GSA Schedule

On March 20, 2025, President Trump issued executive order (“EO”) Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement, which will have significant effects on federal government contracting.  The EO is intended to consolidate “domestic Federal procurement” within the General Services Administration (“GSA”) to “eliminate waste and duplication.”

The EO has two primary objectives:

  1. It grants GSA an increased role in the U.S. Government’s acquisition of “common goods and services”.
  2. It designates the GSA Administrator as “the executive agent for all Government-wide acquisition contracts for information technology” pursuant to 40 U.S.C. § 11302(e).[1]

We have summarized key provisions and potential effects of the EO further below.Continue Reading Executive Order Issued To Expand GSA’s Role in Acquisition of “Common Goods and Services” and Information Technology

The Civilian Board of Contract Appeals has published its annual report for FY 2023, providing data regarding the number of appeals and contractor success rates at the Board.  The data illustrated a number of noteworthy points — and a few welcome trends — for the contracting community.Continue Reading Contractors Had a Strong Success Rate Before the CBCA in FY 2023

As GSA Multiple Award Schedule contractors know all too well, Schedule contracting involves a complex web of customer-tracking, reporting, and price-adjustment requirements.  Those of us who navigate these often byzantine rules understand why many in the industry have called for the adoption of an alternative approach to verifying price reasonableness.

For the last several years, GSA has been piloting just such an alternative:  the Transactional Data Reporting (“TDR”) program, through which the government collects transaction-level data on products and services purchased through the Schedule to make data-driven decisions that save taxpayer dollars.  GSA has been running a TDR pilot program for several years to test the potential for a new regulatory regime, though the program sometimes has been the source of criticism and controversy.  Now that controversy has heightened further:  GSA’s Office of Inspector General published an audit report on June 24, 2021 that is sharply critical of the program, only to see GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (“FAS”) Commissioner publicly reject the report’s conclusions and defend TDR’s effectiveness.

Time will tell whether the TDR rule becomes the new standard for GSA Schedule contracting.  But the latest round of controversy suggests that the current maze of requirements are not going away any time soon.Continue Reading The End of CSP and PRC Requirements? — GSA’s TDR Pilot Program Faces Further Internal Criticism

On Friday, the General Services Administration (“GSA”) announced that it had awarded three contracts to develop online shopping portals for commercially-available off-the-shelf (“COTS”) items.  The awardees are Amazon Business, Fisher Scientific, and Overstock.com.
Continue Reading GSA Awards First Contracts to Develop an Online Shopping Platform, and the White House Seems to Be Paying Attention

Tight deadlines are a fact of life in the world of government contracting.  Indeed, it is not unusual for the government to expect a contractor to provide large amounts of information in just a few short days.  And the draconian penalty for missing such a deadline is usually the rejection of a proposal.

But can an agency’s deadline be unreasonably short?  Yes.  In MCR Federal, LLC, GAO determined that the agency’s deadline for submitting its final proposal revision (“FPR”) was so short that it deprived the protester of a fair opportunity to improve its proposal.Continue Reading Not So Fast Guy: Recent GAO Decision Provides Rule For When Agency Deadlines Are Unreasonably Short

After nearly two years of planning, GSA has released an RFP seeking prototypes of online shopping portals that would allow federal customers to buy COTS items from their computers.

GSA’s plan implements Section 846 of the NDAA for FY 2018, which instructed the agency to create an internet marketplace exempt from many standard procurement regulations.  As we have previously discussed in this blog, GSA began planning in 2017, sought input from industry in 2018 and 2019, and the announced earlier this year that it would proceed with proofs of concept. But while the new solicitation was a long time coming, GSA clearly is ready to move quickly: contractors will have less than a month before the proposal deadline to digest the solicitation and assess how its terms might affect their business approach, data rights, and competitive standing.Continue Reading GSA’s E-Commerce Portal Program Is Here: What the New Solicitation Means for Government Contractors

In the latest step towards delivering on the long-promised “Procurement Through Commercial e-Commerce Portals” program, the General Services Administration has announced plans to build a proof-of-concept for federal online shopping, aiming to issue an RFP by the end of the year for web-based acquisition platforms.
Continue Reading Federal Online Shopping Platform Coming Soon — GSA to Issue Prototype RFP Within the Year

Last year, we wrote about a trial court’s decision to dismiss a False Claims Act (“FCA”) complaint regarding alleged Trade Agreements Act (“TAA”) non-compliances because the relator failed to plead fraud with “particularity” under Rule 9(b).  That decision offered a sweeping rebuke of speculative FCA claims, and emphasized why it can be difficult to present a valid FCA claim based on a potential violation of a complex regulatory scheme like the TAA.

Last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit unanimously affirmed that decision in United States ex rel. Berkowitz v. Automation Aids, Inc., — F.3d — , 2018 WL 3567836 (7th Cir. July 25, 2018).  In doing so, the Seventh Circuit provided additional guidance about various topics, including the Rule 9(b) standard for implied certifications and the power of the materiality defense.  Our takeaways are below.
Continue Reading Alleged Sales of Non-TAA-Compliant Products Under GSA Schedule Contracts Are Not False Claims, 7th Circuit Holds