Come the new fiscal year, agencies will have access to a set of automated contact center technologies and services through a new special item number on the General Services Administration’s IT Schedule 70.
The Automated Contact Center Solutions SIN—numbered 132-20—“provides a deep pool of pre-vetted vendors with a diverse set of contact center solutions,” according to a notice on GSA’s Interact site.
The special category will include vendors offering the latest in automation technology, including artificial intelligence, chatbots, voice and speech recognition, text-to-speech and more.
Managing citizen engagement through the various lines of contact—phone, email, web portals and in-person meetings—if a difficult task. GSA’s own Federal Acquisition Service receives close to 1 million calls a year, according to CenturyLink, which holds a $1.3 million contract to manage the service’s contact center.
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Sharpe’s resignation followed acting General Services Administration chief Tim Horne’s announcement that the agency’s newly stood-up 
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.
