The General Services Administration and recently the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program have been in the news.  The departed GSA Administrator, Lurita Doan, dominated the news for some time. Federal Computer Week, www.fcw.com, has provided readers with an excellent analysis of the activities at this very important agency.  Ms. Doan stirred the waters at GSA with some saying it was good but many gave her a failing grade during her tenure.  Ms. Doan is now gone and Jim Williams, a career acquisition executive, has been nominated to replace her.  This is good news.

However, Ms. Doan did take a positive step before her departure; she formed a blue ribbon panel to examine the GSA MAS program.  This is important because the GSA MAS program with 39 Schedules affects thousands of companies – in fact over 17,000.  With sales of over $36 billion last year, this program represents significant business for many companies.  Small businesses hold 81% of the contracts that produced $13 billion in sales.  So, this program is not just for big business.

The panel has held a number of meetings and has heard from many of the trade organizations, large businesses and special interests groups.  The consensus of industry observers is that not much progress has been made to date.  However, the panel recently took a very important step by issuing a direct call to government agencies to provide input on the schedule program.  To read a recent FCW article on this click here. The panel should issue a similar call to vendors.

The largest of the Schedules is the Information Technology (IT) Schedule.  It accounts for over $17 billion in annual sales and is of high interest to over 5,000 technology companies.  Service provided to IT vendors has been eroding in recent years.  New contracts are taking too long to be awarded.  But, the biggest problem is that renewals and contract modifications for existing contracts routinely can take months, sometimes more than a year.  As a result, new products and solutions are not available to government customers on a timely basis.  This results in dissatisfaction and causes the vendors to steer government customers to other contractual vehicles to acquire current technology.

The GSA panel has a web site, click here, where you can learn more about the panel’s activities and related stories.  Most importantly, you can submit your comments to mas.advisorypanel@gsa.gov.  They need to hear from you and the thousands of other companies who have a vital interest in the GSA MAS Schedule Program.

IT executives from federal agencies in, California, New York and other states are recipients of a marketing campaign produced by CMA Executive Forum to introduce the benefits of virtualization technologies.   Sponsored by Hewlett Packard, Intel and VmWare, the campaign includes a series of webcasts, seminars and other media targeted to the public sector market. 

According to Cathy G. Martin, HP Director, Government Marketing, “There are dramatic savings and performance improvements that can flow from computer virtualization and sever consolidation.  Many federal, state and local governments are turning to virtualization to reduce operating costs.  In a recent study by Pacific Gas and Electric, they discovered that for each server removed through virtualization, organizations can expect to save $300 to $600 in energy costs — and almost double that amount when reduced cooling-costs are considered.”

Recent seminars in the capitals of California and New York were big hits.  CIO’s from these two large states presented their Going Green initiatives and the important role of computer virtualization in reducing energy costs and the other benefits of server consolidation.