GSA to ‘quadruple’ in size to centralize procurement across the government

A new executive order moves some agencies’ contracting work to the General Services Administration, which already plays a key role in government procurement, agency leadership told employees in an all-hands meeting.

Trump reportedly signed the contracting-focused executive order on Thursday. The text of the order wasn’t immediately available, and the White House didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

“Over the coming months, we are going to ingest all domestic, commercial goods and services inside the GSA. We’re not going to do all $900 billion, but we will do about $400 billion, so we’re going to quadruple our size,” Josh Gruenbaum, the head of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, told employees Thursday, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

Already, GSA has piloted onboarding two to three agencies “to see what procurement would look like being onboarded at GSA,” Gruenbaum said. Federal News Network first reported this pilot.

The Office of Management and Budget is being onboarded now, a source familiar told Nextgov/FCW, as is the Office of Personnel Management, which laid off its entire procurement team last month.

“We now feel as though we have a very mobilized operational process to onboard and ingest procurement from around the government,” Gruenbaum continued, saying that GSA will be automating procurement processes and bringing in some talent from the agencies it will be buying on behalf of.