It’s been percolating for some time, but it’s finally here, the General Services Administration (GSA) has added a third business line.

Now it’s not just the federal government’s landlord (Public Buildings Service) and the government’s lead buyer (Federal Acquisition Service), it aims to be the tech innovation hub. In a blog post, GSA Administrator Dawn Turner Roth announced the creation of the Technology Transformation Service, to “help agencies navigate how to build, buy, and share user-centered and emerging technology solutions.”

The creation of the Technology Transformation Service (TTS) has been rumored for some time, and fueled by the way GSA has shifted its perspective on technology—not just creating contracts for customer agencies to buy from, but helping them develop the technology themselves. You can trace a fairly clear family tree for the TTS, starting in 2013, when the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF)—one of the first big ventures to attract private-sector tech talent to help tackle government problems and foster innovation within agencies—set up a permanent program office within GSA. In 2014, GSA created 18F, a “digital services agency” within the agency, whose charter was to not only help agencies write better RFP for tech, but to help develop digital products themselves. 18F has been enormously effective and influential since it began, winning over a lot of early critics, and just last month releasing 34 digital products for reuse by agencies.

Keep reading this article at: http://publicspendforum.net/technology-transformation-service-smart-move/

Also see Revamped 18F to get a contracting embed at: https://fcw.com/articles/2016/05/23/gsa-fas-embed.aspx