GSA Planning New Governmentwide Contract for Unmanned Vehicles

This content is provided by Bloomberg Government.

The General Services Administration is considering creating a governmentwide contracting vehicle for services related to manned and unmanned systems, potentially consolidating billions of dollars annually that now flow through hundreds of contracts.

“GSA is embarking on gathering market research to determine whether there is a need for a government wide contract vehicle for operations, readiness, maintenance, integration, and development of manned, optionally manned, and unmanned platforms, as well as support functions for these platforms,” GSA press secretary Pamela Dixon confirmed in an Aug. 29 email to Bloomberg Government.

The program, known simply as “ATLAS,” is being spearheaded by GSA’s Federal Systems Integration Management Center, or FEDSIM. According to its website, FEDSIM manages $14 billion in total active contracts.

Earlier this year, GSA appointed Mike Donaldson, a 25-year veteran of federal acquisition services, to head up emerging programs at FEDSIM. Until recently, Donaldson was listed as “ATLAS Director” on FEDSIM’s website.

GSA hasn’t yet finalized the scope of the new program, but based on Dixon’s comments, it could potentially deliver a wide range of services supporting the government’s fleet of civilian and military land vehicles, ships, and aircraft. If that’s the case, ATLAS’s scope could be extensive.

It’s possible the program is intended to centralize that spending in an effort to manage governmentwide demand and take advantage of standardized labor rates, as agencies have in areas such as information technology.

A previous version of this article stated that FEDSIM manages the OASIS contract. OASIS is managed by the Office of Professional Services and Human Capital Categories.