GSA’s FAS is trying to move into the world of data analytics

GSA to push vendors for more data on schedule price variances

The General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service is trying to move into the world of data analytics to drive management decisions.

It’s part of a four-pronged effort to stay relevant to vendors and customer agencies alike.

Kevin Youel Page, the deputy commissioner of FAS, said the need for change became clearer over the last few years.

“We really today are in an environment where there are declining dollars. The multiple awards schedules program has been flat and in slight decline for years and so we are seeing no particular new opportunity in terms of growth in the program. And we have done not enough, in my opinion, to take the program, which is after all a 60-year-old program that was designed around products and designed in an industrial age, we have done not enough to make this program live and breathe in a dynamic way that we are used to experiencing in our personal and private lives,” Youel Page said Tuesday at the Coalition for Government Procurement’s annual spring conference in Falls Church, Virginia. “We have not done enough to bring ourselves into a world of analytics and true management. The way we see the imperative is we either continue along the path we are on and stagnate and become increasingly irrelevant in a competitive marketplace, or do what we prefer to do and grow.”

The handwriting on the wall for GSA has been clear for some time and many of the initiatives FAS is launching in 2015 have been in the works years.

Listen to the Federal News Radio interview with Jason:

Read the full article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=445&sid=3847927&pid=0&page=1

Source:  Federal News Radio, by Jason Miller, April 29, 2015

 


 

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