Category: IT Services

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Connecting with ITS

If  you’re a regular reader of the ITS blog, you already know that we provide the government IT and acquisition communities with private-sector solutions for everything from simple IT commodities to complex infrastructure and emerging technology. Now, we’ve made it even easier for government buyers and our industry partners to get the information they need, whether it’s acquisition assistance or information about the latest telecommunications and technology initiatives: just visit gsa.gov/technology to connect with us.

gsa.gov/itshelp also provides access to statement of work (SOW) templates, ordering guides, ordering systems and the other tools government buyers need to get the job done, including the IT Solutions Navigator, a self guided decision tool that can point you to the contract vehicle that best meets your IT needs.

Check out what’s new  — The Acquisition Gateway

Among the challenges facing acquisition professionals when purchasing products and services is understanding how individual submarkets approach pricing and offerings, and what contracts already exist government wide to support acquisition of these services.

To address this need, GSA has turned to category management to reinvent acquisition, a tactic already used to help many Fortune 500 companies buy smarter. Work is now underway to develop the new Common Acquisition Platform (CAP), which will provide access and insights into transactional data from across government and help guide buyers through every step of the full acquisition process to include shared best practices from industry experts and thought leaders alike. CAP will also reduce the need for maintaining redundant and duplicative acquisition vehicles, systems and tools.

GSA has also launched the Acquisition Gateway, a space for acquisition professionals to  learn, connect, and act upon acquisition information, expertise, and advice.  Content on the Acquisition Gateway is divided into product and service category hallways and resources.

The IT category already has two active hallways, IT Hardware and IT Software, providing pricing tools and information, sample SOWs, best practices, and expert articles relative to that specific category for contract solutions across government. The Acquisition Gateway will be an important tool in supporting and improving how the federal community acquires IT.

By May 2015, additional hallways will be launched for Telecommunications, IT Security, IT Consulting, and IT Outsourcing, in addition to other categories outside of IT.

This is an exciting time to be a part of IT acquisition and I’ll have much more to discuss in June, but in the meantime, I recommend all government employees access the Acquisition Gateway.  Check back often as this is an agile platform that is expected to grow as its user base increases and becomes more collaborative.

Resolving Your Issues

Our goal is to resolve your issues within 48 hours and, even though federal acquisition can get complex, we’re doing quite well.

ITS FY15 Case Origin – How Customers /Vendors Reach Out to NCSC Number of FY15 Cases (Issues / Inquiries) Average Case Resolution Time Percentage of Cases Closed Within 48 Hours
Phone 693 36 Hours 85%
E-mail Inquiry 405 42 Hours 82%
Live Chat 244 34 Hours 87%
FY15 Total 1,342 38 Hours 84%

 

Stay Tuned

Getting updates on gsa.gov pages is an easy way for agencies and Industry to stay up to date on contract and program features, innovations, and changes.

For example, when GSA updates the free downloadable SOW templates on our website, you can receive an alert to let you they’re available.

You can subscribe to updates for a wide range of topics, including Technology and Telecommunications, Schedule 70, and Cloud IT Services. Just go to Get Updates, enter your email address, select your interests, set any preferences you prefer (including how often you’d like to receive alerts), and you’re ready to go. It’s that simple.  Of course, we’ll continue to share news “as it happens” on this blog.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join GSA’s IT acquisition conversation.

We Value Your Feedback

Our goal is simple: provide the support agency buyers and Industry partners need. Receiving feedback at every stage of the journey is critical to continuous improvement, driving value, and outstanding customer service. GSA already reaches out to agencies and vendors when we’re shaping specific programs, receives continuous feedback from customer and industry groups, and looks at our impact through our customer and vendor satisfaction surveys. You can find “Rate This Page”on the bottom right of our IT webpages.

Please help us to help you meet your IT acquisition needs by using the “Rate This Page” tool to fill out this form. It will just take a few seconds, but the information you provide about what’s working well and what’s not is invaluable.

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Small Business GWAC Program

(This blog post is part of a multi-week series reviewing data and trends from GSA’s IT acquisition vehicles for FY14. Read previous posts at http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/technology/)

Small businesses are the backbone of job growth and constitute a major force in the U.S. economy. They generate a vital portion of our gross domestic product (GDP) and contribute to growth and vitality of economic and socioeconomic development. In particular, small businesses create jobs and spark innovation, which complement the economic activity of large organizations by providing them with products and services that contribute to their bottom line.

Here at GSA, we pride ourselves on helping the government utilize small business. We have multiple acquisition vehicles that connect government to small business. This provides agencies the flexibility to choose the best acquisition vehicle to meet their need. Some of these vehicles reside in our Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC) program.

Small Business (SB) GWACs provide powerful and flexible contracts that support agencies’ complex projects and requirements. These contracts experienced a tremendous amount of growth in FY 2014. Total business volume growth increased by approximately $400M on our three active SB GWACs, comprising 8(a) STARS II, Alliant Small Business, and VETS, from FY13 to FY14; an increase of approximately 19%.

Scope Reviews: Lowering risk and increasing customer support

Part of that increase is due to our complimentary scope reviews for statements of work (SOW). The team works with agencies to help determine whether requirements are within scope of a GWAC within two to five business days. This service reduces the risk of protest.  The Small Business GWAC Pre-award Scope Review Team recently analyzed the pre-award scope review process to see how our contracts are being used.

The number of pre-award scope reviews conducted on our active small business GWAC increased by 12% (253 to 287) from FY13 to FY14.  Across all three of the small business GWACs, IT Support Services is the predominant type of work being considered.

During FY14, GSA conducted 285 reviews and performed those reviews in 1.3 days on average. Retrospectively, the scope review process provides a clear understanding of the requirements, establishes a baseline for proposal evaluation, reduces evaluation and negotiation time, and most importantly minimizes the need for future changes. Understanding the trends of these scopes gives us a better understanding of how to promote small business contracting and satisfy our customers’ needs.

Buying Trends

Some of the most popular uses were for IT Support Services like Help Desk, software maintenance, and system operations.

Small Business GWACs represent 45% of GSA’s total GWAC obligations for FY14.

  • The Alliant Small Business Program experienced a 17% increase in obligations for FY14 compared to FY13.
  • 60 of 80 Alliant small business primes have at least one task order award
  • The 8(a) STARS II GWAC is the follow-on to the very successful 8(a) STARS GWAC.  The contract was awarded August 31, 2011 and resulted in 645 awards in FY14 with over $641 million in obligations.
  • The 8(a) STARS II Program has seen a 41% increase in obligations for FY14 compared to FY13.
  • The Veterans Technology Services (VETS) GWAC has obligations from 16 different federal agency customers.  All contract holders have received task orders totaling over $1 billion in obligations. In FY14, VETS added 14 task orders with $17.1 million in obligations.

Looking Ahead

The future of Small Business GWACs is bright. We’ve seen agencies increase the use of our GWACs to reach their small business goals and meet their IT demands, and we’ve seen businesses grow beyond their small-business designation due to their participation on our program.

This next year is going to be an exciting time for our Small Business GWACs. We’re going to continue to exceed customer expectations by bringing additional value like our complimentary scope reviews and prices paid data. Our flexible vehicles and focus on customer service should help us continue to expand the usage of these vehicles as we look into the future toward our next generation Small Business GWACs.

Please follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join the conversation.

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Schedule 70 in the State and Local Market

(This blog post is part of a multi-week series reviewing data and trends from GSA’s IT acquisition vehicles for FY14. Read previous posts at http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/technology/)

State and local governments are adopting Schedule 70 at a rapidly growing rate. They have the ability to receive the same benefits that federal agencies receive when using Schedule 70: fast and easy acquisitions and access to a large range of pre-vetted vendors at prices determined to be fair and reasonable.  The program is called the Cooperative Purchasing Program and allows state and local entities to use Schedule 70 and Schedule 84.

State and local: by the numbers

  1. Growth: The usage of Schedule 70 by state and local governments increased almost 30% last year to $846 million in volume. The projected IT spend at the state and local level has increased over the past couple of years, and the growth of usage of Schedule 70 has outpaced that growth.
  2. Outreach: GSA has increased overall focus on outreach and training to state and local governments on the use of Schedules 70 and 84.
  3. Local vendors: An enormous benefit to state and local governments is access to companies in their local communities.  Schedule 70 has thousands of vendors located across the US and many state/local entities encourage local businesses to consider GSA Schedule as an option.  80% of the companies on Schedule 70 are small businesses and GSA can provide support to those companies seeking to obtain a Schedule contract.
  4. Positioned for future growth: for state and local,  growth in spend is occurring in areas such as software, IT services, systems, and IT outsourcing. These are areas that we expect to see continued future growth in state and local markets.

Improving efficiencies in all levels of government

The state and local IT market is valued at over $60 billion. Although the market is significantly more fragmented than the federal market, GSA is ready to help all forms of government become more efficient, spend smarter, and support delivery of services to the citizens. We will continue to work with local governments and vendors in an effort to drive greater value for the taxpayer.

Please follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join the conversation.

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Alliant GWAC: Exploring Success

(This blog post is part of a multi-week series reviewing data and trends from GSA’s IT acquisition vehicles for FY14. Read previous posts at http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/technology/)

The GSA Alliant GWAC had an outstanding year helping agencies achieve their mission through a fast, flexible, and safe acquisition vehicle. Agencies obligated  $2.682 billion dollars to Alliant during FY14, marking Alliant as the largest utilized single GWAC in GSA history by dollar value. Alliant is GSA’s premier enterprise GWAC, providing flexible access to customized IT solutions from a large, diverse pool of industry partners. Alliant allows for long-term planning of large-scale, complex program requirements. The success can be attributed to several factors that deserve a closer look.

Alliant FY14 Success Analytics:

Since contract inception, more than 60 agencies have used Alliant and awarded an estimated $18.7 Billion in task order value.  Fourteen agencies used Alliant for the first time in FY14. This steady growth can be attributed to numerous factors. For example, approximately 1200 federal acquisition & program professionals have received the Alliant GWAC Delegation of Procurement (DPA) training to including 229 just in FY14 – an 18% increase in buying power! Lastly during FY14, 85 Statements of Work (SOWs) were submitted for review.

Top Agencies and Vendors:

The top three agencies utilizing Alliant (obligated dollars) are the Department of Homeland Security at $2.74 billion, the Air Force at $2.70 billion, and the Department of State at $2.52 billion. The Army comes in at a close fourth at  $2.24 billion, marking a significant task order increase of 47% between FY13 and FY14.

Currently, SAIC is the dominant vendor with over $1.6 billion in obligations spread across 42 task orders. Booz Allen Hamilton Engineering Services follows with $720 million across 43 task orders, increasing its capture by more than 60% over the past three years according to a recent study conducted by Govini. Northrop Grumman follows suit with $550 million across 36 task orders.

Strong relationships between Government and Industry:

As pre-competed vehicles, GWACs can streamline the acquisition process, which naturally leads to saving time and taxpayer money. Our pre-competed vehicle consists of 58 exceptionally qualified contractors. The Alliant program office takes pride in the individual relationships that have been created through the years between the Enterprise GWAC division and the outstanding Alliant contractors. To date, 50 out of 58 primes have received awards, exemplifying the diverse pool of credible talent and the constant interaction between government and industry.

The Enterprise GWAC division recently invited representatives from each of the 58 Primes to participate in Alliant’s twice-a-year Program Management Review (PMR). The event spans two days and allows industry to interact with government and partake in collaborative program updates and breakout sessions.  Success on projects through Alliant is a three-part partnership – GSA, the procuring agency and the company performing the work under the task order. We’ve built this model over a number of years through all of our GWACs, and it’s because of that focus and approach that Alliant has served the federal community so well.

Please follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join the conversation.

 

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USAccess HSPD-12 Update

(This blog post is part of a multi-week series reviewing data and trends from GSA’s IT acquisition vehicles for FY14. Read previous posts at  http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/technology/)

GSA is the second largest issuer of Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials in the federal government. The credential you are carrying every day may well be issued by GSA’s USAccess program.

Since 2008, our program has issued almost 900,000 credentials to more than 100 federal agencies. In 2014, we focused on two specific improvements that will improve customer service:

  • Reducing the wait for delivery and activation of PIV cards
  • Enhancing security and personnel management

Reducing wait time

PIV cards are critical for agencies to protect and secure data and locations. Many contractors and employees cannot function without access to the buildings and systems that the PIV cards allow. Because of that, customers have wanted us to shorten the waiting time for delivery and activation.

Since the beginning of our program, the average wait time was 10-14 days. We worked with our shipping partner through GSA’s FSSI Domestic Delivery Service to reduce the wait time by half: 5 to 7 days. Now we combine a daily batching process for producing the cards, exclusively overnight shipping, and better anomaly tracking, so agency customers now receive finished cards 50% faster than before, with 99.97% accuracy.

Enhancing security and personnel management
GSA partnered with the Census Bureau to build a Local (Distributed) Printing Proof of Concept (POC). This POC will allow Census to decrease wait time and therefore increase security and field office personnel management. By their projection, it will also reduce travel expenditures by several million dollars annually by saving employees extra trips to credentialing centers. The first distributed printing station went into operation at Census’ Suitland headquarters on September 15, to be followed by up to 40 more stations across the United States by early 2015.

Since USAccess is a shared service, this enhanced capability can be offered to other agency customers with a much-reduced development time and cost, using the template and lessons learned from the first deployments. The team’s goal is to deploy distributed printing as a standard practice.

Looking ahead
GSA is developing and deploying even more improvements and enhancements to the USAccess PIV card service. Through customer collaboration groups, we can take on technology challenges like mobile and derived credential solutions, temporary credentials, and new identity verification methods like iris scans. These developments will be carefully designed and tested by the team and its support contractors so when they are fielded, they will enhance and extend the USAccess’s value.

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“Easy to Find, Easy to Buy” — Envisioning the Next Step for Cloud Computing on IT Schedule 70

GSA has led efforts to create a 21st century government, including introducing cloud to federal agencies. We offer a variety of contract vehicles that help agencies streamline acquisition of cloud technologies, including IT Schedule 70, the Email as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs), and Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWAC) like Alliant and Alliant Small Business.

As the cloud marketplace is maturing, we are seeing an increased focus on IT Schedule 70 as one of the main acquisition vehicles for agencies.

IT Schedule 70 is already the largest, most widely used IT acquisition vehicle in the federal government, and we are continuously looking to improve what it offers. One area we are exploring is looking for ways to help customers find and buy cloud services.

For example, we are considering the creation of a single Special Item Number (SIN) for all cloud services that would provide clear cloud technology differentiation for customers and improve ease of access to acquire cloud services. We recently released a request for information, seeking industry input on this idea.

IT Schedule 70 already offers cloud services, and our industry partners have cloud offerings in several SINs, so why create a new SIN?

Through customer dialogue and market research, an integrated team of acquisition, technology, and program experts across the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) has identified that there would be benefits to creating a Cloud SIN to all parties involved:

  • GSA Customers – Clear differentiation of cloud services vs. non-cloud IT products and services, and empowered cloud buying through better data
  • Industry Partners – Opportunity to market distinctive solutions and offerings on IT Schedule 70
  • Internal GSA Operations – Enable more granular reporting on cloud sales to enable decision making, and help our customers buy better through data

The goal of this new SIN would be to provide clear cloud technology differentiation and ease of customer access through systems such as eBuy and GSA Advantage!.

Since SINs create logical categories of services within a Schedule, we envision the creation of a Cloud Computing Services SIN will provide a level of differentiation for customers that would more easily and clearly identify cloud services.  Additionally, GSA could establish a set of qualifying requirements that would help customers in identifying cloud services that meet acceptable standards around security, data, and other characteristics.

We are always looking for ways to make sure that doing business with us is as easy and reliable as possible. We believe that adding a Cloud Computing Services SIN would realign IT Schedule 70 cloud technology offerings to better reflect the current cloud computing market and satisfy customer needs.

The cloud market is sufficiently mature to offer differentiated and vetted cloud services through a single SIN, and this makes sense for both GSA customer agencies and industry partners. We are looking for feedback to make sure we get it right and look forward to the conversation. Read the RFI.

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Help Us Shape the Future

Here in ITS, we’re reevaluating our approach to strategic sourcing by focusing on category management, which will help transform government IT acquisition and improve the value we provide to our customers. We can’t succeed without your feedback on the best ways to improve our performance. We are counting on you—our customers and industry partners—to identify where we can serve you better.

We’re conducting two surveys that focus on ITS, our performance, and what you expect when you work with us.  (These surveys are separate from our recent supplier perception survey and our Customer Loyalty Survey):

Suppliers: The Voice of the Supplier Tool will assess supplier satisfaction in key areas with questions tailored according to category management best practices.

Federal ITS Customers: The Business Alignment Tool will allow ITS customers to assess our acquisition management function as it relates to category management.

The surveys will take no more than 20 minutes, but will give us the insights we need to help tailor our approach to best meet your needs.

Thank you for helping shape our future.

What Category Management Means for You

You may be asking, what is category management and why should it matter to me?

Category management is a data-driven approach to manage groups of related products and services. In principle, it drives greater value by generating sourcing strategies unique to each grouping of products or services (e.g., the software market has different drivers and savings levers than the telecommunications market does).

Ultimately, we expect category management to help us better carry out our mission—and enable our customers to do the same—by shifting our focus away from managing ITS contracts and towards developing market expertise that will put us in the best position to guide our customers to best-fit solutions. Our goal is to become the go-to trusted advisor for our customers’ IT needs.

We know that establishing this position within the federal acquisition community will mean providing customers with value-added services that make designing solutions and using contract vehicles easier while still delivering better value. Category management is a tool we believe will help us meet this challenge by focusing our efforts on understanding customer demand and market dynamics.

Through better management of customer and supplier relationships, we hope to bring greater value to the acquisition process by more easily aligning customer demand with market solutions. Understanding our customers’ need and the Federal IT environment is just one piece of the puzzle. Working with our industry partners to understand emerging technologies and innovative solutions in addition to their cost drivers will be just as important.

To learn how GSA can further help your agency with your IT procurements, contact our National IT Customer Services Center by phone at (855) ITaid4U or by e-mail at ITCSC@gsa.gov.

Please follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join the conversation.

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Alliant GWAC Five Years Later: Usage, savings, and efficiency just keep getting better

Five years ago, GSA’s Integrated Technology Services (ITS) team had an ambitious vision: to create a governmentwide acquisition contract (GWAC) to meet all of the federal government’s IT services needs. But primarily ITS wanted to save time and money by eliminating the need for agencies to create their own contracts. That vision and commitment created the GSA Alliant GWAC.

Today, $16.5 billion and 54 agencies later, Alliant continues to provide IT services contract support for partner agencies. On May 1, 2014, GSA extended the Alliant option period. Agencies can continue to acquire innovative and complex IT services while still receiving Alliant’s same great customer service until April 2019.

Both DoD and civilian agencies alike use Alliant. Alliant has helped support mission-critical and transformative IT projects for the departments of Homeland Security and State; the Internal Revenue Service;  the Army, Navy, and Air Force,  and many more.

Stellar customer service

Industry partners and federal customers often praise Alliant for its end-to-end stellar customer service and complimentary project scope reviews. Its customer-focused services put Alliant head and shoulders above many other government IT contracts.

Client testimonials note Alliant’s “exceptional” and “unparalleled” customer service and appreciate that “the team responds swiftly to all inquiries,” particularly as “the need to use Alliant has increased.” Another client described the team as “responsive, flexible, and sensitive to our needs” and said, “Without the support of extremely competent GSA contracting staff, there is no way we could have put a contract in place….” Read more Alliant customer testimonials.

Collaboration

As the IT market and emerging new technology evolve, GSA must work with industry and our customers to keep pace. Over the last five years, as advances in federal IT services emerge, the Alliant GWAC Shared Interest Group (SIG), comprising Alliant prime industry partners, works together to stay ahead of the curve.

For example, as the federal government’s interest in moving to cloud-based systems emerged, the SIG worked with a cross-government team to develop sample statements of work (SOWs). These SOWs serve as a valuable roadmap for agencies on how best to acquire, migrate, and integrate cloud systems.

To deliver the best IT solutions to the government, good working relationships with our industry partners are critical. Alliant continues to be recognized as an example of how government and industry can work together to deliver results for the federal government.

Moving Forward

We’re not just resting on our laurels; we know there is plenty of work ahead. We continue to be at the forefront of moving government forward through our “prices paid” data initiative, which helps federal buyers negotiate better because they can see what other agencies are paying for IT services.

Not only do we have certain prices paid data available on strategicsourcing.gov so any government employee can conduct better market research and stronger negotiations, but we are also adding more detail, greater capabilities, and increased functionality.

We are also already moving forward with our Alliant 2 strategy. We are engaging both customers and industry partners through GSA’s Interact community to discuss ideas and strategies that will help shape the next-generation Alliant GWAC. We encourage everyone involved with federal IT purchasing to join the conversation.

Looking forward, we’re thrilled with the possibilities of federal IT’s future. Alliant is a solid, tried- and-true program that is always getting better and better. We are committed to providing the services that have helped so many agency customers over the past five years as we develop the next-generation solution.  

To learn how GSA can further help your agency with your IT procurements, contact our National IT Customer Services Center by phone at (855) ITaid4U or by e-mail at ITCSC@gsa.gov.

 

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FY14: Savings, Savings, Savings

In our most recent blog post, we shared how much money federal agencies and taxpayers save by using GSA’s Networx program. And while it’s a significant amount of money, there’s more to the savings story.

Across government we are challenged with constrained budgets and acquisition resources while simultaneously focused on improving procurement and ultimately delivering successful projects and programs. FAS and ITS are drastically rethinking how we can serve our customers by creating a marketplace that will provide agencies with buying options, access to data and information, access to expertise, an improved buying experience, and at the same time deliver significant savings.

Government’s IT Marketplace – Delivering Savings

ITS is government’s go-to source for IT products, services, and solutions. We are committed to helping agencies understand acquisition options and find solutions. This year, we set out with an ambitious goal of bringing $1.35B in savings to our customers and I am happy to report that we were able to meet our goal. Here are some of the savings highlights:

  • The Networx program saved its subscribing agencies $678 million in FY13.
  • One agency is expected to achieve 20% cost savings by using Networx.
  • We helped an agency that needed to connect securely to the public Internet with Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Service (MTIPS) to achieve an estimated 20% cost savings.
  • Most agencies using GSA’s USAccess Program (HSPD-12 Identity, Credentials and Access Management) shared service save between 4 and 9 times the amount it costs to do it themselves.
  • Using the SmartBUY BPAs, agencies saved $775M in software costs compared to commercial prices.
  • The FedRAMP program takes a “do once, use many” approach to Authority to Operate (ATO), which can help save agencies up to a year in time and $100,000 versus conducting their own ATO process.
  • As of September 30, 2013, the new ReverseAuctions.GSA.gov site delivered 17 federal agencies an average savings of 7.27% ($161,549 in savings).

It’s no secret that FAS and ITS focus on increasing the use of GSA acquisition solutions and programs by federal, state, local and tribal governments. By using existing contract vehicles that are flexible and customizable, every agency gets what they need but doesn’t have to recreate the basic procurement process. We aim to reduce the need for duplicate contracts, improve consistency in terms and conditions, improve the chance of successful project outcomes, and of course save agencies money. We leverage the full buying power of the government which gives us the ability to negotiate and drive down prices for everyone.

Initiatives to Reduce Costs in FY14

We’re happy with FY13 results, but this is a marathon and not a sprint, and there is more that we can do. We’re hard at work making FY14 more successful than FY13 with the goal to increase our ability to serve as the government’s marketplace:

  • We want to help agencies make smarter decisions through data: We are piloting prices-paid initiatives for some of our contracts now, including Future COMSATCOM Services Acquisition (FCSA) and Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs), making prices-paid data available thereby enabling better buying decisions.
  • We have been conducting a full-scale review and “modernization” of the GSA Federal Supply Schedules contracts to ensure they are best suited to meet today’s needs.
  • We are focusing our offerings around “categories of spend” to streamline offerings and channels to the market.
  • In FY13, we set the groundwork to help government through our Managed Mobility Program that includes a managed mobility information center and our FSSI Wireless BPAs to deliver agency savings in FY14. We are reducing price variability on wireless service plans, and less variation will help agencies make better cost-saving business decisions. Agencies can save 15-20% on wireless service annually and eliminate mobile device costs entirely since zero-cost devices are bundled with service plans.
  • And, we just recently launched the Request for Quote on the FSSI Large Desktop Publisher BPAs, part of the SmartBUY program, which will drive even greater savings for government software.

The underlying purpose of each initiative is to allow us to better serve agency customers and deliver more cost savings. And there are more to come. Not only will our FY14 initiatives serve government needs, but prices-paid data, modernization of contracts, and aligning acquisitions to seller buying patterns help industry partners compete, reduce costs, and make it easier to do business with the government.

Contact us via one of our customer service channels if you have questions or need assistance. And be sure to follow us and continue the conversation on Twitter @GSA_ITS.

 

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Our Push to Best Customer Service

I often hear about different tactics to improve customer service, some are good ideas and some not as good. This isn’t to say every idea isn’t worth exploring but rather, successful customer service comes from one core thought:

Customer service starts with understanding the customer.

So we asked, and we listened carefully. We understand that with such a diverse group across government, we have to maintain multiple options to ensure we are able to meet our customers’ needs. We believe in empowering our customers by providing self-service options on our webpages, offering a variety of incoming channels and extended hours so customers can explain and clarify issues, and having a plan to better define and rapidly solve complex challenges.

Understanding GSA’s IT Customers

Our agency customers are each one of you who come to GSA for IT acquisitions and rely on us for customer service. Initially, you come to GSA for a wide array of technology solutions without the added cost and time of going Open Market. But, you will be more likely to continue to use GSA IT contracts to achieve cost savings if you know GSA is here to assist when needed.

You want to know what available solution(s) are best for your organizations, if the solutions can be customized, how to most easily order, and how to get specific questions answered.

We want you to have a positive experience you’ll remember and share with others. If we do our job right, we help save money for you and for U.S. taxpayers. If we don’t have the right solution and know of one elsewhere, we’ll tell you.

I’m proud to say that we’ve often been praised for providing outstanding service and many returning customers are a testament to that.  However, we also know that there are times we’ve missed the mark.

So, we are taking some actions to help enhance our customer service.

Opening up New Channels

To start, we want to make sure you know the latest self-service options available at your fingertips anytime, anywhere. We’ve added to our Need Help webpage more links to self-service tools so you can easily find answers and guidance on your own.

For example, from Need Help you can link to GSA’s latest IT Statement of Work templates and Ordering Guides, and check out our new IT Solutions Navigator tool, which will help you evaluate GSA’s IT and telecommunications solutions. Use it to conduct market research and identify IT solutions that best meet your requirements. We’re working hard to develop even more self-service tools for our customers.

We’ve also added new options to make it easier to reach us anytime—

  • Phone: 1-855-ITaid4U (1-855-482-4348) 24 hours a day, Monday-Friday
  • Live Chat: When a representative is available to interact with you via an online chat box, a blue Live Chat button will appear on the Need Help webpage. Use the Live Chat button to type in questions and connect immediately in an online chat box with a customer representative.
  • E-mail: ITCSC@gsa.gov

The 1-855-ITaid4U (1-855-482-4348) centralized toll-free number is geared specifically for answering your questions about GSA IT solutions and contracts (including IT Schedule 70). Centralizing our help desk lines should make it easier to provide you customer service and provide less confusion just like MAS Schedules also did recently for non-IT related GSA schedule questions.

We’ve also set up a new Customer Advocate team assigned to resolve your more complex issues, including those that span multiple contract vehicles and technology programs. If at any point during your inquiry or issue resolution you require a specialized program expert to meet your needs, ask us to escalate your issue to a customer advocate.

Our customer service mission is simple: We want to understand what you need—and deliver it.

Tell us what you need via our new multiple channels. And be sure to follow us and continue the conversation on Twitter@GSA_ITS.