The General Services Administration is leaning into artificial intelligence with a goal of easing the burden on its workforce and making data more accessible.
One of the tools, released last week, is designed to support staff in their daily work, featuring a chat function and application programming interface (API), similar to commercially available AI capabilities.
A second pilot is using generative AI to help contracting officers and other acquisition workers search across all acquisition policies and internal directives/circulars as well as code generation.
These are two examples of acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian’s continued vision for GSA’s future.
“My goal is that GSA returns to our founding mission of streamlining federal operations, consolidating resources and efficiently providing essential services that allow government agencies to focus on their core missions. GSA is the tip of the spear — we’re setting the example for other agencies and serving as a collaborative partner to help them cut wasteful contract spending, right size the federal real estate portfolio and deploy software to drive efficiency and productivity,” Ehikian wrote in a blog, obtained by Federal News Network. “GSA has an important role to contribute towards the elimination of the federal deficit and enabling our customer agencies to move faster to accomplish their goals. We are the backbone of federal government operations and have an opportunity to innovate across federal procurement, real estate and technology shared services.”
Ehikian outlined several ongoing or recent initiatives such as disposing of unused or underused federal properties, streamlining procurement and improving competition and improving oversight and management of IT spending from cloud to software to system consolidations.
Ehikian’s expanded vision for GSA comes in the shadow of significant workforce reductions and the elimination of shared services like 18F. It also comes as the White House has put GSA at the center of all federal acquisitions for common goods and services for all agencies.
GSA has kicked off a pilot with four agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management and the Small Business Administration, to see how centralized buying could work.
Increasing collaboration, breaking down silos
The AI tools are a key part of his innovation focus.
GSA says employees asked for the internal AI tool based on feedback and concerns about the risks of using commercially available AI capabilities that may not meet the security and privacy requirements necessary for government use.
“This tool is continuously being improved, and GSA is actively seeking feedback from staff to refine its capabilities and ensure it meets the agency’s high standards for performance. GSA is actively working towards offering the tool as a shared service to other federal agencies in the near future,” GSA wrote in its release. “GSA is actively working towards offering the tool as a shared service to other federal agencies in the near future.”
The GenAI bot for acquisition is part of a broader effort Ehikian said is focused on increasing collaboration and preparing for future opportunities with AI.
“We need to break down the data silos and allow systems to better communicate with one another,” he wrote.
A related piece of that effort is reviewing GSA’s own operations, seeking opportunities to consolidate and centralize shared services. Ehikian didn’t offer any further details on what that would look like, but the recent news about changes to the schedules program where one of the Federal Acquisition Service’s goals is to simplify processes, eliminate inefficiencies and ensure alignment of management and oversight within the program to make it more effective and user-friendly for both contractors and government agencies.
Reviewing every IT solution
Related to that goal, Ehikian said is “improving the procurement technology infrastructure in order to create faster vendor onboarding, reduce paper-based workflows, improve vendor management and improve data-driven decisions.”
Additionally, GSA also is looking to save money and reduce duplication by “conducting a line-by-line evaluation of every technology solution, ensuring we only pay for the licenses that we use and eliminate redundant systems.”
Ehikian’s other big priority is rightsizing the federal building portfolio. He said along with selling underutilized properties with large liabilities, the agency is canceling leases to save money and further optimize office space.
“Our most recent survey data of a subset of buildings indicates an average daily occupancy of 31%. We are actively working with our tenant agencies to assess their space needs to support the return to office while considering the impact of a downsized federal workforce across the country,” he wrote.
GSA recently walked back plans to terminate hundreds of leases after officials discovered that closing down these offices would impact public-facing benefits and services.
By the end of the fiscal year, however, GSA leaders expect to terminate another 660 leases.
At the same time, Ehikian said GSA also wants to break down the silos many agencies operate in for real estate management. He said, “Agencies typically lease/own their real estate and operate their facilities and infrastructure, both physical and IT, without any connection to other agencies, resulting in significant redundancy and inefficiency. There is a great opportunity to support greater interoperability between agencies.”
Again these plans call come on the heels of the Public Building Service’s goal of reducing its workforce by 63% or about 3,557 positions. PBS is pursuing such large workforce cuts because “meaningful consolidation of space will occur and require less support,” and is considering “reduced service levels for owned buildings.” PBS Commissioner Michael Peters said GSA is looking to cut its total real estate portfolio by 50%.
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