Federal Agencies Should Learn More From GSA's Mistakes

Federal agencies have begun offering their own procurement vehicles for many reasons. I've written about one in particular a number of times in the past year -- that being the growing dissatisfaction with the General Services Administration. But as some of these agency procurement vehicles grow in size and scope, they start to take on a number of the characteristics that have turned government and contractors off to GSA in the first place.

Take the Navy Seaport Enhanced, or Seaport-e, contract. The Washington Post reported that 391 contractors were added on May 23 as part of the Navy's rolling admissions process. That grows the total number of companies able to compete for up to $5.3 billion a year in orders to 1,300.

Solution providers -- particularly those with limited resources -- have to wonder if it's worth their time. Beyond the fact that contracts are getting too crowded with eligible players, agencies are making the functional areas targeted by these contracts so broad that no contractor can be filtered out.

Look at the Information Technology Enterprise Solutions (ITES) contracts from the Army. Worth up to $20 billion in services and $5 billion in hardware, the vehicles support the Army's enterprise IT systems, with solution providers contributing to the design and implementation of combat and business systems with IT services, program and project management, systems operation and maintenance, and network support. Regardless of whether a company wins a position as a prime, it surely qualifies to contribute as a subcontractor, which results in a competitive landscape that's saturated. How is that good for the government customer or the government channel?

I ask solution providers all the time about the opportunities that exist in federal contracting. More and more, I'm told they're few and far between. That's a shame for the solution providers, but also a shame for the federal agencies. In their attempts to drive costs out of procuring IT, they're driving some of the best contractors to look to other segments of public sector -- namely state and local government. Let's just hope that states, which are increasingly growing the size and scope of their own contracts, don't make the same mistake.