Open Letter to GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian on How IT Services Can be Acquired under GSA's Procurement Consolidation Initiative
Dear Mr. Ehikian,
Congratulations on the exciting opportunity created by President Trump’s recent Executive Order, "Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement." This allows you to achieve your vision for GSA to return to its core purpose: making government work smarter and faster. As you noted, GSA is now positioned to drive efficiency across government operations and empower agencies to deliver better service to taxpayers at lower cost.
This shift is both timely and necessary. As DOGE has uncovered, too many modernization efforts remain stagnant within outdated and poorly incentivized contractual models. The centralization of procurement under GSA offers a powerful opportunity to accelerate how services and solutions are delivered across federal agencies. Consolidating procurement of common goods and services reduces duplication, streamlines acquisition cycles, and maximizes federal buying power.
From an industry perspective, this transformation feels like a reboot—a chance to innovate alongside a Fortune 1 customer that is rethinking how it prioritizes and procures. Federal service providers now have the chance to operate with the agility and energy of a start-up in a reimagined procurement landscape.
To assist GSA as it develops revised guidance under the EO, I’ve outlined several recommendations for how federal procurement for IT services can evolve to meet the moment:
Standardize the Agency PWS: To streamline procurement of common goods and services under the EO, develop a baseline Performance Work Statement (PWS) for IT services (e.g., data/application development, architecture, service desk, IT service management). Agencies should retain influence over mission-specific requirements (e.g. project goals, current technical stack) while leveraging GSA’s centralized efficiencies for standardized acquisitions. Additionally, agencies should detail technical specialists to GSA who remain actively involved in drafting their specific agency RFPs and evaluating proposals. This approach creates consistency across procurements while allowing flexibility for agency-specific requirements. It also allows for the creation of uniform SLAs across government buys.
Use Modular and Tiered Contract Structure: Modular and tiered contract structures can break down IT services into scalable components. GSA can design these structures so agencies can select pre-defined capabilities and services that align with their mission needs, without requiring fully customized services. This approach supports service standardization and enables common SLAs across federal procurement. It also preserves agency flexibility as they can mix and match based on mission needs, scope, and complexity.
Adopt a Multi-Vendor Development Model: For modernization and development projects, avoid single-vendor awards. Consider concurrent pilots or a development "shootout" model, allowing multiple vendors to demonstrate real-time responsiveness to mission needs. Incorporate automation, such as CI/CD pipelines, low-code platforms, and DevSecOps practices, to streamline testing, integration, and deployment. This enables smaller, faster investments and promotes use of commercial platforms to accelerate timelines, reduce custom build costs, and scale proven solutions quickly. It also gives agency stakeholders the ability to host technical demonstrations to "try before they buy."
Treat Cybersecurity Differently: Cybersecurity is a national security imperative. Allow agencies to continue procuring these services independently until a centralized procurement model within GSA is fully tested and validated. A premature shift to centralized procurement could delay critical protections, hinder incident response, and introduce security gaps.
Uphold Small Business Participation: Procurement consolidation often favors large technology providers, limiting competition and stifling innovation. As a serial entrepreneur, you understand how small businesses bring speed, agility, and nuanced capabilities, allowing them to quickly adapt and deliver mission-driven innovative solutions. The Small Business Act also requires a fair proportion of federal procurements go to small businesses. The current 23% Small Business goal should remain a floor, not a ceiling, in GSA’s centralized procurement strategy.
Streamline Direct Award Authority Through GSA: Provide a mechanism for direct awards to small businesses through GSA rather than routing through SBA. This preserves centralized oversight while enabling fast, focused execution. Given GSA’s expanded role and increased oversight, this is the right time to revise the FAR and raise the direct award threshold from $4.5M to $10M. This change would accelerate timelines, reduce administrative overhead, and give agencies the flexibility to move quickly when they identify high-impact small business solutions. This change would also allow high-performing small businesses to grow before competing with large primes, preventing promising firms from prematurely aging out of set-aside programs.
Differentiate Existing GWACs: The GWAC program plays a key role in supporting Best-in-Class acquisition goals. However, many of the current vehicles have become redundant. Most GWACs include the same pool of vendors and lack clear scope distinctions. For example, vehicles like OASIS blur the lines between IT as ancillary or primary services, creating confusion. CIO-SP3’s Task Area 1 (Health IT) should be a mandatory requirement for all task orders issued under the vehicle. It’s counterproductive to design a GWAC based on Health IT experience that allows any agency to broadly compete its full IT service portfolio. GSA now has a critical opportunity to redefine the GWAC landscape by clearly distinguishing service areas and aligning vendors with the capabilities they deliver best.
Standardize Security Clearance Requirements: Use this transition to create common standards for security clearances across civilian agencies for non-classified work. This reduces onboarding time, increases the hiring pool nationwide to accommodate Return to Office mandates, and strengthens vendor readiness. Security clearances are painfully slow per current process even for Public sector assessments.
Incorporate AI into Federal Procurement: GSA can position itself as the federal AI center of excellence for procurement modernization. This can be done by:
Using NLP models to scan solicitations and contracts for compliance issues (e.g., cybersecurity, small business goals, Buy American provisions).
Deploying AI-powered queries to support market research and sourcing strategies.
Apply machine learning to assess vendor past performance, forecast risk, and analyze historical procurement data for smarter buying decisions, volume discounts, and better pricing. This can also support automated contract modifications, reducing cycle times and administrative workload.
GSA can lead AI adoption by procuring commercial, AI-enabled platforms that improve service delivery, automate workflows, and strengthen analytics. These platforms can support your goals of modernizing the procurement technology infrastructure to enable faster vendor onboarding and improved vendor management while reducing costs, time to award, and reliance on paper-based workflows.
I look forward to watching GSA lead this transformation with boldness, transparency, and collaboration. As a very interested stakeholder, I am eager to support your mission and help build a smarter, faster, and more effective federal procurement ecosystem.
Sincerely,
Kaamil Khan
President, Makpar Corporation