Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative Targets Government Contractors

This is the first part of a six-part article on upcoming changes in federal contracting.

The Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative (FSSI), implemented by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), continues to march forward.

FSSI was introduced in 2005 to leverage the federal government’s purchasing power, streamline procurement and ultimately reduce procurement costs. GSA has since implemented FSSI in several sectors, including the janitorial supply industry. GSA announced in August it had awarded 35 blanket purchase agreements (BPAs) to 18 companies for the FSSI’s JanSan purchase channel.

Up next is GSA’s Building Maintenance & Operations (BMO) Services strategic sourcing program. BMO Services, along with an upcoming human resources and training solution, is the first FSSI to deal with services instead of commodities. Those BMO Services include contract cleaning.

Details have been slow to emerge, but GSA is formulating an implementation strategy with the goal of having a solution available in fiscal year 2016, says Cara Battaglini, GSA Federal Acquisition Service director of communications.

Previous strategic sourcing programs, such as FSSI JanSan, were designed help federal government agencies save taxpayer dollars by restricting the number of BPAs awarded and requiring those select vendors to provide deep discounts to the agencies that order their products.

Industry members are now wondering whether the BMO Services program will closely resemble those previous initiatives and how it will impact building service contractors servicing federal facilities.