GSA sees common cause with SEWP, NITAAC
There is inherent tension among the various IT sources for federal buyers, but GSA's Mary Davie says there is plenty of business to go around.
GSA's Marie Davie says there is "plenty of room" for the wide variety of federal contracting vehicles.
The General Services Administration is working with other big agencies’ contracting vehicles to get federal buyers the best pricing and other contracting data, said Mary Davie, the agency's assistant commissioner for integrated technology services.
In remarks at the Federal IT Acquisition Summit, Davie said GSA is working to include information from Government Wide Acquisition Contracts from vehicles such as NASA's Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement and the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center for her agency's developing category management efforts.
There is inherent tension among those various IT sources for federal buyers, who sometimes vie for the same customers, but Davie said there is enough business to go around.
"There is an $80 billion IT spend. There's plenty of room. We are talking and working together in the IT space," Davie said. GSA is incorporating as much pricing, product and other specifics into its category management "hallways" in hopes of keeping agency buyers as well informed as possible.
Davie said GSA has launched 12 hallways on its common acquisition platform to date, and anticipates more to come.
GSA and other agencies are working in other collaborative arenas to create a more unified approach to federal IT acquisition, hone contract specifics and reduce the total number of contracts across agencies.
Among those other avenues, Davie said, is the Category Management Leadership Council, which had been the Strategic Sourcing Leadership Council until December.
Those collaborative efforts are driving increased scrutiny of individual agency contracts and their details, Davie said.