Policy Alert: Consolidating Procurement Executive Order

Action: Executive Order “Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement”

What it does: The Order directs Agency heads and senior procurement officials to submit proposals for the General Services Administration (GSA) to conduct domestic procurement of common goods and services on their behalf. Within 90 days, the Administrator of GSA must submit a comprehensive plan for consolidated procurement of common goods and services across the domestic components of the Federal government. The Order also designates the Administrator of GSA as the executive agent for all government-wide acquisition contracts for information technology (IT), with the goal of identifying and eliminating contract duplication, redundancy, and other inefficiencies.

Key Insights

• In an accompanying fact sheet, the Administration states that the Federal government spends roughly $490 billion annually on contracts for common goods and services.
• The Administration cites inefficiencies and pricing inconsistencies when agencies independently procure goods and services, such as office productivity software, band saw blades, televisions, computers, and identity protection software, which could be purchased centrally to leverage volume discounts and GSA pricing.
• Regarding IT government-wide acquisition contracts, NASA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are the primary Federal agencies outside of GSA that manage these contracts. Per the Order, GSA will decide whether to take over the management of these contracts from NASA and NIH.
• The Order restores the centralized role of GSA in Federal procurement and contracting, bringing it closer to its original statutory role before Congress passed reforms in the 1990s intending to streamline procurement, reduce bureaucratic hurdles, prefer commercial products, and simplify acquisition procedures as part of the “Reinventing Government” initiative under the Clinton Administration.
• It’s unclear how GSA’s increased workload and additional responsibilities under the Order align with the Administration’s push to cut GSA staffing.