Information Sharing, Procurement Centralized, Agencies Cut in Latest Move to Remake Government
In a trio of executive orders, President Trump looks to cut down on government waste, fraud, and abuse by promoting information sharing among agencies, centralizing domestic contracting decisions at the General Services Administration (GSA), and essentially eliminating several small government agencies.
In one order, the president ordered agency leaders to authorize the sharing of unclassified records with other agencies and remove barriers to such sharing, calling them “important steps toward eliminating bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency while enhancing the Government’s ability to detect overpayments and fraud.”
That includes giving leaders at other agencies access to records, software systems, and information technology systems or their equivalents. Agencies have until April 20 to rescind any guidance that hinders information sharing.
Making GSA the Government’s Procurement Center
The president also ordered that domestic procurement be consolidated at GSA.
The President noted that it’s “time to return the General Services Administration to its original purpose, rather than continuing to have multiple agencies and agency subcomponents separately carry out these same functions in an uncoordinated and less economical fashion.”
Agency heads were given 60 days to submit proposals to have GSA take over domestic procurement for goods and services.
“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,” said GSA Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) Director Josh Gruenbaum.
The agency is planning to take over the contracting functions at several agencies first, including the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Education Department, the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), in a pilot program.
“FAS is reorganizing and one of our new functions will be consolidating the contracting activities across the government, starting with those agencies as a pilot,” the GSA employee said. “Those other agencies are not going to have acquisition staff remaining after either RIF or pulling personnel over to GSA.”
Agencies Cut
President Trump also took aim at additional federal agencies, targeting them for elimination to the maximum extent as allowed by law.
Among the agencies cut to bare bones operations:
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
The U.S. Agency for Global Media
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution
The Institute of Museum and Library Services
The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness
The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund
The Minority Business Development Agency
One of those agencies, FMCS, issued a press release clarifying which functions would still continue in light of the EO.
“In response to multiple inquiries from both media and clients, FMCS wishes to assure all stakeholders that we remain operational and are continuing to provide our statutorily mandated services, including tracking and servicing approximately 15,000 private sector collective bargaining agreements negotiated annually nationwide. With an annual budget of $55 million (less than 0.0014% of the federal budget), FMCS’s work delivers extraordinarily outsized economic benefits. Using conservative estimates, FMCS’s work saves the American economy well over $500 million annually,” the agency wrote in a March 19 press release.
