Doan starts tenure at GSA with splash

Her first big one was bringing
in Jim Williams, the program
manager for one of the government’s
highest-profile, politically
toughest challenges—the U.S.
Visitor and Immigrant Status
Indicator Technology project at
the Homeland Security Department.

Williams will head up the
Federal Acquisition Service.

In making the move, Williams
leaves a DHS organization of 115
people to lead one of 4,000. The
Federal Acquisition Service is a
relatively new piece of GSA,
formed by combining the Federal
Technology and Federal Supply
services. The combined services
resell more than $35 billion
worth of goods and services each
year via numerous contracting
programs.

Doan said she will work quickly
and undertake several other
initiatives to improve not only
how the agency interacts with its
federal customers but with industry
as well.

“I know GSA has its challenges
... but I believe that if you don’t
just dive right in, you’ll never get
anything started,” Doan told the
standing-room only audience at a
Coalition for Government Procurement
conference this month.

In particular, Doan said she
will shorten to 30 days the time
it takes for a business to get on a
GSA schedule and asked that
CGP members provide suggestions
on this issue within a
month.

“We at GSA are going to retool
our abilities to respond to national
emergencies, and you can expect
some real innovative ideas on
this,” she said. “You can actually
expect them in the next few days.”

In bringing in Williams, who replaces
acting FAS commissioner
G. Martin Wagner, Doan is hiring
a career official practiced at lifting
up tough programs. Williams was
deputy associate commissioner of
the IRS, where he was program
manager in the tax agency’s Business
Systems Modernization Of-
fice. Before that he was the IRS’
procurement director.