Doan wants multiyear funding at GSA

The General Services Administration needs to have the option to carry over customer funds from one fiscal year to the next, said GSA Administrator Lurita Doan.

For many years, GSA was able to hold money for agencies in cases in which they had money earmarked for projects but could not spend it by the end of the fiscal year. But concerns about the abuse of this system led to a crackdown by government auditors after fiscal 2005, with millions of agencies' "parked" dollars being returned to the Treasury Department.

But Doan said it's a legitimate option for GSA to offer.

GSA has a different mandate than other agencies, she said at a Northern Virginia Technology Council Titans Breakfast Series meeting. “We’re allowed to handle multiyear money. Somehow or another, we started waffling in the past, but that’s got to end,” Doan said.

She said holding money beyond Sept. 30 is an advantage of GSA that brings “true value to the federal government and the business community.”

After her speech, Doan said she still is strategizing how to address the issue. But she intends to increase attention to it in the fiscal 2007 legislative agenda.

Other agencies have to return unused appropriated dollars to the Treasury Department at the end of the fiscal year, but GSA is different, she said.

Critics have said GSA lost its competitive edge when it stopped the multiyear funding.

Doan’s other agenda items include balancing the role of GSA’s inspector general in audits and building standard fees across the agency’s regions. She also wants to have a single contact point for large procurements to help government customers.