An Unlikely Federal Contractor

Doing business with the federal government is a notoriously difficult endeavor. The myriad of regulations make the barrier to entry extremely high for the average entrepreneur unfamiliar with the BeltWay of doing things. But one two and a half year old tech company's recent entry onto the GSA Schedules program may provide a preview of the Obama Administration's strategy to bring innovation to the government.

According to Kevin Merritt, founder and CEO of Seattle-based Socrata, one year ago he would have never predicted that his company would be doing business with the new administration.

"It's not generally a good fit for startups to work with the public sector," Merritt said.

So what changed? Basically Merritt walked into his office one day during the transition to find a dozen email and voicemail message, all from the White House or GSA regarding his firm's product, which allows government organizations to publish, analyze and embed data sets for the Web.

"The folks who ran Change.gov liked our technology and used it for publishing campaign donor data," Merritt said. "So when some of the same folks on the transition team moved over to the White House, they called us and had us formalize it by signing terms of agreement."

Socrata signed agreements with both GSA and the White House and joined a number of other social media services whose offerings are approved for government use. Both the White House and GSA use of Socrata's free service with a few cosmetic enhancements throw in without cost.

However, Merritt has bigger plans for his company, especially with the federal CIO Vivek Kundra requiring agencies to post more data online via Data.gov. Merritt said Socrata seeks to provide agencies with "a turnkey version of Data.gov that's more evolved".

Merritt said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the first federal customer to pay for the company's premium service, but he expects that number to rise now that Socrata is a vendor on GSA's Schedules program. The company was approved two weeks ago after a six-month process that Merrit described as atypical.

"Most companies spend a lot of time and money to get on a GSA Schedule. Part of what this makes me feel good is the organic selection, the natural adoption of our platform," Merritt said. "At Change.gov they cut a lot of corners, did a lot of things on the fly. The White House is more formal, my understanding is that some of the folks did a good job on our behalf telling the folks in GSA about us."

Merritt said he hopes agencies will try the free product available on Apps.gov and if they like it consider upgrading to the premium service. He called the business model "Freemium" and it's a definite departure from the traditional federal procurement process. Socrata has yet to earn FISMA certification, though Merrit said he's anticipating going through that process in the near future.

"The vision for Apps.gov is to broaden significantly so anyone who works in any federal agency can procure any cloud-based service through Apps.gov," Merritt said. "The products and services that have been FISMA certified will get special designation and it will be easier for people to procure them."

"I guess the typical path is to work your way from the bottom up. A city contract, a county contract, if you're lucky a federal agency at the edge," Merritt said. "We've worked from top-center down."

It's certainly noteworthy that the White House has directly encouraged an Internet company to market its product to the government sector. Will this mean more direct involvement from the White House when it comes to technology procurement? Given the administration's strong support in Silicon Valley, measures that make it easier for technology firms to market their wares to federal agencies would make sense.

It will be interesting to see what other products end up with the unofficial White House seal of approval. Given the number of administration officials that have been poached from one firm in particular, we've got a pretty good guess who it'll be.