Changes are coming in the way the General Services Administration purchases services.
In April, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy released a new strategy to use category management to reduce multiple award contracts, and contractors will begin seeing the results soon.
“Services are procured very differently than commodities. What I’m focused on, and what senior leaders across government are focused on, in particular senior procurement executives, are we really need to move how we’re buying services to a performance-based environment,” said Tiffany Hixson, assistant commissioner of the Office of Professional and Human Capital Services within the Federal Acquisition Services at GSA. “We’ve been on this journey for many years. It really needs to be rebooted, and we’re going to continue to push in terms of how we buy services to being performance based. Buying engineers by the pound is not an effective way to deliver mission capabilities.”
During Deltek’s Spending Spree event July 19, Hixson said procurement officials need to focus on the outcome they want from a particular contract action, not necessarily the price. While there are some subcategories of professional services where price can be a driver, more often than not, officials should be looking at the value of the capability delivered.
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OFPP required agencies to 
That day may not be too far off if a provision in the House version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act makes it into law.
“Everyone knows the federal market is driven by budgets, and budgets are driven by the presidential budget request,” Kevin Brancato, director of government contracts research at Bloomberg Government, said in an April 27, 2017 webinar. “What I would advise federal contractors to look at is agency priorities and see where they align with the president’s priorities … and you’ll likely see those agencies is where the money will be spent.”
But it’s this portion of the April 12, 2017 memo focusing on the mundane ideas of alternative delivery models, streamlining mission-support functions and leveraging existing solutions for common requirements that includes some of the most realistic and achievable goals. Ideas such as shared services, insourcing and outsourcing and the all-but-mandate to use existing multiple-award contracts instead of developing new ones are the types of initiatives that have the real potential to change and transform agencies and their mission areas.
