The 1949 law that established the General Services Administration made the agency a mandatory source for agency purchases of products and services, though from the very beginning there were some exceptions and carve-outs, and in fact procurement was never done only by GSA. For IT purchases during much of the period, agencies could buy for themselves, but only after going to GSA with a “Mother, May I?” request and getting approval for the specifics, which generally delayed procurements by several months or more.
The idea for doing this was that centralizing procurement would produce big buys with quantity discounts and good terms for the government. The problem, though, was that GSA had a procurement monopoly.
And guess what? GSA behaved like a monopoly. They were notorious for slow and indifferent service. Folks in other agencies generally disliked them. And GSA was not an aggressive negotiator, so frequently the prices the government received were not that great.
Big changes came with then-Vice President Al Gore’s Reinventing Government effort in the 1990s, with which I was involved as administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy from 1993 to 1997.
Gore wanted to support the program officials who used the products and services the procurement system bought. He wanted to get them quick, easy access to the things they wanted to buy. They were — to use a phrase that began to be spoken within government for the first ..
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