Acquisition gateway expands in 2016

One of the General Services Administration's keystones for its category management strategy, the acquisition gateway, has expanded its IT resources and access in the past year, according to its manager.

The GSA's acquisition gateway has seen 10,000 users since its launch two years ago, according to Mary Davie, assistant commissioner for Office of Information Technology Category in GSA's Federal Acquisition Service. It features six IT "hallways" that house information such as prices-paid data, best practices, decision support tools and templates for the common use of agency contracting officers, she said.

When the acquisition gateway launched in October 2014, the IT hardware and IT software categories were two of the three hallways. Currently, 19 hallways are aligned with 10 common federal government nondefense spend categories, Davie wrote in a Jan. 11 blog post.

The IT category, she said, now has six of the 19 hallways, including the old IT hardware and IT software hallways, as well as IT security, IT outsourcing, IT consulting, and telecommunications.

The 3,000 visitors to the IT hallways in 2016, she said, could access 150 articles written by acquisitions experts from across government. Davie said there were more than 2,800 views of those IT-specific articles.

The gateway's initial library of model statement-of-work contract documents now has 50 new document types that cut across all phases of the acquisition process, Davie said. After an expansion this past summer, she added, the document library has been viewed more than 3,500 times.

Additionally, she said the site's Solutions Finder spreadsheet that once covered a handful of governmentwide contracts has morphed into a search tool that allows users to compare 100 IT solutions out of more than 200 governmentwide contracts, purchase agreements and shared services.

In the coming months, Davie said, GSA wants to integrate new apps into the gateway, as well as develop new user tutorials, improve and expand the document library and improve search capabilities.