Five months in as the Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner, Tom Sharpe has a pretty good idea of how he’d like to transform FAS.
Sharpe is advocating for the General Services Administration’s FAS to be the main source of contracting for every agency for everything from technology to automobiles to janitorial services.
Sharpe said he believes the business case for FAS to take over a lot of contracting for the government is strong because GSA can offer better value and better quality and can contract less expensively.
“First and foremost, it’s a faster process. We’ve gone ahead and done some research that using the Federal Supply Schedules, when you are going to do a sourcing and pricing event in any event, it’s up to 50 percent faster,” Sharpe said Tuesday at an event sponsored by AFFIRM in Washington. “How do I know that? We’ve collected the CFO Act agencies’ own internally advertised procurement lead times. So, the actual lead times they’ve published internally to their customers’ document that it’s up to 50 percent faster if you are doing a sourcing and pricing event. In any case, it’s a faster process.”
Sharpe said on top of GSA’s own speed, agencies should consider acquisition assistance during these times of employee furloughs and budget reductions.
Because FAS is a fee-for-service agency, employees are not facing furloughs.
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