General Services Administration officials issued a 30-day advance notice Wednesday that they plan to issue a final solicitation to condense the agency’s 24 Multiple Award Schedules program into one schedule for products, services and solutions by Oct. 1.
The agency first proposed consolidating the 24 contract vehicles, which represent $31 billion in annual spending, into a single offering in November 2018 as a way to streamline federal acquisition, but in an email Wednesday, Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Alan Thomas said the agency would unveil the single-vehicle approach in a new solicitation by the start of the fiscal year.
“The new solicitation with its simplified format is going to make it much easier for customers to find and purchase the solutions they need to meet their missions,” Thomas said. “One Schedule means vendors no longer have to manage contracts across multiple schedules.”
That solicitation, expected will be posted on FedBizOpps, was updated to reflect more than 1,000 stakeholder comments on how the GSA could repackage the MAS program, which includes contract vehicles covering everything from IT and cybersecurity to office supplies and security services.