GSA ends IT tracking program

The General Services Administration decided to end GSA Preferred (GSA-P), an information technology tracking system, after internal reviews and an external firm’s evaluation found the program failing to meet the agency’s needs.

GSA now transfers data from GSA-P back to the original systems, a task it expects to complete by the end of the year, according to the agency. However, GSA-P will remain operational to avoid any interruptions in agency operations.

“Moving forward, GSA-P will be used as a valuable tool for considering the options and needs for the agency’s management systems in the future,” GSA said in a released statement. The failure will be a learning experience, the agency added.

“GSA Preferred’s demise was a foregone conclusion,” said Larry Allen, executive vice president of the Coalition for Government Procurement. “It never really worked as it was envisioned.”

GSA intended the management system, initiated in 2004, to be a replacement for the multiple systems currently in place. GSA’s Federal Technology Service, which is now part of the new Federal Acquisition Service, oversaw the system's development. GSA-P was to be a customer-oriented, secure way to manage the agency’s business lines.

Allen said GSA wanted GSA-P to do too much. He said the agency should integrate its systems with e-Buy as one component of its transition to FAS.

GSA stopped further development of GSA-P in late 2004, pending assessments of the system’s continued viability. After internal reviews, the agency contracted with KPMG in late 2005 to assess GSA-P. GSA agreed with the firm’s finding that technological, and process and organizational factors led to the system’s failure.

GSA-P was implemented in the mid-Atlantic region, which includes Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia; and the Rocky Mountain region, which includes Colorado, Montana, North and South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.