Some bold ideas for the next GSA administrator

Come next year, the General Services Administration will likely have a new administrator. Longtime federal sales expert Larry Allen joins the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with a few suggestions for GSA reform.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin  Whether the Harris Biden administration continues as the Harris Waltz administration, or there’s a new Trump administration, it’s likely Robin Carnahan will step aside, you know, four years and there’s going to be a new GSA. We’re not taking sides here, but you’ve got a lot of ideas, starting with the venerable schedules program, Larry.

Larry Allen  That’s right, Tom. I think that it’s time, past time, actually, for GSA to go ahead and create an official schedules program management office with the Senior Executive Service billet to run it, and that’s taking nothing away from the existing PMO, which itself is pretty new. They do a nice job, but they don’t always have a lot of accountability or ability to really change things. So, what I’m calling for is for a schedule PMO that works much more like GSA’s other program management organizations on the Oasis, plus Alliant two, Alliant three, family of contracts. You know, these are offices that really do manage all aspects of the program. The contracting officers are part of that team. It’s an integrated team. And when you’ve got a program like the schedules that is exponentially larger than any of the programs I just mentioned, it really is a strong argument, I think, for having an integrated schedules team. You know, the IG keeps plucking away at GSA on the schedules program, for not doing things the way they think they ought to be done. And, you know, one way to maybe get the IG, I don’t think it’ll get it off your back, but maybe get them distracted for a minute, would be to set up an integrated PMO where everybody rolls up to the same person. But when you’ve got a $50 billion a year program, I think that just makes sense.

Tom Temin  Because it wasn’t that long ago, what about two, three years ago, that they consolidated all of the different sub-schedules into one big, multiple award schedule, no more 70 and 40 and this, that and the other. So, that would seem logical.

Larry Allen  Right? I think, in fact, you could argue that it’s a natural progression of the schedule’s consolidation process. As you pointed out, it’s now one big schedule with all kinds of different sub parts to it. Why not have one person overseeing all of it, who has the authority to not just manage the program, but to provide oversight and training for the acquisition workforce?

Tom Temin  All right, so, you’re available for the job?

Larry Allen  Just give me my orb.

Tom Temin  That’s right. Well, Bill Gormley might take it, but I think he’s doing just well enough without being at GSA anymore. And then the other idea, the second one you had, wow, this is going to, you know, prick somebody, but the sunset date for the technology transformation service. That means shut it down at some point.

Larry Allen  Well, I think you have to shut it down, Tom, if it’s not going to actually turn a profit and pay for its own expenses. And look, it’s the government, but even inside GSA, as in other government agencies, you do have programs that at least have to pay their own way, and TTS just doesn’t do that. It may have been a great idea for its time, but now the only time we ever see TTS in the headlines is when something’s gone wrong, and most prominently that’s been with login.gov, but there are other issues with it, and it’s a small part of the Federal Acquisition Service, yet it’s one that gets a tremendous amount of outsized attention, both good and not so good. And, I think that, you know, you really have to be honest, if you’re going to have this service, it’s going to have to actually fulfill a federal customer need. It’s going to have to be pay as you go. If you look at something close to that in the Federal Acquisition Service, Tom, you’ve got GSA’s assisted acquisition services. They are very popular, and they do cover their costs and probably then some. So, it’s not unrealistic to ask TTS to do the same thing, albeit on a much smaller platform, really.

Tom Temin  We’re speaking with Larry Allen. He’s president of Allen Federal Business Partners. And I guess too, behind the idea of technology transformation is that as new technologies come along, they may not be widely known or exercised across government, but eventually this knowledge does get diffused of whatever it is, and so TTS may have temporary need, but once people understand the technology more widely and its value in transforming what the government is doing, updating IT, then you don’t need the TTS so much, right?

Larry Allen  Well, I think the real bottom line is that if it’s fulfilling a need, then agency customers ought to be paying for it, and if it is, that’s great, then you can make your business case. But if it’s something where you’re not really fulfilling a need, you’re just out there providing information, in some cases, that may be duplicative to other sources, like industry sources, then you’re carrying overhead, and you’re forcing other GSA programs to subsidize that operation. I think that’s hard for any organization to justify.

Tom Temin  All right. And further, with your idea of the heretic running into the orthodoxies here, you are talking about reuniting the acquisition policy and the operations side of GSA. Tell us more about that idea.

Larry Allen  Well, so Tom, this gets a little bit in the weeds, but I think it’s important to understand what we’re really talking about here is the efficient working of the acquisition process in GSA. And this has been a debate for as long as I’ve been in this market, for over 30 years. Do we have operations and policy together? Do we have them separate? And in my experience, it’s been one of those things where the concept of having policy on one side and operations on the other looks good on paper, but it doesn’t really work well in practice. And it goes back a little bit to what we were just talking about in the schedules program, putting together a larger scale schedule PMO, but it transcends that and but it’s alike in that you’ve got people who put policy out, who are separate and apart from the people who do the operations. They don’t always understand each other. They don’t always speak the same language. It’s almost kind of like building a railroad from east to west, and the tracks don’t quite match up when you get in the middle. And unfortunately, I think that really puts contracting officers and contract specialists in an unfair position where they’re trying to bridge that gap and they haven’t really been given the skills, or, in some cases, the authority, to do that. I think that there’s a strong operational case to be made for reuniting policy and operations.

Tom Temin  All right, and we’ll continue here with some other ideas quickly, the idea that the Federal Acquisition Service, you kind of like the leadership team there, they are talented, you’re saying. And so therefore, what? Keep it going?

Larry Allen  Well, I think keep it going, but I think you also have to have a political appointee class inside GSA that trusts and understands the careerists. GSA FAS does have some exceptional careerists. They’re very good at what they do. But over the last three or four years in particular, I think there’s been more of a disconnect than there usually has been between the political appointees and the careerists. It’s been a bridge, a gap that’s been very developed to bridge. I think you and I probably talked about this when the Biden administration first came in, saying, well, give it time. Well, now, we’ve given it time, and it doesn’t always work so well. And also, to be fair to the Biden administration, it’s not just that issue. GSA Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner became an appointee originally under the Trump administration about seven or eight years ago now, and that’s another political appointee position who’s put in over careerists. And yet, in order for that organization to work well, whether you’re career or political, you have to be part of the same team. And I think that if the careers knew that their appointee supervisors had their back a little bit more would understood a little bit more about the mission, then you would see that leadership team that’s already good go from good to great.

Tom Temin  And hopefully that career person won’t be in schedule F.

Larry Allen  Right!

Tom Temin  F should stand for Federal Acquisition Service, and we’ll leave it there. And then finally, you mentioned the Inspector General, which at GSA, has risen up and flung some barbs over the years from time to time. And you’re talking about the distinguishing between the role of the Inspector General and the role of the operations offices.

Larry Allen  Right, and I think both offices do have an operation, and they do have a role to play, Tom. So, I’m not going to sit here and beat up on the IG I think one of the things that’s important is that you have a well functioning IG’s office. By the same token that IG office has a role to play and a role not to play, and the role not to play is becoming the co-program administrator for the operational programs. And I think sometimes that gets a little out of whack. I think the people in the operational part of GSA, and really, this is not just leadership team by any means. It’s gotten down to the rank and file, where good line level contracting officers are now really afraid of making business decisions because the IG may call them out. That’s a problem, and that’s something that needs to be realigned. And I think that senior management team that we were just talking about just as political appointees, have to have their back, that management team has to have the back of the line level people, and understand fundamentally that while you don’t get out of your way to aggravate the inspector general or anybody else, I would think, fundamentally, you’re going to be coming at your work from two different perspectives, and they’re hardly ever going to align. It’s not the IG’s job, for example, just to issue reports saying, hey, everything’s great. You don’t really need us. No, their job is to try and find something, and find something they do, and I think you need to put those reports into the proper perspective. Change the things that need to be changed, but have some confidence in your overall policy and program.

Tom Temin  And if you don’t like your IG, go ahead and poke the bear. Larry Allen is president of Allen Federal Business Partners. As always, thanks so much.

Larry Allen  Tom, thank you, and I wish your listeners happy selling.

Tom Temin  We’ll post this interview at federalnewsnetwork.com/federaldrive. Subscribe to the Federal Drive wherever you get your podcasts.

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