GSA’s procurement chief details administration’s acquisition reform plans

Larry Allen’s expertise in government contracting spans four decades; three books he either authored or contributed to on the subject, and a college course he created and taught for several years at The George Washington University.

In March, Allen was appointed as the General Services Administration’s associate administrator for governmentwide policy and chief acquisition officer — a major role made more prominent after executive action centralized many government procurement functions within GSA.

To Allen, the confluence of a new administration and an “exceptionally dynamic” leadership team at GSA represented an irresistible opportunity to truly reform government procurement not seen since Allen and the previous generation of practitioners ushered in contracting reforms in the 1990s.

“What brought me back into government service was the ability to work on federal acquisition reform. I really think that we now have a unique opportunity in government to streamline acquisition,” Allen told GovExec TV in an interview that will air May 20. “Seldom do you get a chance to work on acquisition reform twice in one career, and so I really feel like I have a unique opportunity to make an impact here.”

In the interview, Allen addressed several directives and initiatives the Trump administration has set underway that will impact how agencies buy as much as $1 trillion worth of goods and services each year and how companies engage with the government.

One of the most recent, GSA’s OneGov Strategy to streamline software acquisition unveiled April 29, is already bearing fruit. 

Beginning with Google and followed by Adobe, companies are engaging GSA and offering discounted rates on their software, recalculating costs as if the government were a single customer, rather than a collection of individual agencies. Both companies offered more than 70% discounts on their software, and Google’s discount on its Workspace suite — to the delight of the nascent Department of Government Efficiency and chief Elon Musk — could save federal agencies as much as $2 billion over three years. At GSA, OneGov and other contract consolidation work is being led under the direction of Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum, who was appointed in February. 

“We're actually now starting to have the companies come to us and say, ‘Hey, here's how we can be a better partner to you,’” Allen said. “And I think part of that is reducing the number of rules that those companies have to manage when they're doing business directly with the government.”

Allen said to expect more enterprise-level agreements with software vendors in the near future in “phase one” of the strategy. The second phase, he said, will be driving the usage of those agreements across agencies to increase efficiency, lower costs and drive better outcomes for customers.

“The real question then becomes, once we get those [agreements] in place, how do we drive that usage in the customer agencies?” Allen said. “There's always been a tendency to say, ‘Well, I really like 99% of what you just did, but there's that 1% so I've got to kind of go do my own thing.’”

“Well, no. The reason we put this in place is so that everybody can do it, and you're going to get unbelievable pricing, you're going to get an unbelievable level of service commitment, and you should be using those enterprise agreements first before you even think about going anywhere else, because this is going to save you money and the taxpayer money, it really will get you where you want to go,” Allen continued.

Impact to resellers 

GSA’s OneGov strategy announcement acknowledged that while “agencies have historically purchased software through resellers, this new approach prioritizes direct relationships to deliver better outcomes.” 

Allen suggested resellers “hone your value statements,” align with new administration priorities and introduce — or reintroduce — themselves to the new administration and key agency officials.

“The government wants to do business with good business partners,” Allen said. “And if you've got a group of leaders who aren't so familiar with how that works in government, you want to make sure that you're telling your story. Don't assume that today's senior agency officials, whether GSA or other agencies, know all about your business. Why would they, if you haven't gone and told them about what it is you do and how you do it?”

“No one tells your message as well as you do,” Allen added. “Now is the time to take some time to make sure that that's as sharp as you want.” 

New contracting ‘marching orders’ 

President Donald Trump’s executive orders around rewriting the Federal Acquisition Regulation, prioritizing commercial technology and centralizing approximately $400 billion worth of procurement within GSA, prompted some to wonder whether the government was rehashing the 1980s era when the agency did procurement for the whole government.

“We’re not going to do that,” Allen said. “But we are going to do the things that make sense to drive those common use technologies across government. And GSA is going to be the buyer and provider of choice of those solutions, not just in terms of the contracts, but in terms of the acquisition services we provide our customer agencies.”

Allen said President Trump’s executive orders “are our marching orders on acquisition consolidation and on redoing acquisition regulations,” and when asked about the future of governmentwide acquisition contracts — commonly referred to as GWACs — Allen said, “I think one of the things we're looking at here very seriously is consolidation.”

GSA, he said, would also consider how its Polaris small business GWAC — which he said was “just about ready to get on the football field and see some action” — and others, like the popular Alliant 2 contract and OASIS+ for professional services, would fit together as part of the broader contracting ecosystem.

“We're going to take a look at that entire portfolio and see what makes sense,” Allen said.

AI is a big deal 

Another key priority for the Trump administration is accelerating the adoption of AI tools across government. GSA, Allen said, is using its own internal AI tool called “GSAi” in several parts of the agency, including the Federal Acquisition Service and Public Building Service, and the tool could be offered as a shared service to other agencies in the near future. GSA Chief Information Officer David Shive, Chief AI Officer Zach Whitman, and the Technology Transformation Services team under director Thomas Shedd have been leading the development of this unique tool that may ultimately be used across numerous other agencies. 

“It’s kind of like a chatbot on steroids,” Allen said of GSAi.

He added that AI has major potential to improve government operations and aid federal employees with their day-to-day workloads, as well as with speeding up contracting processes that have traditionally been manual efforts. For example, with proper system prompts, GSA’s AI tool can bring up laws associated with certain procurement statutes. It can also ingest and analyze market research at inhuman speeds and improve statements of work.

“We’re still going to have contracting officers making decisions about how the government’s money is spent, but we’ve got a lot of ways that AI can assist in that process,” Allen said, adding that because it’s a relatively new technology, “we’re going to see AI acquisition really evolve over time.” 

AI is not yet purchased by agencies as a commodity like other, older technologies.

“How do we get to the point where we're making sure that the government is paying fair and reasonable, competitive pricing for AI solutions?” Allen asked. “That's not necessarily the easiest thing, when the government or commercial markets are talking AI implementation. The more mature the market gets, the better we're going to be able to streamline our price reasonableness identification.”