The Office of General Supplies and Services (GSS) is responsible for acquisition services and comprehensive supply chain management, including excess/surplus federal property.
GSS assures that customers are in compliance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). In addition, centralized purchasing of items needed by multiple agencies allows GSS to:
- Achieve lower pricing.
- Offer compliant requisition and acquisition options to civilian and military customers.
- Assure alignment of business process and information flow within a DoD-driven global distribution system.
- Maximize prudent federal use of property through re-utilization, donation or sale, thus avoiding waste and expense. and
- Provide commercial solutions via the Multiple Award Schedule, to customers worldwide and reduce costs to government.
Primary functions
MAS — GSS offers millions of non-IT products and services to federal customers worldwide, with narrow niches available to state and local buyers. GSS negotiates prices and terms with thousands of suppliers and displays these supplies on GSA Advantage. Customers are not required to buy at GSA Advantage; they can contact a supplier directly and buy through the vendor website or another convenient channel. Vendors ship to buyers and typically bill the customer’s government purchase card.
GSA Global Supply offers roughly 1 million products for delivery worldwide, ranging from office supplies and furniture, to cleaning supplies and tools. Transactions are simple, government-to-government requisitions, so customers can use a purchase card or arrange direct billing to an Activity Address Code. GSA Global Supply has a vast footprint and decades of experience supporting deployed military forces in Europe, Asia, and beyond. Recently, it opened multiple forward supply points to quickly deliver high-demand items to users in Europe, Alaska, and multiple locations in the Pacific Ocean.
Customer Supply Centers support over 75 retail outlets in the United States and globally. Customer Supply Centers leverage decades of experience in supply chain management to tailor a supply chain solution to specific customer requirements. This is accomplished through a fourth party logistics, or 4PL, arrangement. For organizations with complex requirements, 4PL acts as an integrator that assembles the resources, capabilities, and technology to design, build, and run a comprehensive supply chain solution.
Personal Property Management provides the services, expertise, and systems that ensure timely, effective, and efficient disposition of the federal government’s excess and surplus personal property assets, yielding the greatest return on investment to the taxpayer, at the least cost to our environment. Federal property managers save millions of taxpayer dollars annually. An array of personal property utilization and donation programs, exchange and sale programs, and public purchase programs are available through PPM.
U.S. General Services Administration