The General Services Administration (GSA) was established in July 1949 by President Harry Truman to streamline the administrative work of the federal government. Today GSA provides centralized procurement for the federal government by managing the Federal Supply Schedules program, known more commonly as GSA Schedules. GSA Schedules is a purchasing vehicle that offers more than 12 million commercial supplies and services and is open for use to any federal agency within the Executive Branch. Currently there are 24 Schedules offering commercial goods and services which are managed directly by GSA. There are also another eight federal supply schedules managed by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

As part of Winvale's new guest blogger series, Andrea Davis, Director of Contracts at Govplace and a Winvale client, is sharing the top 15 tips about government contracting that she's learned in her 20 years working for government contractors, in no particular order:

Background New bills working their way through congress can signal incredible opportunities for government contractors. The House has passed a series of bills related to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) management in the past month. Perhaps most prominent is H.R. 2083 which, if turned into law, will benefit small businesses tremendously. First introduced by California Democrat Correa Luis in April 2019, the bill has three main goals: to increase the share of equipment for DHS personnel procured by U.S. manufacturers, enhance regulation of delivery timelines, and determine whether to raise uniform allowances.

The General Services Administration (GSA) manages the federal acquisition and award processes using 10 websites. In August 2017, beta.SAM.gov went live and will eventually serve as a replacement for the 10 legacy acquisition websites that GSA maintains. Christy Hermansen, the Integrated Award Environment (IAE) Design Lead, says “We will be continually adding functionality to the site over time, making improvements based on feedback we receive from users. We are not shutting down any of our 10 legacy applications yet. These will be turned off one at a time, once all of the features have been transitioned and we’ve validated that that functionality is ready to be the authoritative system.”

On November 27th, the General Service Administration announced its intention to modernize federal acquisition and transform the Multiple Awards Schedule (MAS) program as we know it. GSA plans to consolidate the agency’s 24 Schedules into one single Schedule for both products and services and operate under a single solicitation with compressed terms and conditions.

On September 4, 2018, Congress passed a bill titled “Securing the Homeland Security Supply Chain Act of 2018 (H.R. 6430)” following a bipartisan introduction led by Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. Some have noted that the bill appears to come in response largely to a growing concern over commercially-successful companies who have been contracted by the U.S. government, particularly in the IT industry, that later demonstrated to pose significant supply chain risks that are a threat to national security. While these reports generally entail foreign-based cyber firms, the bill seeks to address risky vendors both internationally and domestically.