GSA Category Management Initiative Going Government Wide
The Strategic Sourcing Leadership Council (SSLC), a conglomeration of the seven largest and highest spending agencies, has approved the implementation of a government-wide category management approach to managing, developing, supplying, identifying and communicating best practices, and spending on all current acquisition categories.
This approach has been employed by the government of the United Kingdom and private industry for many years. Category management will enable the government to behave more strategically, and act as a solitary enterprise with stronger insights into what buyers across the entirety of the landscape of the federal government are doing. To achieve this end, the federal marketplace is divided into ten distinct categories of management. Each of these ten categories is a major spending area (such as IT, Professional Services, Security and Protection, etc.) and will be led by a team of experts who will develop strategies for smarter buying and providing overall solutions. This change facilitates the dissemination of best strategies, while helping to eliminate any redundancies in the current process of purchasing goods and services.
Government wide category management builds upon the prior work of the General Service Administration’s (GSA’s) Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), who in their efforts with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) and SSLC, have been actively working towards these changes. GSA is in the process of developing an online portal called the Common Acquisition Platform (CAP) to house all of the acquisition categories in one place (see earlier BH Sky February 2015 blog). CAP is expected to provide a single access point whereby a Contracting Officer can go to find out about all of the existing contract vehicles for any commodity area for easier navigation and purchasing.
How Do I Join the CAP Community?
Within CAP, GSA has already deployed sites for several spending categories, such as Admin Support, Education and Training, and IT Software. To learn more about CAP, view GSA’s Acting As One video.
About BH Sky
BH Sky Associates, based in Princeton, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., helps clients identify, negotiate, secure, market and manage procurement opportunities and contracts at federal, state, and local levels of government. It is New Jersey’s only company specializing in GSA/VA Schedule Contracts and Government Market Intelligence. BH Sky offers professional consulting services to small and mid-size companies in a wide range of industries seeking to do business with the government. For more information, view our videos or contact us directly by phone 866.468.7420 or email.