The General Services Administration celebrated its OneGov Strategy like most new government initiatives with all the pomp and circumstance of a press release and a blog post.
What was missing, of course, is the actual strategy document itself.
No link in the press release.
No link in the blog post.
Both the press release and blog post just included celebratory, yet general, platitudinal sentences about how GSA will oversee changes to make the government buy as an enterprise.
OneGov is a “bold initiative aimed at modernizing how the federal government purchases goods and services.”
OneGov sets “a governmentwide direction for how we acquire and manage information technology —starting with commercial software. It reflects a broader shift in how we think about IT, not as a set of individual purchases, but as an interconnected system that powers everything from citizen services to national security,” wrote Laura Stanton, the newly minted deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service in GSA.
The thing is, without an actual document, it’s unclear what OneGov really will do. Sources tell Federal News Network, GSA got a bit ahead of its skis or put the cart before the horse with the press release and blog post.
Only now, sources say GSA is putting keyboard to screen (pen to paper seems so old school) to create the actual strategy that outlines its goals, objectives and maybe even timelines.
One industry source noted, “It seems like they are going by the seat of their pants. They have savings numbers they have to meet and are trying to get there.”
Multiple emails to GSA seeking details about the strategy or a copy of the document or a link or anything further came up empty. A GSA spokesperson said the agency “wasn’t ready to provide answers to my questions quite yet.”
Oh, but GSA has a strategy!!
“The OneGov Strategy is a bold step forward for President Trump’s GSA and our mission to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars,” said GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian in a release. “It’s about acting as one — aligning to our scale, standards and security to meet the needs of today’s government while preparing for the future.”
GSA also wrote, “The strategy calls for deeper, direct engagement with OEMs to ensure more transparent pricing, streamlined acquisition, and improved cybersecurity protections. While agencies have historically purchased software through resellers, this new approach prioritizes direct relationships to deliver better outcomes.”
Beginning with software licenses
We will just have to take GSA’s word that is what the strategy says, because they just aren’t ready to release it or talk about it, despite what the press release and the blog post say.
Here is what we do know about the OneGov effort:
GSA will try, once again, to create enterprise software licenses for all agencies to use. This is probably the third time in the last 25 years the government has attempted to corral issue. Remember SmartBuy. Remember the Defense Department’s enterprise software initiative (ESI). Both found limited success.
“One of the big questions GSA will need to answer is whether the government will be disciplined enough to actually use the enterprise licenses,” the industry source said. “This administration seems a bit more in lock step with some of these things, but there’s always the parochial feeling of agencies that ‘it’s our money and we will decide how to spend it.’”
So far GSA has new deals with Microsoft, Google and Adobe. All three will give agencies steep discounts off the list price on the Multiple Award Schedule.
Google will offer Workspace to every federal agency at a temporary price reduction of 71% off of the current MAS IT pricing, regardless of transaction size.
Adobe “will offer a comprehensive Paperless Government Solution at a 70% discount off the current GSA list price.”
Interestingly, both the Google and Adobe deals end this calendar year with agencies having until Sept. 30 to buy from Google and until Nov. 30 to buy from Adobe. So far from permanent discounts, meaning (add your used car sales voice here) agencies better buy now before this deal goes away.
Microsoft agreed with GSA on “standard terms and conditions and cost reduction strategies available in government transactions for software or services.”
Changes to OEMs, VARs coming
GSA and Microsoft came to an agreement during the Biden administration, and the agency said at the time that cost savings or avoidance could be up to 5%. Additionally, GSA anticipates making it easier, faster and 20% more efficient to buy from Microsoft through use of pre-negotiated legal and security requirements, templates and best practices, among others.
GSA is expected to continue to work with some of the largest software providers to create similar enterprise agreements. The Government Accountability Office found in January 2024 that 10 vendors, including Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce and Oracle accounted for 73% of all licenses purchased by the 24 agencies reviewed.
Stanton wrote in the blog post that, “These successes show what’s possible when we partner directly with industry to simplify acquisition, increase transparency, and create real savings. The OneGov Strategy takes that same spirit of collaboration and scales it across the broader procurement landscape. Software is just the beginning. Over time, this strategy will guide how we approach hardware, platforms, infrastructure, cybersecurity and more.”
The “strategy” also seems to be focused on working directly with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) instead of buying software through resellers.
GSA says this new approach prioritizes direct relationships to deliver better outcomes. What those outcomes are remains unclear.
Stanton said software OEMs will “have a clearer path to partner directly with the government at scale.”
Great idea. Again what’s missing still is the “how?”
The industry source said offered another big question that GSA has to answer, “Will OEMs even want to do business with the government? Is the government’s approach with OEMs consistent with how these companies already go to market more generally? That will be a big factor in this discussion.”
OEMs work through resellers for many reasons. Some don’t want to sell directly to the government because of what they believe are burdensome requirements. Others, particularly smaller companies, can’t afford the infrastructure required to sell to agencies. Still others are more than happy to pass along the risks, whether cyber or operational, to the reseller.
While changing that business model may sound good on paper, without, say, a strategy to show how that new approach would work, it’s all just talk.
Let’s be clear, no one is saying the ideas behind the OneGov Strategy aren’t worthwhile. Experts from all sides of the discussion agree that better coordinated buying, relieving burdens, which is part of the goal of the rewrite of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, on agencies and vendors alike and cutting costs make sense.
But there also are reasons why many of these efforts have been tried before and produced limited results. And without some semblance of a plan for how to overcome both real and perceived obstacles, GSA will embody the Yogi Berra quote, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
The post What’s missing from GSA’s OneGov Strategy? An actual strategy first appeared on Federal News Network.