Former Defense Department acquisition official and private-industry veteran Alan Thomas was sworn in Monday as commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, just two weeks after incumbent Tom Sharpe abruptly resigned.
Sharpe’s resignation followed acting General Services Administration chief Tim Horne’s announcement that the agency’s newly stood-up Technology Transformation Service would move into the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) as part of President Trump’s efforts to streamline information technology acquisition.
Horne during Monday’s ceremony at GSA headquarters’ “historic administrative suite” acknowledged the three previous FAS commissioners — Sharpe, Steve Kemp and Jim Williams — since the unit was created in 2005 via a merger of the Federal Supply Service and the Federal Technology Service. Horne exulted that – after six months on the job at a desk that sits alongside others in the agency’s open-office bullpen – he finally got to use the high-ceilinged wood-paneled room that was built a century ago for powerful Interior secretaries (and where the 1920s Teapot Dome oil royalties bribery scandal was said to have originated) for the swearing in.
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The backstory of this conflict signifies a more aggressive stance taken by the government in dealing with contractors that mislead the government or bilk taxpayers. Public statements by both DOJ and the General Services Administration’s inspector general further suggest they are more willing than ever to prosecute contractors that play ball unfairly—even if it takes years to do so, as it did with CA.
CA is an information technology management software and services company headquartered in New York, New York. The settlement resolves allegations related to a GSA contract awarded to CA for software licenses and maintenance services.
As one offeror recently discovered in 
The General Services Administration (GSA) is now using a special item number to tag vendors specializing in services such as penetration testing, incident response and vulnerability assessment. As of Oct. 20th, 15 vendors have been approved under the Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services section of the IT Schedule 70, a list of companies pre-vetted to sell tech services to the government.
