GSA Expected to “Rightsize” MAS Program

On Monday, March 24^th, the GSA Press Office released a notification that the General Services Administration (GSA) will be implementing a new initiative to “rightsize” the Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Program. This effort to “rightsize” follows suit with recent policy changes and the Trump Administration’s overall goal to eliminate waste, improve efficiency in operations, and ultimately save the taxpayer money. Let’s explore what this means for your GSA Schedule and how you can prepare.

How GSA Plans to “Rightsize” the MAS Program

What does “rightsizing” mean exactly? According to the release, this initiative will include efforts such as:

• Allowing MAS contracts that do not meet the sales thresholds in FSS Clause I-FSS-639, Contract Sales Criteria, to expire.
• Addressing MAS contractor non-compliance, including performance concerns, which will help ensure that only productive and compliant contracts remain in the program.
• Simplifying processes, eliminating inefficiencies, and ensuring proper alignment of management and oversight within the program -- making it more effective and user-friendly for both contractors and government agencies.
• Eliminating items with insufficient market demand or where administrative costs outweigh procurement benefits, making them unsuitable for the MAS Program.
• Reducing redundancies with other procurement channels across government.

At its core, the MAS program is all about efficiency; efficiency in the acquisition process by allowing GSA to vet, negotiate, and pre-approve pricing and terms and conditions with MAS contract-holders to drastically reduce lead times and red-tape compared to non-MAS procurements.

For years, features like the GSA Advantage! platform, the FAStLane Program, and more have been creating a quicker to market and purchase environment for contractors and federal (and SLED) buyers. This makes it a popular vehicle, as the MAS Program is the largest government commercial acquisition program in the world. The MAS program accounted for over $50 BILLION (with a “b”) in sales in FY2024 alone.

In a time of fast-paced changes to acquisition policy and slight uncertainty, let Winvale be your guide to cutting through the noise and getting down to brass tacks.

So, what does this mean for MAS contractors and how can you prepare?

How to Prepare for “Rightsizing” As An Existing MAS Contractor

Review Sales Under your MAS Contract 

The requirement to review sales under your MAS contract in comparison to Clause I-FSS-639, Contract Sales Criteria is NOT new; however, the sales requirements have been altered slightly in recent years. Currently, the requirement is that MAS contractors are expected to exceed $100,000 in sales in the first 60-months of contract award (the base period), and $125,000 in each 60-month period (option period) thereafter for the remaining Period of Performance.

If an MAS contract has not met these requirements or shown enough significant activity to indicate it will, the Contracting Officer may decide not to exercise subsequent option periods. It is imperative to understand how to market and effectively track sales under your MAS schedule as you work toward these requirements. One transaction could put you over the required threshold for the entirety of the 5-year period, so don’t ignore opportunities under your MAS SINs just because they’re not millions of dollars.

Ensure You're Maintaining GSA Schedule Compliance 

• • Sales Reporting (238-80 / Alternate I): On-time and accurate GSA sales reporting
  • Mass Modifications: Responsiveness to and acceptance of required mass modifications for solicitation refreshes when they are released, including the upcoming Refresh #25
  • Publishing your contract’s Electronic Contract Data via either SIP or FCP (I-FSS-600)
    • Making sure your contract’s pricelist is visible for customers and always has all required information available
    • Executing the transition to the FAS Catalog Platform (FCP) if your contract has been selected to participate
  • Compliance with Commercial Sales Practices (CSP) and Price Reductions Clause (PRC – 552.238-81)
  • Compliance with Trade Agreements Act (TAA) requirements for all offered products and services

Evaluating the Govcon Marketplace

• • FAS Schedule Sales Query (SSQ+), which will provide sales data for other companies in your industry and allows you to filter by SIN and business size to analyze the potential market landscape. It’s important to remember that the data in SSQ is vendor-provided SSQ+ also houses “demand” data, outlining top purchased items across the MAS and GSA Global Supply
  • Acquisition Gateway’s “Forecast Tool”, which provides a dashboard of upcoming federal contracting opportunities
  • USASpending, where you can search award data as reported by government sources to assess the public sector market by NAICS code, PSC, recipient, set aside, and even location
  • FPDS, for official federal awards data, searchable by PIID, company UEI, or other terms
  • GovWin, Bloomberg or other paid tools

Adapting to GSA Multiple Award Schedule Changes

The MAS Program has undergone some significant changes over the years, including consolidating what used to be the Professional Services “PSS” Schedule to combine FABS, AIMS, etc., consolidation to a unified MAS solicitation from the individual solicitations like IT70, Schedule 84, 00CORP, etc., creating and rolling out a replacement for the long-standing Schedule Input Program (SIP), Transactional Data Reporting (TDR), just to name a few.

As with any shift in the federal contracting landscape, preparation is key. Take some time to assess your MAS contract and how Winvale can help you ensure it remains an integral part of your go-to-market strategy in the public sector.