requirements outlined in President Donald Trump’s executive order from March calling for the consolidation of contracts.
One of those acquisition programs that is bucking the cancellation trend is the Army’s huge multiple award contract for professional services.
The service said in a Dec. 19 posting on SAM.gov that it will proceed with the Marketplace for the Acquisition of Professional Services (MAPS) contract after all.
The Army had shelved the program back in March when the White House issued the EO.
“We are pleased to announce that after careful consideration the Government has decided to PROCEED forward with the MAPS acquisition!” the Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground wrote.
MAPS would bring together two existing contracts, IT Enterprise Solutions-3 Services (ITES-3S) and Responsive Strategic Sourcing for Services 3 (RS3), and would have a 10-year life with a $50 billion ceiling.
The Army planned to combine the two contracts in MAPS back in 2024. Instead of recompeting its RS3 as a vehicle called Ascend and moving to version four of ITES-3S, the Army wanted to create its own broad-based professional services contract. Baker Tilly says in a blog post that the Army awarded RS3 in multiple phases between 2017 and 2019, with 260 companies currently participating in the $37.4 billion vehicle. The advisory firm says the service awarded ITES-3S in 2018 and includes 135 companies, and it has a $12 billion ceiling.
The Army had considered moving its requirements that MAPS will address to OASIS+ since there is some overlap of professional services requirements. Under MAPS, the Army is looking for a wide variety of IT and engineering professional services, including program management, business process reengineering, cybersecurity and many others. Baker Tilly says while more details are coming, it believes “MAPS is currently proposed as a full and open competition with small business reserves. The government intends to make 100 awards in total, 20 awards per domain with an unknown number of small business reserves for each of the five domains.”
Now MAPS is back on tap and the Army will hold an industry day on Jan. 28 at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to discuss the rebooted solicitation.
The Army’s decision comes as the General Services Administration is opening an on-ramp and expanding its OASIS+ contract.
GSA to expand OASIS+
GSA said it will enter phase 2 of OASIS+ on Dec. 4. This means the updated multiple award professional services contract will add five new service domains across all six current contracts. OASIS+ eventually will have 13 total domains. The five news ones are:
Business administration
Financial services
Human capital
Marketing and public relations
Social services
GSA says this expansion is a direct response to the market research and feedback it received from federal and industry partners.
“Through in-depth spend analysis, customer engagement and a formal request for information (RFI) that was posted on June 17, 2025, GSA identified critical service areas that represent a significant portion of unmanaged government spending,” GSA said in a release.
GSA expects to release the RFP for OASIS+ phase 2 on our about Jan. 12. Additionally, on Dec. 16 the agency posted draft scorecards outlining the evaluation criteria for all 13 domains combined under the six solicitations.
In its first year, OASIS+ saw agencies obligate more than $366 million through 102 task orders, according to GSA’s data-to-decisions dashboard.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Air Force accounted for the biggest agency customers based on total task orders, awarding 31 and 29, respectively, in fiscal 2025.
Deloitte Consulting won the most task orders with four, and Leidos won the largest task order for $219 million.
And speaking of GSA contracts, its Polaris small business governmentwide acquisition contract is moving forward. As of Dec. 3, agencies can place task orders against Polaris service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) and Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) pools.
Among the IT services included on Polaris are:
Artificial intelligence and automation
Cloud and edge computing
Distributed ledger technologies
Immersive and emerging technologies
“More awards in both pools are expected in Fiscal year 2026. Through this approach, GSA can ensure strong program oversight, manage vendor onboarding effectively and create room for additional opportunities,” wrote Larry Hale, GSA’s assistant commissioner in the Federal Acquisition Service’s Office of Information Technology Category (ITC), in a blog post. “Polaris was built from the start with flexibility in mind. The contract includes key features that help it stay current and responsive, such as on-ramps, no contract ceiling, and technology refresh capabilities.”
GSA still is reviewing bids for the small business and women-owned small business pools.
GAO dismisses AI contract protests
Another program that has garnered a lot of interest and attention received some good news last week as well.
The Government Accountability Office dismissed the protest by AskSage of GSA’s awards to artificial intelligence providers under its OneGov initiative.
GAO rejected the complaint not on its merits, but because it doesn’t have jurisdiction over contract modifications. GSA modified its schedule contracts with Carahsoft to offer access to AI providers for $1 or less.
“Under the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) and our bid protest regulations, we review protests of alleged violations of procurement statutes and regulations by federal agencies in the award or proposed award of contracts for the procurement of goods and services, and solicitations leading to such awards,” GAO wrote in its decision. “Once a contract is awarded, our office will generally not review protests of allegedly improper contract modifications because such matters are related to contract administration and therefore not subject to review pursuant to our bid protest function.”
GAO says because AskSage challenges the reasonableness of the modification of the schedule contract between GSA and Carahsoft, “AskSage’s protest raises matters of contract administration and therefore is not subject to review pursuant to our bid protest function.”
GAO also determined that AskSage isn’t an “interested party” and therefore not in a position to challenge the modifications.
“To challenge the scope of a contract modification, a protester must demonstrate its direct economic interest with respect to its status as an actual or prospective offeror,” GAO stated. “Here, AskSage is a subcontractor or supplier to Carahsoft, not an actual or prospective offeror for the FSS contract between GSA and Carahsoft that has been modified.”
Nic Chaillan, the founder of AskSage, wrote LinkedIN that there are always loopholes when it comes to federal acquisition rules.
“We are obviously right on the merits. Sad day for America. Now [F]ortune 500 can build a $1 dollar unlimited offering in a contract modification for 12 [months], get agencies locked in and charge billions [in] year 2. Uncompeted. Sad day,” Chaillan wrote in response to others’ comments. “Sad to watch the administration letting those shenanigans happen.”
AskSage filed protests with GAO in August, claiming the awards for access to Anthropic and OpenAI tools violated several laws and regulations, including the commercial item pricing requirements under FAR Part 12 and CICA.
GSA said at least 43 agencies have taken advantage of the low-cost OneGov agreements for AI tools.
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