GSA plans new cloud buying vehicle to support modernization at all levels of government

The General Services Administration is soliciting feedback from industry on a planned new, multiple-award blanket purchase agreement to provide cloud infrastructure, storage, software and services to federal agencies and state and local governments.

The agency is seeking responses by May 24 on the new enterprisewide cloud acquisition strategy. A news release announcing the request for feedback notes that the trend towards cloud adoption has been accelerated by the demands of the pandemic and telework.

In a statement released on Thursday, GSA IT Category Deputy Assistant Commissioner Keith Nakasone said the top request his office receives from various agencies is for an acquisition solution which offers "a full set of commercial, secure, soup-to-nuts, cloud products and services."

"We think now is the right time to make it happen," he added.

The announcement states that the acquisition vehicle will support the replacement of legacy IT systems with " secure, seamlessly integrated, commercial cloud service offerings" from multiple providers.

The announcement of the planned solicitation one day after the White House announced a long-awaited cybersecurity executive order designed in part to leverage the procurement power of the federal government to demand more transparency from industry when it comes to breach notifications.

Additionally, the U.S. is still recovering out from fuel supply constraints that occurred when the ransomware network Darkside hacked the business systems of Colonial Pipeline, which led to the company temporarily shutting off a major East Coast vehicle fuel pipeline.