Letter: Vets GWAC could be used more

With well-qualified teams of companies bound together to meet IT mission requirements, one may have to look beyond his or her agency's specific mission needs to meet socioeconomic mandates.

What do you think? Paste a comment in the box below (registration required), or send your comment to (subject line: Blog comment) and we'll post it.
Regarding "Use of GWACs seen slowing," a reader writes: FedSources is a reputable company and shares its market research willingly, as is the case with its report of the decline in the
use of
[governmentwide acquisition contracts] from over $5 billion to $3.2 billion.

All things being equal, with well-qualified teams of companies bound together to meet [information technology] mission requirements, one may have to look beyond his or her agency's specific mission needs to meet socioeconomic mandates. According to the FPDS, there doesn't seem to be a problem meeting most small- and disadvantaged-business requirements except for the HUBZone and, in particular, the congressional and presidential mandated service-disabled veteran-owned small business 3 percent prime contract procurement requirement.

My question is this: In light of the size of the IT budgets across the entire federal government and the inability of most of the executive agencies to meet their portion of this mandate, why is it that the Vets GWAC hasn't been used to a greater extent? This is a tool that is available to all agencies to assist them in meeting their 3 percent goal.

Clearly, the people's IT business can partially be conducted by these well-qualified people. With all the attention in the trade press about both Alliant procurements, the Vets GWAC remains an equally powerful GWAC that has already been awarded and is available right now to address some of this so-called pent-up business.

John P. Moliere

letters@fcw.com