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Neal Fox | Contracting in Perspective: Will GSA Eat SEWP?

By Neal Fox, Special to GCN

So GSA wants to absorb NASA’s SEWP GWAC contract vehicle. Would this enhance governmentwide procurement, and has anyone asked SEWP’s customers?

I doubt either.

On the surface, an all-powerful GSA in charge of all government acquisition sounds just fine. OK, so maybe it doesn’t. But let’s assume for a minute that it could happen. So what?

We can understand the GSA administrator’s view on this. She wants to stop the leakage of business from GSA, especially since their finances are not what they used to be. SEWP looks like an easy target at first, since it is a true GWAC under Clinger-Cohen definitions, and because GSA’s IT Schedule offerings can supply all the categories SEWP covers. But the very fact that customers use SEWP to buy over $500 million worth of IT products annually, and that Veterans Affairs has recently decided to become a steady customer of SEWP, requires a serious review of what they bring to the table.

By the way, NIH ECS GWAC, we see you hiding over there. GSA will get around to you soon enough.

One must first ask how SEWP can even survive in the shadow of GSA and its Information Technology Schedule. The GSA IT Schedule works great, and government acquisition would be lost without it. This is also the gem of GSA and pays the bills. Well, almost, but that’s another issue. SEWP exists because it provides value in certain areas where the IT Schedule has not. At firs, SEWP was a rudimentary form of strategic sourcing for high-end workstations. But now it continues to exist for several important reasons; namely, because it does not need to meet all the requirements that GSA must meet, because it can cherry-pick what it offers and because GSA has not kept up with the customer.

Not that SEWP should have to be all things to all people as GSA is required to be. GSA must support all those little governmentwide goals, such as maximum small-business inclusion, must take in all vendors who want to play, must not favor one IT vendor at the expense of the others, and a hundred other mandated play-nice goals thrust on it by Congress and others, or else self-imposed. GSA must carry that burden for the federal government. But SEWP doesn’t, and probably shouldn’t. Some things just are.

More news on related topics: IT Management, Acquisition / Contracts, Business Process Management, Management



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