U.S. General Services Administration
Making Progress on GSA’s Next Generation Services Contract
Post filed in: OASIS+
On March 2, 2021, GSA began its work to create the next generation contract program for non-IT services. Our market research activities included exhaustive acquisition history and spend analysis, significant customer and industry engagement, proactive outreach via GSA’s Professional Services Interact Community, and large scale requests for information (RFIs). Our work was guided by three aspirational goals:
- Fulfill federal agencies’ non-IT services requirements through highly qualified contractors and a simpler buying experience.
- Expand access to best-in-class non-IT service contracts for highly qualified contractors while providing for increased small business opportunities and an improved selling experience.
- Achieve significant burden reduction for both government and industry.
So where are we today? While we are not quite at the finish line, we have made significant progress in developing several elements of the acquisition strategy, including:
Maximizing small business participation
Maximizing small business participation is a cornerstone of the new program. Initially, we envisioned one contract utilizing small business reserves. Since then, in consultation with the U.S. Small Business Administration and GSA’s Office of Small Disadvantaged Business Utilization, we adopted a small business strategy that creates separate and distinct contract families for categories of small businesses to provide for maximum opportunities to participate. As announced in February 2022, we intend to solicit and award indefinite-delivery indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts in the following categories:
- 8(a) Small Business
- HUBZone Small Business
- Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business
- Total Small Business
- Woman-Owned Small Business
- Unrestricted
Scope
The new program will have a broad scope. As their respective ordering periods conclude, the new program will be able to fulfill requirements currently met by GSA’s One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS); Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS); and Building, Maintenance, and Operations (BMO) contracts. In addition, new scope areas include environmental, intelligence services, and large enterprise solutions. Plus, we’ll build-in the flexibility to expand scope as customers identify new federal services needs.
Domains
The contracts will be organized by Domains - functional groupings of services spanning multiple NAICS codes. Domains will be designed to align order requirements to qualified industry partners. The contracts will evolve over time, empowering GSA to add new Domains to meet agencies’ needs at its discretion. We may prioritize and add new Domains based on data-informed assessments of need (e.g. gaps in existing contract programs, anticipated demand changes, emerging Administration directives, etc.). We will introduce any new Domains in close coordination with stakeholders and through additional market research. Learn more about proposed initial Domains and sample qualification matrices on GSA’s Interact site.
Highly qualified vendors and an open contract program
GSA is fully committed to ensuring the companies that receive awards in the new contract program are highly qualified. We also want to create a path for new industry partners to routinely onboard. To achieve these outcomes, we will maintain high standards for the program’s various contracts, provide for continuous on-ramping, and eliminate caps on the number of awards. The ability for industry to continuously on-ramp with no cap on the number of awardees allows the program to:
- Evolve as government procurement needs change.
- Expand the industrial base as agencies’ needs change or they discover the contract’s benefits.
- Eliminate barriers to entry for all qualified businesses.
Additional contract features
We are also committed to establishing a suite of contracts that leverage competition to establish price at the order level through use of GSA’s Enhanced Task Order Competition (876) authority. Additionally, the contracts will allow for both commercial and non-commercial services and orders of all types including fixed price, time and material, cost reimbursement, and hybrid.
Lastly, the program will use improved systems and tools for proposal management, and task order market research, evaluation, and management.
Finally, a new program name
After careful deliberations–internally, with our federal agency customers, and industry stakeholders–we have reached a decision on the name for our new contract program: OASIS Plus (aka OASIS+). The name echoes a successful brand that our customers have come to know and trust, reflects the expanded scope of services that will be available through the new program, and embodies the contract’s flexible domain-based structure.
What’s next?
We have a few more details to finalize on our acquisition strategy. We will publish additional program updates through the newly renamed GSA FAS OASIS+ Interact Community and on SAM.gov over the summer. After we complete the acquisition strategy, our plan is to issue the draft solicitation in early FY 2023 and the final RFP in the second quarter of the fiscal year. Thank you to all our agency customers, industry partners and associations, and countless other collaborators in getting us to this point. We are grateful for your thorough and thoughtful input. Please continue to share your feedback via PSHC-dev@gsa.gov.