“We have some exciting news — our component acquisition executive gets initial procurement authority early July,” CISA Chief Information Officer Robert Costello said during an event hosted by the Homeland Security Defense Forum last week. “That’s a huge, huge deal.”

CISA will have its own contract specialists, Costello said. Currently, CISA relies on outside entities, including the Office of Procurement Operations at Department of Homeland Security headquarters, to carry out its procurement needs.

David Patrick is currently CISA’s chief acquisition executive, according to the agency’s website. Prior to CISA, Patrick served in various leadership roles in acquisition offices at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, DHS headquarters, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Patrick is “leading the realignment of CISA acquisition and procurement activities and the transformation of the Office of the Chief Acquisition Executive,” CISA’s website states.

As one of the newest federal standalone agencies, CISA is still building out management and support operations that other agencies may take for granted. CISA was established as a standalone operational component of DHS in 2018, having previously been the National Protection and Programs Directorate at DHS headquarters.

“There’s a lot of work to do internally just on our own identity and culture,” Costello said. “Now we’re a component of equal rank to [the Transportation Security Administration] or CBP, so we’re developing our own culture here as well.”

CISA procurement plans

CISA is requesting $6.2 million in fiscal 2023 for 50 positions, including 25 full-time equivalents, to establish and build out a procurement team within the Office of the Chief Acquisition executive, budget documents show.

“As a new agency, CISA does not currently have the internal procurement operations and support functions to effectively and efficiently support CISA’s growing and rapidly changing cybersecurity, infrastructure, emergency communications, risk management, stakeholder engagement, and other missions,” the documents state.

The new team will help CISA streamline and improve its procurement planning and execution by working more closely with other CISA divisions and programs, the justification documents continue.

Other goals include “identifying and utilizing existing contractual flexibilities and methodologies to best meet end-user needs in a rapidly changing environment,” as well as partnering more closely with industry through outreach events.

“A CISA procurement activity will operate as a full business partner and serve as a strategic asset dedicated to improving the agency’s overall business performance,” the documents state.

‘Handing out laptops’

Costello joined CISA last year. He has experience at much larger IT divisions in other DHS components, though, including ICE and CBP.

At the cyber agency, Costello said he gets to be more “hands on” as CIO of a relatively new standalone component.

“There have been days where I’m handing out laptops or configuring stuff,” he said during last week’s event.

The CIO’s office has a staff of about 90 people, Costello said. A priority for the coming year, he said, is expanding support to CISA’s growing field operations, including statewide cybersecurity directors, chemical security advisors, and regional directors.

“I’m starting to embed my folks out in the field and provide improved services out there so that they have the same level of technology as we do here at headquarters,” Costello said.

CISA has seen a rapid growth in recent years as both the Biden administration and Congress have looked to the agency to respond to cybersecurity threats in particular. The agency has taken on a lead role in the cybersecurity of the federal civilian executive branch. It’s also working more closely with private industry to combat cyber threats to critical infrastructure.

Costello said his role CIO is to support those growing functions with up-to-date technology. Still, he said the CIO organization at CISA is still a work in progress.

“We’re definitely maturing a lot of our processes, building a component CIO office,” he said. “I really do think it’s going to take a few years to kind of get to the same level of say, an ICE or CBP, where we’re doing all those functions ourselves. And so in some areas, maybe I’ve slowed down some work because we’re not quite there at that maturity level as we stabilize other areas.”

With CISA looking to attract top cybersecurity talent, Costello said the agency needs to use the most up-to-date technology. He said a big focus for him has been supporting different devices, including Macs and Androids, he said. In December, for example, CISA began using Slack for internal collaboration.

“We really need to be a place where people want to come to work for the tech,” Costello said.

Costello is also aiming to set the bar high when it comes to federal cybersecurity by ensuring CISA’s internal security complies with the agency’s mandates and guidance in areas like zero trust architectures.

A big focus for CISA’s internal security developments is identity, credential and access management (ICAM), an area in which Costello said the agency is currently “lacking.” But at the same time, the CIO said he has the advantage of being able to build new, “green field” solutions rather than needing to update an extensive legacy IT environment.

“I had some goals in mind this year,” Costello said. “We met a lot of them. Some of them are going to slip, and that’s okay, because I want to build a really strong foundation that CISA can build on for a decade. And so I’d rather take a six month slip on a project than build a really poor foundation. So that’s what we’re concentrating on: identity, monitoring systems, and building our people and in teams up, deciding what the federal-to-contractor makeup is going to look like, and what skill sets that we need.”

The General Services Administration re-released the solicitation on June 30 with updates to the mentor-protégé and joint venture experience submission requirements, the definition of relevant experience and the documents needed to establish the mentor-protégé or joint venture relationship.

Small businesses have until Aug. 10, to submit their bids, for this 10-year contract that could be worth tens of billions of dollars, but has no specific ceiling. Questions about the RFP are due to GSA by July 12.

“Overall, I think the RFP looks good. It is more in line with the original draft, with respect to mentor-protégé/join ventures, and seems to have clarified many of the ambiguous instructions,” said Courtney Fairchild, the president and CEO of Global Services, a proposal services firm, in an email to Federal News Network. “I think it strikes a good balance between small business prime/subcontractor teams and MPJV teams. Overall, I am not disappointed with the RFP. GSA listened to feedback before final release.”

The mentor-protégé and joint venture submission requirements have been at the heart of the concerns about Polaris over the last few months.

Relevant experience updates

GSA now is requiring mentees to provide at least one example of relevant experience and limits mentors to only three examples. Previously, there were no limits or minimums for either mentor or protégé. This experience can include task orders under the schedules or a blanket purchase agreement, a single contract or subcontract and, just added, other transaction agreements (OTAs).

“It seems like GSA is just following the NITAAC book with the protégé experience requirements — i.e., requiring one experience example from the protégé to show some experience. This is what I thought they were going to do,” said Cy Alba, an attorney with PilieroMazza in Washington, D.C. “The Small Business Administration regulations do not provide direct guidance on this question and so it does seem like agencies have some level of discretion in making the determination about how much experience the protégé would need to show. That said, they cannot discriminate against protégés as that would violate SBA regulations. Unfortunately, the law is not clear on where that boundary lies and, if protested, it will be up to GAO or the Court of Federal Claims to make that determination.  This is consistent with other compromises on the issue though, like CIO-SP4.”

Additionally, the new solicitation tells vendors to detail “the work done and qualifications held individually by each partner to the joint venture as well as any work done by the joint venture itself previously. If any partner or the joint venture itself has no previous work done or no qualifications held, this should be stated” in the submission forms.

A third change would let mentor-protégé teams and joint ventures can submit relevant experience of their subcontractors as part of their bid as long as the experience happened under the joint venture umbrella.

“I’m sure some of the experience requirements, like requiring at least 6-months of performance, or how IDIQ contract value is calculated, may bring the ire of some small businesses but I am not sure those requirements are legally objectionable,” Alba said.

Fairchild added the changes GSA made may still give mentor-protégé teams and joint ventures an advantage in the self-scoring system given the probability that large businesses will have more large value projects to offer.

“I like that they brought the minimum period of performance down from one year to 6 months — seems to be more friendly to small businesses,” she said.

Concerns remain about the RFP

Other industry experts were less certain about GSA’s changes.

Larry Allen, the president of Allen Federal Business Partners, said the three and one relevant experience requirement continues to favor large businesses in what is supposed to be a small business contract.

“GSA is really trying to balance the contract so that both experienced small businesses and less experienced, newer market entries can potentially participate on Polaris. The basic idea is to get new participants into the market,” he said. “Also, while offerors using companies that don’t have relevant prior experience must disclose that, I am not sure that such information will automatically disqualify a company. My belief is that GSA will look at the overall team submitting the offer. Again, they want to enable new company participation as much as possible.”

Lisa Mundt, co-founder of the Pulse of GovCon, said GSA may have caused additional confusion, specifically for women-owned small businesses (WOSB).

“The WOSB track RFP states, ‘A minimum of one primary relevant experience project or emerging technology relevant experience project must be from a WOSB.’ However The offeror must submit a MINIMUM OF THREE (3) and may submit a MAXIMUM OF FIVE (5) distinct primary relevant experience projects and a MAXIMUM of three (3) emerging technology relevant experience projects. Does this mean if a bidder submits a maximum of 8 Relevant Experience submissions, that only one needs to be from a WOSB?” Mundt said. “We’re all for minimizing barriers to entry, but if the purpose is to provide access to best-in-class women-owned small businesses, then shouldn’t the bidder’s submission reflect that? Otherwise, the WOSB becomes a front for other companies outside the classification. The WOSB set aside is already abused in the industry with men naming their wives as ‘CEO’ – this just further exploits women business owners as props.”

GSA came under fire when it released the original RFP in March, specifically for last-minute changes it made to the requirements for mentor-protégé and joint venture bidders. After BD Squared filed a protest with the Government Accountability, GSA paused the solicitation to re-look at the requirements and obtain feedback from contractors.

In May, GSA released draft changes to Polaris, seeking industry feedback and then incorporating that into the updated final solicitation.

Sonny Hashmi, the commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said in May interview that the team was trying to find the best approach to create the most opportunities for small firms.

“There’s going to be a trade-off that we need to find and that’s just reality,” he said. “Depending on the feedback that we get, and then to what extent we need to completely change strategy will determine the timeline. I’m hoping that the adjustment that we’ve made or proposed in our updated criteria is it meets the expectations of industry.”

Roger Waldron, the president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, praised GSA’s approach to improving Polaris

“GSA’s process for addressing the challenges to the Polaris evaluation was transparent, providing interested small businesses and others the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed changes. This approach was critical in demonstrating GSA’s commitment to developing a reasonable evaluation approach that balances the relative merits of small businesses, joint ventures and contractor teaming arrangements,” he said in an email to Federal News Network. “GSA clearly has moved the ball here, and now, potential offerors will have time to digest the changes and respond by Aug. 10.”

Category management is one major influence contributing to the decline of the small business contractor ecosystem. Small businesses have been warning about its effects for years. Reforming category management was also one of the priorities specifically mentioned in the Biden administration’s plan to improve small business contracting.

Now, the Small Business Administration is taking steps to begin that reform.

“That is the top issue that the White House and [SBA] Administrator [Isabella] Guzman wanted us to address,” Bibi Hidalgo, associate administrator of SBA’s Office of Government Contracting & Business Development, told the House Committee on Small Business during a hearing Thursday. “And so as a result, we negotiated with [the Office of Management and Budget] and the White House to have all the socioeconomic firms — that includes service-disabled veterans, women-owned businesses, all place-based HUBZone firms, and small disadvantaged businesses — into tier 2 of category management, which is the rating system that they had created. So that means that 33,000 more additional firms are part of that higher level tiering category, which will create more access for contract opportunities.”

Hidalgo said her team is still tracking the data, but anecdotally, they’re seeing positive trends due to this change. Some business owners are reporting being contacted for the first time in years, she said. And they’re seeing increase in new entrants to the program, which is one of the metrics they’re using to ensure that it’s not just the spend that increases, but the health of the overall ecosystem.

Hidalgo also pointed to increased accountability as a recent change to address these issues. The administration’s reform plan directed that small business contracting goals be included in the performance plans for all Senior Executive Service managers.

“This is part of essentially their [key performance indicators],” she said. “So we are seeing a difference. They are now reaching out more and more. My staff was just telling me this yesterday: Across the board agencies are reaching out to identify more businesses across all the socioeconomic categories.”

But these aren’t the only challenges; the deeper the administration and Congress dig into this problem, the more inequities they discover. For example, Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) pointed out that small business contracts tend to be geographically concentrated as well. She said that “43% of the contracts went to around 17 congressional districts, 12 of which are located in Maryland and Virginia.”

Hidalgo said this is largely a result of contract bundling. That’s a practice where an agency will roll together a few smaller contracts into one larger one in order to better leverage its purchasing power. The concept originated from hardware acquisition, in order to better ensure components were interoperable. But as the government has transitioned to purchasing more services and solutions, contract bundling can look more like enterprise-level acquisitions.

Contract bundling is another instance where experts have been sounding the alarm for years. President Biden first announced it as an administration priority in December 2020.

Hidalgo said contract bundling often favors larger companies and small businesses that work with them as subcontractors. She said that new entrant data her team is collecting is also being analyzed geographically in order to find ways to ease that concentration.

Women-owned small businesses

Hidalgo has also been working to troubleshoot the certification processes for small businesses, she said. For example, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) expressed concern at recent SBA Office of Inspector General findings that out of 15,000 applications for certification as a women-owned small business (WOSBs), around 12,000 were immediately returned for more information.

“The way it was set up is they would ask applicants for all of their documents at once. But it turns out if they didn’t upload them individually, then it would only accept one of the documents. So I said ‘this is unacceptable and we need to fix this right away,’” Hidalgo said. “My team got right on it, fixed it to at least inform the business owner that they needed to upload one at a time. And as a result, we’re seeing differences like that are having an impact. We’ve now certified well over 5,700 firms; we’re on pace to certify over 6000 this year. Any incomplete applications, I have my pre-screeners working directly with the applicants to make sure that their application is not rejected, and that they can work toward a complete application as soon as possible.”

Hidalgo also said she signed a rule to open up a number of new North American Industry Classification System codes to qualify them for WOSBs. Now 92% of federal spend falls under those codes.

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This week Moshe Schwartz, president of Etherton and Associates, joins host Roger Waldron on this week’s Off the Shelf  to discuss The Slow Destruction of the Defense Industrial Base, a report Schwartz co-authored with Michelle Johnson from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).

The report was prepared for the NPS and was presented at the Nineteenth Annual Acquisition Research Symposium.

It outlines the significant shrinking of the defense industrial base and the negative ramifications for the Department of Defense’s ability to access to innovation and cutting edge technologies from the private sector. The defense industrial base has shrunk over the last decade in contrast to the overall growth in the U.S. economy over the same period.

Schwartz highlights the key policy, regulatory, workforce and business practices that have driven industry away from working with DoD and the government in general, and the  government’s approach to the allocation of intellectual rights as a disincentive for commercial firms doing business with DoD.

Notably, the report coins a new term, the National Security Innovation and Industrial Base (NSIB), emphasizing the critical importance the commercial market plays in driving innovation in defending our nation.

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Just when you thought government contracting was about to get fun, again, the General Services Administration decided boring is the right approach.

That’s right, I’m saying government procurement and fun in the same sentence because we had an upcoming contract that had so many possibilities intertwined with it. GSA has been planning the follow-on to its highly popular and successful OASIS contract for the past year. It started by calling the vehicle BIC MAC—best-in-class multiple award contract. Oh the possibilities there!

The agency moved to Services MAC for the last few months. And with both of those names, unlike its more traditional and unexciting names like Alliant or Millennial or 8(a) STARS, these names had so much potential for fun in headlines and leads and so much more.

But GSA decided — and I’ll blame the lawyers here, only because it’s always fun to blame lawyers — to pick the name OASIS+, or maybe Oasis-Plus, for the new governmentwide contract, ending any real chance of bringing fun back to federal procurement.

“The name echoes a successful brand that our customers have come to know and trust, reflects the expanded scope of services that will be available through the new program, and embodies the contract’s flexible domain-based structure,” wrote Tiffany Hixson, the assistant commissioner in GSA’s Office of Professional Services and Human Capital Categories in the Federal Acquisition Service, in a blog post from June 15. “The new program will have a broad scope. As their respective ordering periods conclude, the new program will be able to fulfill requirements currently met by GSA’s One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS); Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS); and Building, Maintenance, and Operations (BMO) contracts. In addition, new scope areas include environmental, intelligence services, and large enterprise solutions. Plus, we’ll build-in the flexibility to expand scope as customers identify new federal services needs.”

All kidding aside to the good folks at GSA, the decision around OASIS+/Oasis-Plus is seems small, but important. It’s clear there is recognition in FAS that the current contract is popular, in part because GSA has spent the better part of a decade promoting, creating a brand and working with everyone from the Air Force to the Homeland Security Department to the Army to commit to putting hundreds of millions of dollars through OASIS.

Since 2015, agencies have spent $48.8 billion on OASIS, OASIS small business and OASIS 8(a) through more than 3,200 task orders.

The Air Force remains the largest user, issuing more than 1,000 task orders worth more than $28 billion. The Army is the largest user by total sales with more than $30 billion across 458 task orders.

The updated vision for OASIS+ also recognizes the struggles of the HCATS contract.

GSA awarded HCATS to 109 vendors in May 2016. The 10 1/2 year contract has a ceiling of $11.5 billion and replaced the Training and Management Assistance (TMA) contract run by the Office of Personnel Management for the last two decades. After a series of bid protests, GSA finally issued the notice to proceed for HCATS in September 2016. Over the last almost six years, agencies have not used the contract like may believed they would, awarding 300 task orders worth $764 million.

Six contracts with five for small business

Sheri Meadema, the acting assistant commissioner of GSA’s Office of Professional Services and Human Capital Categories in the Federal Acquisition Service, said during the Coalition for Government Procurement spring conference that the changes to OASIS-Plus also acknowledges what GSA’s customers have said about the draft details of the new contract over the last few months.

“We had originally envisioned one contract with small business reserves, and working closely with the Small Business Administration and our Office of Small and Disadvantage Utilization Office and our customers, quite frankly, we ended up switching that strategy. So the plan is to now award six separate contracts, five of those being for small businesses and the six being unrestricted,” she said. “The second change is scope. Oasis will cover all of the scope areas in Oasis currently today, plus HCATS and building maintenance and operations as those contracts expire. In addition, in the initial stages of the contract, there are additional scope areas that we’re adding on to include environmental intelligence services and a domain we’re calling enterprise solutions, which will be unique to the unrestricted vehicle. That domain is for very large, complex, high-dollar value, non-commercial type work.”

The domains is another change for OASIS+. GSA will add or remove domains based on customer needs and usage throughout the life of the contract.

That gives us a lot more flexibility as things change and customers’ needs change to introduce new scope areas,” Meadema said. “We are trying to keep the solicitation open continuously after we initially close it to deal with solicitation protests. This is all about our ability to onboard industry partners at any time during the contracts life.”

The onramp for OASIS was far from a smooth process, beset by protests and delays.

Meadema said the new contract will make it easier for companies who grow out of the small business size standard to apply to get on the OASIS+ unrestricted version.

“The evaluation criteria will drive the highly qualified pool of vendors that we’re trying to attract. We’re not recreating the Multiple Award Schedules. We are setting the bar relatively high,” she said. “That being said, we are giving careful consideration to how high we set the bar for unrestricted. So again, we can allow companies who re-represent their size to move on to another vehicle.”

Price not a key evaluation factor

As part of the evaluation factors, GSA will be applying the authority it received under Section 876 of the 2018 Defense Authorization bill, where price is most important at the task order level, not at the main contract level.

GSA stated in recent answers to industry questions that OASIS-Plus will not have a total dollar ceiling attached to it, joining Polaris as the only other contract do deviate from the Federal Acquisition Regulations in the last nine years.

Meadema said GSA expects to release some new or updated draft sections of OASIS-Plus for industry comment over the summer and then release the full draft request for proposals in early fiscal 2023. GSA expects to issue the final solicitation in the second quarter of 2023.

The new name, scope and domain changes are important steps for GSA in this journey, but they still don’t necessarily answer all the questions about how OASIS+/OASIS-Plus isn’t just creating a new type of schedule contract. The Coalition has expressed concern over the last year about possible duplication with the schedules, cross-walking what OASIS+ will include and what the schedules already provide.

The next key stop in this journey is when GSA releases the draft RFP for industry comments to see how it differentiates from the schedules and whether it alleviates any concerns in industry about duplication. Most would agree that last thing industry or government needs is another contract that doesn’t add value and meet agency needs.

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This week on Amtower Off Center, host Mark Amtower interviews B2G marketing professional Sheri Ascencio.

Topics include:

• Ascencio’s background and introduction to B2G
• Based in San Diego, she needed to find peers and did so through Government Marketing University and the GMarkU Ideation group
• How Ideation relationship helped with research and more
• Ascencio’s mentor/mentee relationship with Amtower
• How she leveraged her network in her job search

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When the government establishes a mandated source of supply, that means there’s no way around it. That’s what the Defense Logistics Agency found when it issued a solicitation for body armor parts. Smith Pachter McWhorter procurement attorney Joseph Petrillo shared more about the case on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Joseph Petrillo: This case arises from a Defense Logistics Agency solicitation for a competitive procurement for something called Advanced Tactical Assault Panels or ATAPS and they’re apparently multipurpose vests worn by soldiers, which they can keep their equipment and protective plates or ballistics purposes. The Defense Logistics Agency issued the solicitation, but the bests in question these ATAPS were covered by a program set up many years ago in the 1930s by the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act, it’s now called the AbilityOne program, the purpose is to promote employment among the blind and severely handicapped, and the severely handicapped portion of the program is administered by a nonprofit agency called Source America. And what happens under the program is that a nonprofit agency that employs severely handicapped people can become a mandatory source for items or services required by the federal government. And in this case, ATAPS was on that list of things that are covered. And the mandatory source was a company called SEKRI.

Tom Temin: And it turns out SEKRI felt that it didn’t need to bid on this because it is the sole mandated source.

Joseph Petrillo: Right. So why was DLA issuing a competitive solicitation? When SEKRI heard out about that it went to Source America. Source America went to DLA and said, Well, wait a minute, this is on our list. There’s a mandated source. And DLA went ahead and said no, we’re going to go for it with a competitive solicitation sector, you can submit a bid if you want to. But DLA did not seek an exception from Source America from the mandatory source program, which it could do, but it I guess, either didn’t qualify or didn’t bother. So in this instance, the procurement proceeded, offers were submitted. And at that point, SEKRI filed a protest with the Court of Federal Claims. Now, the court looked at the requirements for filing a protest. And the trial court at the Court of Federal Claims held that it had not met two of them. First of all, it was not an actual or prospective bidder. It didn’t submit a proposal, and that’s one of the requirements. Secondly, it had not objected to the solicitation before the close of the bidding process.

Tom Temin: The standard timeliness type of issue.

Joseph Petrillo: Exactly. And GAO, that’s covered by a rule and the Court of Federal Claims. It’s an appellate decision that set that up called the Blue and Gold rule. And in this case, the Court of Federal Claims said no, you you’re not going to be able to submit a protest here. But secondly, didn’t stop at that answer. It appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which then reversed the lower court. SEKRI was found out to be a prospective bidder. The failure to submit a bid or file a protest during the bidding period, didn’t bar its later protest to the Court of Federal Claims, because it was a mandatory source that gave it a special position. The Federal Circuit reason that Congress had set up this program specifically to avoid entities like SEKRI from having to participate in the competitive bidding process. It’s the other way round, the law imposes the obligation on federal agencies to acquire listed items from their mandatory sources unless they get an exception.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Joseph Petrillo. He’s a procurement attorney with Smith Pachter McWhorter. So then the solicitation was pretty much cancelled out and DLA would have to go through SEKRI. By the way, SEKRI stands for Southeastern Kentucky Rehabilitation Industries, Inc. And so they get bid period?

Joseph Petrillo: Well, not quite yet. I mean, the issue here was whether SEKRI can bring a protest and the protest was dismissed before it was really heard. And as they mentioned, the Federal Circuit decided on the question of being as prospective bidder. It didn’t make sense to require sources under the Source America program to monitor all solicitations and file protests with the agency. The other issue on appeal was whether it needed to object to the solicitation before award. And the Federal Circuit thought in this case that it was sufficient that SEKRI went to Source America which went to DLA and said, hey, you’re getting this mandatory source item in the wrong way. The court also stated that it hadn’t previously extended this rule this Blue and Gold Rule to the AbilityOne program, so it leaves open the possibility that the rule doesn’t apply here at all. But now since the appeal was granted, the case goes back to the Court of Federal Claims which now must adjudicate the bid protest. It will determine whether or not SEKRI should have received to this contract instead of having it go through the competitive bidding process.

Tom Temin: Right. So we don’t know the final disposition of this.

Joseph Petrillo: No, we don’t. But the lesson here for federal agencies is that if you’re ignoring a mandatory source of supply, you’ve got to be diligent about following the rules getting an exception or you’re leaving yourself open for a protest even after bids and proposals are due.

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Clarification: Several smart readers pointed out that GSA’s OASIS multiple award contract was actually the first governmentwide contract not to have a total dollar ceiling. GSA issued a FAR deviation for that vehicle in 2013. 

For most of the past 18 months, the federal contracting community has expected the Polaris small business governmentwide acquisition contract to have a ceiling of $50 billion. It’s unclear whether it was an estimate from a market research firm like Deltek or Bloomberg Government, or just a rumor that took off on its own, but for much of the past year, every story and every discussion about Polaris by multiple media organizations highlighted this $50 billion number.

Then a few weeks ago, the General Services Administration suddenly asked for a correction on a story about Polaris that says it has this $50 billion ceiling. The request was a bit surprising given the 18 months of stories and discussion, and never a request for a correction previously.

Well like any good journalist, I put on my investigative hat and found out why.

GSA quietly issued a class deviation to the Federal Acquisition Regulations in March removing the requirement for Polaris to have a minimum or maximum quantity under the indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) type contract. By the way, and to be clear, FAR deviations are rarely big news items that deserve big fanfare and press releases. But you’d think that with Polaris being in the news and garnering attention like it has, GSA may have wanted to alert folks of the significant change.

A GSA official said in an email to Federal News Network that while they issued the deviation in March, it was planning for some time to remove the ceiling requirement.

“GSA incorporated a number of good-for-government key features in the Polaris GWAC program. An important one that we’ve seen misrepresented in the media is the mention of a contract ceiling on Polaris,” said the official, who requested anonymity in order to talk about an active procurement. “In fact, designed to ensure ongoing availability for customers and maximum opportunity for vendors, Polaris will not have a contract ceiling at the master contract level.”

This is the first time  in nearly a decade that GSA, or any agency for that matter, created a multiple award, IDIQ type contract that didn’t have a ceiling.

Sonny Hashmi, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, said GSA is using the authorities Congress granted them under Section 876 of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act where costs only matter at each individual task order level and not at the master contract level.

“The two or three things that historically have defined how we’ve done large, multi agency or governmentwide vehicles, there’s always been a ceiling, on-ramps have been very few and far between and typically we’ve always had price negotiation at the master contract level. All three of those things are done for the right reason and they follow well-trodden paths and the Federal Acquisition Regulation. But all those three things, many times come together to cause unnecessary friction and heartburn for the industry,” Hashmi said in an interview with Federal News Network. “For our customers, ceilings are great when you can have perfect predictability, what the future is going to look like. We’re living in a world where we can’t predict what the future looks like. Digital is going to be a more central part of how the government operates. Organizations at state local tribal level are going to be going through digital modernizations and that is going to continue to accelerate. So we don’t know what the number looks like. So why come up with an artificial boundary that requires people to do artificial work at some point in the arbitrary future?”

Hashmi said GSA wants Polaris, and really all its acquisition vehicles, to solve problems.

“If it’s highly adopted, that’s a great thing because it means that it’s solving real business problems for people,” he said.

Jeff Koses, GSA’s senior procurement executive, signed the deviation because the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA), now codified at 41 USC § 4103, says a solicitation for a task or delivery order contract “shall include [among other things] the maximum quantity or dollar value of the services or property to be procured under the contract.”

In the memo, Koses wrote that the authority to issue the FAR deviation is based on the IT Category’s plan to “on-ramp” new contractors to the Polaris program at least every three years.

“Such on-ramping opportunities do not need to cover all pools, but ITC is encouraged to consider an annual on-ramp, opening a different pool each year,” the memo stated.

Top-line ceilings going away

Polaris isn’t the only contract GSA is planning not to have a ceiling for.

In its response to industry questions about the Services MAC, GSA says it will issue a FAR deviation to remove the minimum and maximum requirements.

Hashmi added that these two will not be the last ones where GSA will seek the FAR deviation.

While he didn’t specifically call it out, it’s easy to see the Ascend cloud blanket purchase agreement fall into the similar category as Polaris and the Services MAC.

Federal procurement experts were surprised about the FAR deviation for Polaris or for any of the other vehicles.

As one federal procurement attorney said, “In light of this [FASA and USC code language], I don’t see how GSA can waive the maximum quantity/dollar value requirement.”

Another said, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) may want to consider asking GSA for a business case as a contract with no ceiling may harm small businesses by reducing other means for competition. The expert added that the agency also is taking on increased risk of protest by unsuccessful bidders.

The other reason for removing the ceiling of Polaris likely is related to the challenges GSA faced with the 8(a) Stars II program. In May 2020, GSA announced the popular contract would reach its $15 billion ceiling 16 months before the end of the contract. GSA had to increase the ceiling size by $7 billion but had to limit the period of performance for contracts as a result.

Polaris update

By not having a ceiling with Polaris, GSA can avoid this potential problem over the life of the contract.

And speaking of Polaris, Hashmi offered a bit of an update. GSA just started reviewing industry feedback on its suggested updates to the evaluation criteria that came out in May.

“You can’t solve for every single use case, so we’re going to try to find the best approach that creates opportunity for the most small businesses that we can,” Hashmi said. “There’s going to be a trade-off that we need to find and that’s just reality. Depending on the feedback that we get, and then to what extent we need to completely change strategy will determine the timeline. I’m hoping that the adjustment that we’ve made or proposed in our updated criteria is it meets the expectations of industry. If that’s the case then we should be able to release the RFP for official response by the end of June timeframe but although don’t hold me to that because all of that depends on the feedback that we get and what adjustments we have to make.”

There are a lot of eyes on Polaris already so it’s understandable why GSA didn’t play up the FAR deviation for Polaris, but at the same time finding out “by accident” because of a request for a correction also makes one wonder whether GSA was trying to downplay another way Polaris is breaking many of the old rules for GWACs.

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The General Services Administration is still in the process of consolidating its Schedules program into a single procurement vehicle. And although it’s undoubtedly one of the biggest changes in the program’s history, there’s a lot else going on with the Schedules that vendors need to be paying attention to. To talk more about it, we’re joined by Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners.

Interview transcript:

Jared Serbu: All right, Larry, and as you point out in the newsletter, there’s a lot going on with schedules right now beyond consolidation. Let’s go through the three things that you mentioned. One is the schedules roadmap that they have now published. Talk us through what that is, and why you think it’s helpful.

Larry Allen: Jared, I think that the roadmap in and of itself is important. But I also think it’s indicative of the larger efforts that GSA is making, to try to make it easier for first time companies to get on the schedule. The roadmap is basically what it says it is. It’s like a non-digital GPS, if we can go back and use reverse technology. It lets companies know what’s going to be required of them so they have an idea of what they need to do when they’re putting an offer together for GSA. And then it tells them what’s going to happen in basic steps. Once they submit their offer, you know how they’re going to negotiate the fact that GSA will negotiate. I think that the roadmap is a useful piece of information for companies to have, it goes some way towards demystifying the schedules process. And that’s really been a priority for GSA’s current leadership.

Jared Serbu: And how does that fold in with the consolidation itself? Does it do a reasonable job of letting folks know how the consolidation has changed the process to the extent it has, maybe it hasn’t changed the entrance process all that much?

Larry Allen: Consolidations changed the entrance process in that the company responds to one unified solicitation. I think the roadmap comes in handy. Because even though you might have a company that’s a first time applicant for the schedules, Jared, people, the actual people probably have worked or may have worked on a scheduled contract before or may have heard about a scheduled contract number like the IT-70 schedule. And of course, that’s all been done away with via consolidation. The roadmap kind of makes that clear, doesn’t come right out and say, hey, we did away with everything. But what it does say is, this is what you have to go do. And this is where you have to go in order to get started on your journey.

Jared Serbu: And the other thing you mentioned that they’re doing is expanding the Startup Springboard option. What is that and why is it helpful?

Larry Allen: Jared, Startup Springboard is a program that allows companies with fewer than two years and in some cases, they had required three years of experience depending on the contract you’re applying for. And even though they have a lot of experience, because their companies had been in business for, say 18 months, they couldn’t apply for a schedule contract. Well, now they can Startup Springboard was started on the IT schedule several years ago, as a way to give those newer companies a way to enter the schedules program, a lower barrier to market entry, if you will. And the idea was that GSA should be able to take these largely small businesses, particularly if they’re offering innovative products and solutions. Have them obtain the schedule contracts so that federal agencies would be able to more easily access those companies. And the companies themselves would have an easier access to government business.

Jared Serbu: And in your experience, what does GSA actually want to see from a company or a company’s leadership to decide whether they’re the right fit for the Springboard?

Larry Allen: I think there are a couple of basic things, Jared, they’re not all that different from a company that’s been in business for longer than a couple of years. I think they want to see what type of experience or expertise does this company have? Does it have something significant that’s new? Are there people associated with a company that have done government contract business before? That type of thing. They definitely also want to see evidence of financial stability. Everybody gets a financial review, Jared, before you get a schedule contract. No different here with Startup Springboard, you would want to make sure that if you’re awarding a contract to a company that, you know, they’re not going to just close up shop six months later and not be able to serve a government customer. So it’s those types of things: stability, any type of experience as broadly defined, previous experience with other ventures, that type of thing. That’s what GSA is really looking to see.

Jared Serbu: And then the third sort of reform you talk about here is the expansion of the ability to use the transactional data reporting method to get on the schedules in the first place? How does that work? And you mentioned you were skeptical of that early on, why?

Larry Allen: Jared, I was a big skeptic of transitional data reporting or TDR, as you mentioned, originally, and that was because I’m always concerned about the type of data company provides to the government, and whether or not it’s being deemed accurate, current and complete, which is a requirement through the traditional schedules process. But TDR has proven itself to be a very flexible way through which companies can either obtain or renew their GSA schedule contract without having to supply reams of commercial sales transaction information.

Transactional data reporting is kind of another lane on the schedules highway. And that lane allows companies to propose for a scheduled contract without having to collect information on all their commercial sales practices. It allows the contracting officer at GSA to conduct market research use some of the price comparison tools that GSA now makes use of and then maybe ask for a small amount of information if they need it. In order to validate the reasonableness of the prices being offered by companies that use the TDR route. One of the neat things is with consolidation, GSA is gradually expanding the scope of TDR so that more contracts and more contractors will be eligible for that program that still retains some part of the schedules price reductions, pause, Jared. So I want to make that clear. Any data that a contractor provides still has to be accurate and current. But there’s no trigger for most favorite customer pricing, a real schedule compliance issue that has been bedeviling contractors for at least as long as I’ve been with the program.

Jared Serbu: Does that market research process put more of the burden on GSA and lengthen a decision process? Or is it roughly, roughly the same on the agency side?

Larry Allen: You know, I think Jared when GSA first launched TDR, the probably was a slightly longer process, because contracting officers who had been used to awarding contracts the traditional way, suddenly add this new option. Over time, we’ve seen the requests for contractor provided sales information be reduced. I don’t think they’re eliminated, I would never go that far. But at the same time, GSA itself has created new price comparison programs. Now industry can talk about just how accurate they think those programs are. But the fact is, these are new tools that GSA has at its disposal. And additionally, contracting officers now have a few years of experience awarding TDR contracts. And they know that they’re not going so long as they do all the things that they’re supposed to do and exercise their due diligence, that they’re not going to get called on the carpet for making a bad decision.

Jared Serbu: All right, lots of interesting stuff going on in the schedules program. Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners, thanks for taking us through it.

Larry Allen: Jared, thank you very much for your time, and I wish your listeners happy selling.

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Shelby Oakley, a director with the Contracting and National Security Acquisitions Team in the Government Accountability Office, joined host Roger Waldron on this week’s Off the Shelf for a wide ranging discussion highlighting GAO’s oversight role and its engagement with the executive branch.

Oakley shared how GAO engages with executive agencies when conducting reviews — emphasizing the importance of communication and building trust. She walked through the process, addressing her role as a director, how GAO puts together a review team, and how GAO conducts reviews.

One of Oakley’s main areas of focus is VA Acquisition Management. She discussed the key findings and recommendations across a services of GAO reports focusing on key programs in VA acquisition, including the VA’s Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) program and the Med-Surg Prime Vendor (MSPV)program. Among the topics addressed include the overlap between FSS and MSPV, supply chain modernization, role of clinical input, and the DLA-VA partnership.

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This week on Off the Shelf, Jason Miller, executive editor of Federal News Network, provided insights and analysis on the spring’s key procurement developments and the implications for government-wide contracting.

Miller highlighted the recent decision by  the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) not to apply the Section 876 to the Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) program. Section 876 authorizes GSA to award MAS contracts without having to negotiate fair and reasonable pricing, thereby leaving pricing to agency specific competitions at the task order level. The decision not to extend the authority to the MAS program is a missed opportunity that will especially impact small businesses and non-traditional commercial firms seeking to enter the federal market.

Miller also tackled GSA’s management of Economic Price Adjustments (EPAs) in response to current inflationary pressures and the impact on contractors.

Finally, Miller shared his thoughts on a host of issues, including the OFPP Administrator vacancy, new e-tools at GSA, suspension and debarment trends, and the shrinking industrial base.

Alan Thomas, chief operating officer at IntelliBridge, joins Off the Shelf for an in-depth discussion of key trends and developments impacting IT GWACs, MACs, Schedules, and eCommerce.

Thomas shares his thoughts regarding the current state of play with regard to GSA’s eCommerce pilot and the potential for a follow-on procurement. In particular, he discusses the status of GSA’s three eCommerce “models” and their potential role in a follow-on eCommerce contract program.

Thomas also comments on the potential eCommerce fit with the Schedules program. With the challenges continuing with NIH’s CIO-SP4 procurement and GSA’s revisions to POLARIS, the discussion turns to the role of IT GWACs and whether, as currently structured, they are meeting customer and industry expectations. The discussion turns to whether the blurring of lines between IT GWACs, Services MAC and Schedules is increasing performance costs and risks across government.

Finally, Thomas highlights the potential for a reorganization of FAS and the Technology Transformation Service.

The working group is led by the National Institutes of Health, according to Laura Stanton, assistant commissioner of the Office of Information Technology Category at the General Services Administration.

“The goal of that is to do an inventory, making sure that we’re doing an environmental scan of all of our current cyber offerings to make sure that we have the tools and the knowledge and the expertise and the capabilities from industry that can help the agencies meet the requirements coming out of that cyber executive order,” Stanton said during a May 25 conference hosted by FCW.

The working group will identify any gaps and look for opportunities to fill them as needed, she added.

The White House’s fiscal year 2023 budget proposal includes approximately $10.9 billion for cybersecurity, including funding for agencies to shift toward zero trust security architectures.

Last May’s cybersecurity executive order directed a bevy of actions at both the White House and agency level. The Office of Management and Budget has since directed agencies to secure critical software, adopt cyber event logging management capabilities, and develop multiyear plans to implement zero trust, among numerous other actions.

The Department of Homeland Security is also developing a proposal for contract language that would require the government’s software suppliers to comply with secure software development standards issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. OMB is working on corresponding secure software guidance for agencies. 

Stanton said GSA is working with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on cyber requirements and acquisition policy. The idea is to ensure cybersecurity requirements are already met in government-wide contracts, and agencies can then add in unique requirements at the task order level as they see fit, according to Stanton.

“The real goal is to make sure that whatever common requirements can be put in the governmentwide acquisitions,” she said. “We’re looking at how do we articulate those, identify them, put them in, and then ultimately, simplify what the agencies are executing against.”

GSA looking at CMMC

The Defense Department is implementing one of the most consequential cyber supply chain security policies in recent years with its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. The Pentagon doesn’t plan to issue the final rule requiring defense contractors to comply with CMMC until next year.

Stanton said GSA is “looking at how do we layer it into the scope of the acquisitions that we’re doing,” as well.

“So that if other agencies choose to expand that, then it’s already built in, and that the companies are already aware that CMMC may be part of a task order requirement,” she said.

DHS is among the civilian agencies considering the CMMC model and whether to adopt it, or do something similar, with their own acquisitions.

With the cybersecurity executive order, CMMC, the Section 889 ban on specific Chinese telecommunications providers and other policies coming into play in recent years, Stanton said GSA is looking to get better at understanding what contractors are capable of when it comes to implementing supply chain security requirements.

“All of this is designed with the idea of expanding that knowledge base across industry, raising the awareness, and making sure that we have the necessary partners in place to be able to continue to deliver on the government’s mission,” Stanton said.

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Exactly who is responsible for labor law enforcement when it comes to federal contractors? The short answer the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, part of the Labor Department. But that’s not the full answer. An Federal Acquisition rule that was banned by Congress is rearing its ugly head agency-by-agency. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin got the latest from the president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, David Berteau.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: David, tell us more about this rule that is somehow like a zombie. And you see its bony hand popping out of the grave here?

David Berteau: Well, Tom, as you know, in the government, no idea is ever really fully resolved, it can always come back again. And we see that happening now with something that goes all the way back to the Obama administration, there was an executive order called the very, very nice title of Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces. Well, who’s opposed to that? Right. But the implementation of it through the Federal Acquisition Regulation was that an allegation of a labor law violation could lead a contractor to be essentially be blacklisted, that is not eligible to receive a contract. That’s an allegation. That’s not a conviction. That’s not a prosecution. There’s not even an admission of guilt in a settlement, right. And so this was put forth in the Federal Acquisition Regulation. It was enjoined, its enforcement was enjoined by a federal district court in 2015, or 2016. And then in early 2017, Congress through the Congressional Review Act, removed it from force, in other words, eliminated the regulation itself. That was five years ago. Now, what we saw creep in earlier this year in the Agriculture Acquisition Regulation, even though you have very dedicated listeners is probably not a lot of them that read the AGAR in the Federal Register. Notice that when it comes out in this was buried in a bunch of technical amendments, but it was a resurrection of the basic idea. With the Agriculture Department being in charge of labor law violation, we have indications from some of the watchers of the system that other agencies are contemplating similar rules. Now, PSC commented on this, on this draft that the AGAR

Tom Temin: Right. Because the rules of federal procurement, which have a basis in statute are designed to be fair to everybody. And you can’t do things on the basis of negative actions on allegations unless they’re proven basically.

David Berteau: That’s correct. And that’s the way it should be. It’s the nature of law in America. And it is a rule of law in the federal procurement process. It’s what we ought to continue to do.

Tom Temin: How did this come to light, you said it was buried in a bunch of technical amendments. So somebody was reading the AGAR?

David Berteau: Well, one of the benefits that PSC brings to our members is we cover all federal agencies. And so we’re not just looking at the Federal Acquisition Regulation of the Defense Supplement the DEFARS that often comes into play. But we’re watching everything and our members are watching everything. And so they only had 30 days to respond. We filed the request for an extension did not get it, or didn’t hear anything back on the request for an extension and filed the comments. And we’re prepared to do that again. So it’s because we cover all the federal agencies and all the little nits and noise of the Federal Acquisition Regulations flowing down through those agencies.

Tom Temin: It’s a wonder they even bothered to make a notice at all. That sounds a little high handed.

David Berteau: Well, you certainly have to wonder, what’s the intention here, right, did some GS-15 in the Agriculture Department wake up one morning and say we’d like to run federal labor law for contractors. I kind of doubt it. But I don’t know what the plan is. I believe that one possibility is that the Congressional Review Act abandonment of this process might be seen as only applying if it’s done at the FAR level at the OMB Office of Federal Procurement Policy level on the FAR Council level, that if each agency does it in its own regulations, it would not be subject to the CRA. That’s not our view of that. But there’s not a lot of history on Congressional Review Act actions over time.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with David Berteau. He is president and CEO of the Professional Services Council. And another subject I wanted to ask you about here. That is the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstructions’ latest report. There were some elements in that that didn’t quite sit right with contractors.

David Berteau: Well, you remember it’s a year ago now that the president announced that we were withdrawing all our forces from Afghanistan and they started the process. I don’t need to recount the history of the fall of Kabul and the emergency evacuation of well over 100,000 people out of Hamid Karzai International Airport last August. But the SIGAR issued his interim report on the collapse on how fast the collapse went. And both the report itself and a number of former military officers who had commanded in Afghanistan made comments that somehow the contractors pulled out. And that that led to the collapse. Well, there’s no question but that the contractor support necessary for the Afghan National Security Forces is something that was, that they missed as soon as it was diminishing. But it’s also true that most of those contractors were following the guidance or the request from the federal government with whom they contracted. There’s nobody that I know of that made actions on their own. In fact, in many cases, one agency in particular, which I won’t name on the program to protect the companies, and the Afghans still inside Afghanistan. Their contracts were continued even after the fall of Kabul, even after the evacuation ended. So to blame any of this on contractors, it seems to me to be both misleading and unhelpful going forward, particularly since we’ve got another war still going on.

Tom Temin: Right there is language in the introduction to that report that says that the military, the U.S. military, withdrew contractor support fairly early before the collapse. So I mean, there’s that.

David Berteau: In many cases, the contract itself required the U.S. military or the U.S. government to provide the security. And so once that security is gone, the contractors are kind of in a bit of a pickle. And many of them had to begin to operate in a way that probably protected their workers and their work, as well as got the job done. It was a mess. And there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from that the SIGAR report doesn’t really give you the right lessons, I’m afraid.

One of the things we know is that the military, both our military and other militaries need contractor support in everything from technical services to day to day operations. And it actually is better for the government to use military for those things that only the military can do. And to use contractors went to support those so that the military that are both your most expensive workers, and in many ways, your best trained and most capable workers for their missions, are able to focus on their missions, not on the nits and gnats behind it.

Tom Temin: And just quickly, I wanted to ask you about a new bill concerning organizational conflicts of interest that had been marked up by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and it seems to concern a single company?

David Berteau: Well, there’s certainly a long standing set of rules regarding organizational conflict of interest and the Federal Acquisition Regulation and its various supplements have a lot of implementation language associated with that. But there’s also a lot of authority left up to individual contracting officers and programs on how to manage that going forward. You want that, that flexibility to be there. So the government can meet its needs. This particular case, this bill was generated through a series of hearings and reports in both the House in the Senate on one company, which was doing business with private sector companies. And with an agency at the same time, the agency was the Food and Drug Administration, the private sector companies was a drug manufacturer. And at least there was the potential in the appearance of individuals who are working for both sides of that over a relatively long period of time, eight or nine years, whether or not any actual conflict occurred still remains to be determined, in my view, but the bill will in fact, require additional acquisition regulations to keep this sort of thing from happening. The bill itself doesn’t actually create that language that’s going to have to be done through the Federal Acquisition Regulation and the FAR Council.

Tom Temin: Well, maybe you can get something into that bill to bar what Agriculture is doing with its regulations.

David Berteau: Well, one of the things it’s useful to recognize, Tom, even though it’s only you know, the first of June, Congress and the Senate don’t have a whole lot of legislative days left. When this Congress reaches its end in December, it’ll go out of business and the new Congress will take effect as voted on in the midterms. Without a lot of legislative days. That means not a lot of legislative vehicle, so we have to watch each bill very, very carefully.

Tom Temin: David Berteau is President and CEO of the Professional Services Council. As always, thanks so much.

David Berteau: You’re welcome, Tom. Look forward to the next one.

CAMBRIDGE, MD — The General Services Administration is trying, once again, to remove the complexities that agencies face when buying cloud services.

This has been a long-standing goal across multiple administrations and multiple attempts that have struggled to gain traction across government.

But the draft statement of work for the latest effort, called Ascend, which GSA released last week, is the culmination of months of research and discussion with agencies and industry experts.

Sonny Hashmi, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service in the GSA, said he believes Ascend will be different than previous attempts to create big cloud procurement vehicles.

“I don’t want to make the presumption that we’ve figured it out. The process to get to an endpoint on Ascend is going to require a lot of dialogue, and I don’t want to us to move forward without it,” Hashmi said after his speech at the Emerging Technology and Innovation conference sponsored by ACT-IAC. “It goes back to how we were talking about user centric design. There’s got to be a user need, and in this case, it’s got to be an agency need that Ascend will address. That will dictate what the vehicle looks like how it’s going to be designed because without it, it is not going to be successful.”

Hashmi, who served as GSA’s chief information officer and worked in industry before taking over as commissioner, is familiar with the previous attempts to create cloud vehicles. He said one reason for the lack of adoption is the vehicles didn’t take an agency mission-need first approach.

“At this point, we’re being very deliberate about making sure that there is an actual need on the other side of this. Adoption is going to happen not just because it’s going to be a forcing function, but because there’s actually a need that we’re solving. If we’re not, if it turns out that we’re behind and agencies don’t have a need, then I would rather actually not do this,” he said. “While we’re excited about this program, ultimately, its job is to solve a problem and help agencies to deliver on mission. If there’s a better way or a different way to solve for the problems that we are facing, we’re happy to change tactics on it.”

The current thinking for Ascend, as outlined in the draft statement of work is to create three separate pools of vendors to deliver infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service, software-as-a-service and cloud professional services.

“The Ascend BPA is part of the GSA’s cloud marketplace vision of empowering agencies to develop and implement enterprise-level cloud acquisition strategies through a modernized and simplified approach to meet their IT and cybersecurity requirements,” the draft solicitation states. “The BPA will emphasize cloud smart/security smart objectives, and establish minimum baseline requirements for the acquisition, business, operations, reporting and technology capabilities provided by commercial cloud service providers (CSPs) and cloud-focused labor service providers that are not currently accessible under other GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) or governmentwide acquisition contracts (GWACs). The Ascend BPA will focus on enabling support for both vertical (e.g., IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) and horizontal capabilities across the ecosystem and will provide more effective system integration and managed support services for the delivery of flexible, diverse, and secure cloud solutions.”

Feedback on Ascend is due to GSA by June 6.

New level of maturity to cloud buying

“We’ve been thinking about this challenge for some time, at least a year of internal deliberations. But now it’s time to really get industry engaged, and that’s why we released the draft work statement. We look forward to robust conversations, both from cloud service providers, services companies, system integrators and others, to really help us think about not only the purchasing method, mechanism, the methods, but really help us help shape our thinking around the future of digital transformation will look like,” he said. “We’re hoping this will be one mechanism, or the primary and most usable mechanism for agencies to think about when they’re thinking about modernizing their digital stacks.”

More broadly, Hashmi said, Ascend is trying to bring the “next level of maturity” to agencies as they adopt cloud services.

He said Ascend will let agencies buy cloud services “by the drink” or under a consumption based model. It will let GSA on-ramp new cloud service providers as they become available as well as contract holders bring innovation to the federal sector as required and necessary.

“We have flexibilities and ability that we haven’t exercised at scale before,” Hashmi said. “The other thing for me is creating a marketplace that is competitive. It can’t just be a small number of highly capable cloud companies. If you don’t create continuous opportunities for new companies to join the marketplace, then we have failed because this market is changing very rapidly.”

GSA has tried similar cloud acquisition vehicles previously for email-as-a-service and IaaS back in the early days of cloud buying. It found agencies didn’t want just a contract to buy cloud services, but wanted the full range of support from the cloud itself to integration services to ongoing support.

Gray areas still need to be worked out

Nearly 10 years later and as agencies spent about $8.6 billion on cloud services last year, with GSA acquisition vehicles accounting for $1.6 billion in 2020 and almost as much in 2021, Hashmi believes the time is right for this new approach.

“I think too many people talk about cloud as a thing that is different, unique and we need to buy it specially. Cloud is just part of how we modernize and how we deploy technology. So yes, when you use the Alliant vehicle to modernize, and the primary focus would be to buy professional services to help you modernize your solutions and technologies. Cloud is going to be a component of that,” he said. “Similarly when you want to just buy a discrete number have licenses and it’s easy and fairly straightforward for buyers to use the schedule contract. But there’s a huge opportunity and challenge right now between those two extremes. There’s more and more agencies who are going to multi-cloud environments. These require agencies to think about how these cloud technologies work with each other and integrate with each other, and then how to secure them. There are specialized services and it’s also highly complex licensing models that are becoming challenging for agencies to procure through a straightforward vehicle like the schedule. So Ascend is designed to solve for that problem.”

He added FAS also recognizes that Ascend may overlap or even have some gray areas with Alliant 2 or the schedule contract.

“We do think that if we hadn’t heard, loud and clear, from our customer base about the need to have a flexible, agile way to engage with cloud providers, we would not be pursuing down this road,” he said. “But we’ve seen that over and over again, we’re seeing a lot of agency-level, BPAs, which I think adds complexity and frustration to the industrial base. No company wants to bet on a Department of Commerce, BPA, Department of Homeland Security BPA and a Defense Department BPA, we do want to make sure that we also reduce friction and burden for the industry, and this is one way to do it.”

Early versions of Ascend also have come under scrutiny by industry associations. The Coalition for Government Procurement wrote a letter to GSA last fall expressing concerns that another cloud BPA will be duplicative and wasteful.

Hashmi said these concerns and other questions that have come up over the last six months is why GSA is putting out the draft statement of work. The feedback from large and small companies, from agencies, from associations and from anyone is critical to Ascend’s success.