GSA looks to help startups navigate big contracts

The General Services Administration has posted a guide to help new technology startups navigate the agency's sprawling multiple awards schedule contracts.

The Multiple Award Schedule Roadmap, said the GSA's MAS Program Management Office, is part of the agency's response to feedback from emerging, small and start-up businesses that getting onto MAS contracts such as IT Schedule 70 can be complicated and time-consuming.

The effort, according to a Sept. 21 blog post, was rolled out under the agency's "Making It Easier" initiative.

Launched under the Obama administration, the MIE initiative produced a series of efforts to set up business-friendly programs for start-ups, small businesses, and other suppliers that could inject emerging and new technology into the government marketplace through GSA's MAS.

GSA Chief of Staff Jack St. John, in a May speech to the Coalition for Government Procurement, vowed to support business growth to the greatest extent possible, leveraging the MIE initiative.

"However, as this White House proceeds with such efforts, please keep in mind my description of the Trump administration as proactively business friendly," St. John said. "So, although MIE was initiated earlier, please view our new approach through this lens."

GSA officials told FCW that more MIE programs, projects and pilots would emerge in the near future.