With an impending winter storm expected to dump as much as 10 inches of snow — and then freezing rain on top of that — in the Washington, D.C. metro area, the Office of Personnel Management decided late Friday night to close federal offices on Monday and institute maximum telework.
OPM said in its weather status update that telework and remote workers are expected to work, but “non-telework employees generally will be granted weather and safety leave for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. However, weather and safety leave will not be granted to employees who are on official travel outside of the duty station or on an Alternative Work Schedule (AWS) day off or other non-workday.”
Additionally, OPM said emergency employees are expected to report to their worksite unless otherwise directed by their agencies.
Scott Kupor, OPM director, posted the decision on X.
Update (and the final one) – We have decided to close federal offices in the region for Monday. We will update the official status on the @USOPM website shortly. We hope that everyone stays safe (and warm) over the weekend. https://t.co/iJugsRw0iz
WTOP, Federal News Network’s partner station, said snow is expected to start in the DC metro area Saturday night and then get heavier into Sunday morning. Temperatures aren’t expected to climb out of the 20s, making the situation more difficult.
For federal employees outside of the DC metro area affected by the winter storm, each agency will make their operating status decision, according to the governmentwide dismissal and closure policy, which OPM updated in December.
“Federal field office heads generally make workforce status decisions for their agencies’ employees and report those workforce status decisions to their agencies’ headquarters,” the guidance stated. “Agencies located outside the ‘Washington capital beltway’ should consider governmentwide operating status announcements when developing local operating status announcements. Employees should always check their agencies’ operating status. Agency-issued operating status announcements should include procedures concerning telework, arrival and departure times, and leave requests.”
In previous years, the Federal Executive Boards (FEBs) coordinated weather and other emergency related closures. The Trump administration eliminated the FEBs in April.
The number of federal employees able to participate in situational telework or who are full-time teleworkers or remote workers is unclear. The Trump administration mandated federal employees return to the office on a full-time basis in January.
OPM did issue the fiscal 2025 telework report to Congress in December. In that report for 2024, 1.3 million, or 53%, of all employees were eligible to telework, which was a 2.2% decrease from 2023. Of those employees who were eligible to telework, 1 million, or 40%, participated in some form of telework, routine or situational. OPM said this was a decrease of 3.6% over 2023.
Federal employees received high marks for their work. At the same time, the public also wants more from them, and federal agencies more broadly, especially around technology.
These are among the top findings of a survey of a thousand likely voters from last August by the Center for Accountability, Modernization and Innovation (CAMI).
Stan Soloway, the chairman of the board for CAMI, said the findings demonstrate at least two significant issues for federal executives to consider.
Stan Soloway is the chairman of the board for the Center for Accountability, Modernization and Innovation (CAMI).
“It very clear to us from the survey was that public actually has faith, to a certain extent, in public employees. The public also fully recognizes that the system itself is not serving them well,” Soloway said on Ask the CIO. “We found well over half of the folks that were surveyed said that they didn’t believe that government services are efficient. We found just under half of respondents had a favorable impression of government workers. And I think this is very much I respect my local civil servant because I know what they do, but I have a lot of skepticism about government writ large.”
CAMI, a non-partisan think tank, found that when it comes to government workers:
47% favorable vs 38% unfavorable toward government workers (+9% net)
Self-identified very conservative voters showed strong support (+30% net)
African Americans showed the highest favorability (+31% net)
Self-identified independents are the exception, showing negative views (-14% net)
At the same time, when it comes to government services, CAMI found 54% of the respondents believe agencies aren’t as efficient or as timely as they should be.
John Faso, a former Republican congressman from New York and a senior advisor for CAMI, said the call for more efficiencies and timeliness from citizens echoes a long-time goal of bringing federal agencies closer to the private sector.
“People, and we see this in the survey, look at what government provides and how they provide it, and then to what they’re maybe accustomed to in private sector economy,” Faso said. “Amazon is a prime example. You can sit home and order something, a food product, an item of clothing or something else you want for your house or your family, and oftentimes it’s there within a day or two. People are accustomed to getting that kind of service. People have an expectation that the government can do that. I think government is lagging, obviously, but it’s catching up, and it needs to catch up fast.”
Faso said it’s clear that a solid percentage of the reason for why the government is inefficient comes back to Congress. But at the same time, the CAMI survey demonstrated that there are things federal executives could do to address many of these long-standing challenges.
CAMI says respondents supported several changes to improve timely and efficient delivery of benefits:
40% preferred hiring more government workers
34% preferred partnering with outside organizations
Those self-identified as very liberal voters strongly favored more workers (+32% net)
Those identified as somewhat conservative voters prefer outside partnerships (-20% net)
Older voters (55+) preferred outside partnerships
“Whether it’s the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Medicaid and Medicare, the feds set all the rules for the administration and governance of the programs. So the first question you have to ask is, what is the federal role?” Soloway said. “Even though we have now shifted administrative responsibility for many programs to the states and to some cases, the counties, and reduced by 50% the financial support for administration of these programs, while the states have a lot to figure out and are somewhat panicked about it, because it’s a huge lift. The feds can’t just walk away. This is where we have issues of policy changes that are needed at the federal level, which we can talk about some of the ones that are desperately needed to give the states kind of the flexibility to innovate.”
Soloway added this also means agencies have to break down long-established siloes both around data and processes.
The Trump administration, for example, has prioritized data sharing across the government, especially to combat concerns around fraud. The Office of Management and Budget said in July it was supercharging the Do Not Pay list by removing the barriers to governmentwide data sharing.
Soloway said this is a prime example of where the private sector has figured out how to get different parts of their organization to talk to each other and where the government is lagging.
“What is the federal role in helping to break down the silos and integrate applications, and to the certain extent help with the administration of programs with like beneficiaries? The data is pretty clear that there’s a lot of commonality across multiple programs, and when you think about the number of different departments and the bureaucracy that actually control those programs, there’s got to be leadership at the federal level, both on technology and to expand process transformation, otherwise you’re not going to solve the problem,” he said. “The second thing is when we talk about issues like program integrity, there are ways you can combat fraud and also protect the beneficiaries. But too often, the conversations are either/or any effort to combat fraud is seen as an effort to take eligible people off the rolls. Every effort to protect eligible people on the rolls is seen as just feeding into that so that’s where the federal leadership, and some of that is in technology, some of it’s in policy. Some of it’s going to be in resources, because it requires investments in technology across the board, state and federal.”
Respondents say technology can play a bigger role in improving the delivery of federal services.
CAMI says respondents offered strong support for using AI to improve government service delivery:
48% support vs 29% oppose using AI tools (net +19%)
Self-identified republicans show stronger support than democrats (+36% vs +7% net)
Men are significantly more supportive than women (+35% vs +3% net)
Support is strongest among middle-aged voters (30-44: +40% net)
Soloway said CAMI is sharing its survey findings with both Congress and the executive branch.
“We’re trying to get the conversations going and get the information to the right people. When we do that, we find, by and large, on both sides, there’s a lot of support to do stuff. The question is going to really be, where’s the leadership going to come from that will have the enough credibility on both sides to push this ball forward?” Soloway said.
Faso added state governments also must play a big role in improving program delivery.
“You have cost sharing between the federal and state governments, and you have cost sharing in terms of the administrative burden to implement these programs. I think a lot of governors, frankly, are now really looking at themselves and saying, ‘How am I going to implement this?’” he said. “How do I collaborate with the federal government to make sure that we’re all enrolling in the same direction in terms of implementing these requirements.”
AI Robot Team Assistant Service and Chatbot agant or Robotic Automation helping Humans as technology and Human Job integration as employees being guided by robots.
The Small Business Administration suspended more than 1,000 companies in the 8(a) program. SBA made the decision after it deemed those small businesses non-compliant with its financial data request from December.
“Suspended firms have 45 days to appeal the suspension,” said Maggie Clemmons, an SBA spokesperson in an email to Federal News Network. “SBA will release further information on the suspensions in the coming days.”
The suspension comes after SBA sent a letter to more than 4,300 8(a) firms in December seeking 13 different data, ranging from a list of the company’s employees to bank statements for the last three fiscal years to a copy of all 8(a) contracts, as part of its ongoing audit of the program.
Data compiled by GovContractPros, an advisory services firm specializing in federal procurement, found that SBA admitted 753 companies into the 8(a) program in fiscal 2024. Of those 753 firms, the company says SBA suspended 156 of them.
In fiscal 2025, SBA says it admitted only 65 companies into the 8(a) firm. GovContractPros says SBA suspended 10 of those firms, including nine which joined the program after the Trump administration began leading SBA.
Lawyers that represent small businesses say SBA issued the suspensions on Wednesday based on the fact that the 8(a) firms either failed to submit their responses on or before the Jan. 19 deadline or submitted incomplete responses.
“At least some firms that submitted complete data call responses only one day late — on Jan. 20, and before any suspension notices were issued — often due to errors in the government-operated MySBA Certifications portal, nonetheless received suspension notices, indicating that SBA is taking a strict approach to alleged non-compliance with the filing deadline,” wrote Meghan Leemon and Matt Feinberg, partners with the law firm Piliero Mazza, on a blog post. “Firms subject to 8(a) suspension are not permitted to receive new competitive or sole-source 8(a) awards. However, firms are required to complete existing 8(a) contracts, and federal agencies may exercise options on those contracts, even while a firm is suspended, unless otherwise prohibited by statute or regulation.”
SBA’s new clarifying guidance
The suspensions are part of a broad Trump administration effort to audit the 8(a) program and address allegations of fraud and abuse. SBA’s data call was one of several ongoing audits to now include the Treasury Department, the General Services Administration and, as of last week, now the Department of Defense.
“The Biden administration expanded and then abused the 8(a) program to hand out billions in taxpayer-funded government contracts to favored minorities at the direct expense of honest small businesses, which is why we ended the practice on day one,” said SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler in a press release. “Since then, the Trump SBA has been working to reverse the damage – and today, we’re reiterating one simple fact: the Biden-era practice of discriminating against white Americans is over, and reforms to enshrine that fact are well underway. The SBA is ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in federal contracting – and our programs will remain open to all eligible job creators in compliance with federal law.”
In addition to suspending nearly a quarter of the 8(a) program participants, SBA issued new guidance today clarifying that the small business development program “is open to job creators of every race – consistent with court orders, notices from the U.S Department of Justice (DOJ), and President [Donald] Trump’s broader effort to eliminate DEI across the federal government – and that any race-based presumptions of social disadvantage have been inoperative since 2023.”
The guidance outlines new ways the SBA will manage the program.
It says it will administer the 8(a) program based on race neutral requirements and there will be no presumptive preference given to anyone.
SBA also will no longer approve the use of “socially disadvantage narratives” as a way to get into the program. It removed from its website the Biden-era “Guide for Demonstrating Social Disadvantage.”
Finally, SBA will consider several factors when determining eligibility for the 8(a) program, including whether the individual has been a “victim of illegal or radical DEI policies or illegal affirmative action policies or has otherwise been the victim of discriminatory practices such as race-based quotas, set asides or hiring targets, in each case by government and non-government actors.”
SBA says these steps are in reaction to the “dramatic expansion” under the Biden administration of companies in the 8(a) program.
Since January 2025, SBA accepted just 65 new 8(a) firms into the program, compared to over 2,100 who were accepted during the four years of the Biden administration.
Undermining the 8(a) program?
Jackie Robinson-Burnette, a former SBA associate administrator in the Office of Government Contracting and Business Development during the Biden administration, wrote on LinkedIn that this change isn’t a small tweak, but it’s re‑anchoring of the program’s foundation.
“It’s important to reform the 8(a) program without crushing the firms the program was designed to help,” wrote Robinson-Burnette, who now is the CEO of Senior Executive Strategic Solutions. “Are we dismantling and putting a sledgehammer to the program to curtail spending $20 million-plus on 8(a) sole source contracts or is it about something else?”
John Shoraka, a former associate administrator of government contracting and business development at SBA and now the co-founder and managing director of GovContractPros, said the SBA and now DoD’s audits are part of a concerted effort to undermine the confidence in the 8(a) program.
“It seems to be one initiative after another initiative, sort of in a very sequenced flow of events to undermine the program and sort of put the brakes on the program,” he said. “I think there’s a perception, and, it’s the wrong perception, that the 8(a) program is, at its core, a DEI program. I honestly don’t think that the administration believes there is significantly more fraud in the 8(a) program than any other contracting program. In fact, the data shows, if you look at inspector general cases or if you look at Department of Justice cases, the instances of fraud in the set-aside programs and particularly the 8(a) program, are actually significantly lower as opposed to across the entire federal government. So when we focus on fraud, waste and abuse in the 8(a) program, I think it’s just raising the flag. They can’t really say we want to kill this program because it’s DEI, they need to identify some sort of red flag to point to and say, ‘Ah-a, we told you this program was fraudulent, and therefore we need to terminate or put the brakes on this program.’”
Leemon and Feinberg, from the law firm Piliero Mazza, said companies caught up in the suspension should consider sending an informal appeals to SBA to lift the suspension.
“If informal channels are unsuccessful, a suspended 8(a) company may — and should — appeal SBA’s decision within 45 days of the date of the Notice of Suspension to SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals. This process can be time consuming, and appeals decisions can be delayed for months or even years,” the lawyers wrote.
The 8(a) small business contracting program is coming under the microscope of its biggest user.
The Defense Department is joining a growing list of agencies auditing the use of sole source contracts through the 8(a) program.
Experts warn that DoD’s decision to launch this new audit signals that this 40-year-old small business development program is teetering further on the edge.
“It’s not a death knell, but it’s absolutely going to leave a mark. It’s absolutely going to hinder our ability to bring some of that new technology, that new manufacturing capability to the federal marketplace. That’s probably my bigger concern,” said Norm Abdallah, executive vice president at Hui Huliau, a Native Hawaiian-owned firm in the 8(a) program, in an interview with Federal News Network. “We’re behind in terms of the ability to manufacture here in the U.S., and have outsourced that beyond what one should in the defense of their own country, and so hindering the ability for us to help bring some of that to bear in the U.S. marketplace is probably the biggest concern.”
Abdallah said the 8(a) program is an avenue for companies to enter the market, obtain past performance experience in the federal sector and learn the ropes so DoD, and really every agency’s, ongoing distrust and scrutiny of the program is likely going to impact the government in bigger ways than expected.
Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a video on X on Friday explaining that the Pentagon is worried about two main things: The 8(a) program is a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) program, and it’s wrought with fraud.
We are taking a sledgehammer to the oldest DEI program in the federal government—the 8(a) program. pic.twitter.com/c9iH8gcqG7
“Providing these small businesses with opportunities is a laudable goal, but over the decades, as it happens, the 8(a) program has morphed into swamp code words for DEI, race-based contracting. And here’s the worst part, in many, many instances, these socially disadvantaged businesses, they don’t even do work. They take a 10%, 20%, sometimes 50% fee off the top, and then pass the contract off to a giant consulting firm, commonly known as beltway bandits. For decades, this program, 8(a) has been a breeding ground for fraud, and this administration is finally doing something about it,” Hegseth said. “Effective immediately, I’m ordering a line-by-line review of every small business sole source, 8(a) contract that is over $20 million, and we’ll look at everything smaller than that too. The Department of War has the biggest chunk of 8(a) spending by far, 10 times more than any other agency. So our cleanup, it’s going to be 10 times tougher.”
DoD’s audit will include two phases. Hegseth said if a contract doesn’t make meet the DoD’s goal of increasing lethality, they will terminate it.
“We have no room in our budget for wasteful DEI contracts that don’t help us win wars, period, full stop. Second, we’re doing away with these pass through schemes. We’ll make sure that every small business getting a contract is the one actually doing the work, and not just some shell company funneling your money to a giant consulting firm,” he said. “This approach is, of course, not meant to hurt small businesses, and that’s not the point. America is full of great, amazing small businesses. This is part of a larger effort to transform our acquisition ecosystem into one that makes sense for the threats we face in the 21st century.”
An email to DoD seeking more details about the audit and a timeline for the audit wasn’t returned.
Experts say Hegseth’s decision to review sole source contracts worth at least $20 million is directed at Native American, Alaskan Native, Hawaiian Native and other tribal companies. Congress raised the sole source threshold for these firms to $100 million from $22 million in 2020. Firms not belonging to one of these groups have a sole source threshold of $5.5 million for manufacturing and $8.5 million for non-manufacturing contracts. These non-tribal or native firms can receive a sole source contract up to $20 million with certain justifications and approvals.
While experts say Congress may not act to change the law, the ongoing audits by the Small Business Administration, the Treasury Department, the General Services Administration and now DoD are sending signals that, at least for sole source contracts, the program doesn’t work.
A former DoD acquisition executive, who requested anonymity because their current company still does business with DoD, said he believes federal small business goals are at risk across the board, and while they may not be affected this year, in two to four years, agencies will see a huge reduction in their industrial base.
The former DoD executive said the administration is sending an inconsistent message to the federal contracting community. The audits and the reduction of staff in small business offices are sending one message that small businesses aren’t important. But then the White House, and DoD particularly, are expressing the desire to attract new participants to the federal market, including non-traditional companies. The executive said these companies typically depend on small business offices and programs like 8(a) to help them get a foot in the door.
John Shoraka, a former associate administrator of government contracting and business development at SBA and now the co-founder and managing director of GovContractPros, an advisory services firm specializing in federal procurement, said DoD’s audit is part of a concerted effort by the administration to undermine the 8(a) program.
“I think if you look at the dollars in the 8(a) program, especially at DoD, some will point to the fact that they actually went up in 2025. But the challenge that we saw across a lot of our clients was that offer letters that have to go through the district office in order for a sole source award to happen were being held up and or never being processed. So we saw a slowdown in sole source awards,” he said. “I think given what we’ve seen with respect to the SBA audit, given what we’ve seen with respect to the number of 8(a)s being approved, in 2024 there was something like 500 plus 8(a)s approved. In 2025, I think the last count I saw was 66 approved. So given the audits, the slowdown in processing, I think contracting officers are looking over their shoulders. I think in the short term, given the current administration and the current congressional makeup, if you will, we will see a trend away from the 8(a) program.”
DoD’s decision to audit the 8(a) program comes after Treasury and SBA announced similar audits earlier this fall. SBA is looking at the entire program and companies had to submit data to the agency by Monday.
The SBA general counsel’s office is driving the audit, which is unusual because usually these things are either done by the inspector general or program office.
Fraud, DEI concerns unfounded
Shoraka said while the questions being asked by SBA, and now eventually DoD, are legitimate questions, the approach is causing some chaos.
“A lot of our clients reached out to their district office and the district office was actually unaware that those letters had originally gone out with respect to the audit, so there was a disconnect there. The field offices aren’t sure how the data is going to be used, or who’s going to use it, or what they’re looking at,” he said. “From my perspective, given the types of questions that were asked, I think it leads to the question, are there pass throughs happening? Because there was a lot of questions with respect to, who are your subcontractors, who are your vendors, et cetera. So the question is, and I think what SBA was looking at is, are there pass throughs and who’s really in control? Is the disadvantaged individual really owning, operating and benefiting from the 8(a) company? And I think those are legitimate questions. But again, there are legitimate processes and mechanisms to monitor that, including the annual review, which occurs every year on every single 8(a) company.”
The former DoD acquisition executive said while there are concerns about the use of sole source awards over $20 million to tribal companies, the allegations of fraud and the belief that the 8(a) program is a DEI program are unfounded. He said DoD should go to Congress and change the law to reduce the risk of large sole source contracts turning into pass throughs.
Experts agreed that while no program is perfect and there probably are some challenges, the 8(a) program is typically well overseen and maintained.
In fact, Abdallah, from Hui Huliau, said most 8(a) firms spend a lot of time meeting the compliance requirements. But he said it’s also a shared responsibility for oversight with the government.
“There are several folks that have responsibility in there. The first one is the contracting officer. In some cases, they’ve got to approve subcontracts. But more basically, with SBA, we go through a review every year where we have to submit our financials, what work did we do and what work happened?” he said. “They worry about the business mix, how much of your work was set aside versus not set aside? Quite honestly, what means you got the work by some means other than the 8(a) program, be that a subcontractor to another straight commercial, et cetera. So there are lots of hooks to watch it. Do they audit the books, per se, to check for percentages? That’s less common. But it’s part of your overall review.”
Shoraka added there are a significant number of regulations or requirements to mitigate the risk of pass throughs, and most rules allow for legitimate subcontracting.
One thing all of the experts pointed out is that the program is set up to help the 8(a) firm grow and learn, but they still have to do at least 51% of the work under services contracts and 15% of the work under construction contracts.
Shoraka said what is being lost in this entire discussion is there is more fraud in non-small business socio-economic programs across government than there are in the 8(a) and other small businesses initiatives.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stands outside the Pentagon during a welcome ceremony for Japanese Defense Minister Shinjirō Koizumi at the Pentagon, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf/)
Ed Forst never served in the Navy, but the metaphor he uses to describe the role the General Services Administration would make any admiral proud.
Forst, who has been at the helm of GSA since late December, believes agencies, like ships, have two distinct compartments. One is to focus on the mission. The other is the engine room that makes the mission run.
Ed Forst is the GSA administrator.
“I think in every business, every enterprise, every agency, every department, and what I think makes great sense, and I believe the President does too, is, let’s advance mission and let’s have the engine room, what’s behind the curtain, consolidate and get even better. That’s where I see GSA in the federal government. We’re the engine room,” Forst said at the Coalition for Common Sense in Government Procurement winter conference on Jan. 14. “Now, interestingly, GSA is its own agency, so we happen to have both. We’ve got mission and the engine room as well. So I think because of that, we really do appreciate the mission piece of that and serving our stakeholders and our constituents.”
For GSA, being that engine room in part means making acquisition less burdensome, cheaper and more agile so agency customers can meet their mission needs more quickly.
GSA has been pursuing several initiatives over the last year to fine tune the acquisition piece of the engine room.
Laura Stanton, the deputy commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said between the Office of Centralized Acquisition Services (OCAS), the OneGov initiative and the implementation of changes from the Federal Acquisition Regulation rewrite, GSA is delivering speed to acquisition like never before.
For example, OCAS now centrally buys for three agencies: the Office of Personnel Management, the Small Business Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Stanton said GSA brought on OPM and SBA in about a month.
Stanton said OCAS is using an opt-in approach to help agencies and trying to relieve some of the burden on GSA’s Assisted Acquisition Service.
“We’re having conversations with a number of agencies about what are their needs. One of the things that we set up OCAS to be able to support is the buying of common goods and services,” Stanton said. “We also recognize that there are mission critical items that and there’s common things that are mission critical that can be used for governmentwide contracts, and then things where there are specialized contracts. So we’re having those types of conversations with a number of agencies at this point.”
Under the OneGov program, GSA has signed 18 agreements to reduce the price of commonly used software across government. Additionally, 45 agencies have taken advantage specifically of the enterprisewide agreements for artificial intelligence tools.
“This is a radical shift in how we think about it, and how we think about how we come to market, and also how we want you to treat us as a customer,” Stanton said at the conference. “This requires changes, not only on the government side, but it’s also going to require changes on the industry side to make that happen. We want to be better aligned when it comes to terms pricing and performance, when it comes to all aspects of that.”
Forst said he was especially focused on the performance aspects of the equation for GSA.
Measuring performance against peer groups
He said measuring performance, and holding organizations and people accountable are among his key focuses areas.
“We’re putting out some priorities for having deliverables. I’m committing every quarter and I’m going to report on ourselves on that,” he said. “I think we’re all better if we find a way to talk about measurement or metrics, whatever you want to call it. There’s a common language and vocabulary about that, so I am a big proponent.”
Forst said he will be looking at both the performance of FAS in terms of “revenue,” as well as their performance relative to peer organizations.
“If you had a record year, you’d probably beat plan. All that should be good. That’s absolute measurement. That’s you versus you. And I think that’s important. I think it’s also really important to accompany that with who’s in your peer group and how did they do? I think the relative performance matters a ton as well,” he said. “You could be down 7% and on an absolute basis, angst to death over down seven if your peer group’s down 15, that’s a home run. So I think it’s important. But if you had a record year and you’re up 6% and your peer group’s up 12%, I’d say good record, but you underdelivered versus the other side. I think we have to be honest with ourselves and look at both us versus us over the time series, and look at us versus a peer group. That seems to make sense.”
Forst said GSA plans to bring in a peer group analysis to raise their awareness and their overall performance.
The third piece of moving bringing speed to capability is the FAR rewrite. GSA will begin implementing the FAR changes within its own acquisition regulations in the coming weeks. It already issued deviations to the current FAR to begin the process.
Jeff Koses, GSA’s senior procurement executive, said in a post on LinkedIn that they have “limited the issuance of mandatory acquisition policies to my office, the Office of Acquisition Policy. Legacy mandatory policy will have to be reissued at the agency level, converted to discretionary guidance, or cancelled.”
Koses said GSA will begin culling down 500 pages of its acquisition manual, 300 pages of office policy, 500 pages of FAS policy and another 500 pages of Public Buildings Service policy and then 1,000 pages of real property leasing policy.
Reviewing the GSA schedule catalog of items
Larry Allen, the associate administrator in the Office of Governmentwide Policy, said at the CGP conference that GSA, in helping out the FAR Council, is working closely with OFPP to get all of the rulemaking completed by the end of the fiscal year.
“It may be delayed a little bit because we had a little shutdown in the fall, but that tells you exactly what type of timetable we are on. It’s aggressive, and you will see change, and we want you to be part of that change,” Allen said.
Stanton added that GSA understands the FAR rewrite has moved quickly and is addressing complex acquisition issues that will take time for government and industry to wrap their arms around.
“When we think about this year, it’s going to be a year of both adopting and adaptation, and acceleration all at the same time, and that becomes really challenging to do,” she said.
Stanton said another key initiative kicking into gear this year is GSA’s review of its multiple award schedule catalog. She said the driving theory is how can the agency operate it more efficiently and deliver more value to agency customers.
“I look at the at the catalog that we run for the multiple award schedule and it has over 100 million items in it. Only 1% or fewer of those items sell, and so this is putting burden on all of you, making sure that you’re meeting all of our terms and conditions, that those items are Trade Agreements Act (TAA) compliant, that they meet the government standards, and that the pricing is fair and reasonable,” she said. “We have contracting officers who have to evaluate those items, and what is the value that either you or the government is getting for that work? I think that this is a big opportunity for us to truly assess where is the government’s demand. As we’re also moving into making transactional data reporting mandatory, how do we effectively have a catalog that delivers on what the government needs? How do we meet those needs effectively? How do we move quickly if we have something that’s not in the catalog? It’s a lot easier to move quickly if we’re not burdened by putting things in there that are not actually being used.”
Andy’s story is an all too familiar one for many executives leaving federal service.
Andy — not his real name — found what he thought was the perfect fit in the private sector after leaving federal service earlier this year. It was with a big company, in a sector he was intimately familiar with and the opportunities across the federal sector were growing.
But less than a year into his new position, Andy is joining the ever growing number of former federal employees who are hanging out their own shingle as a consultant.
“There was a little bit of a mismatch in expectations, probably both on my part and on the company’s part. I thought the role I would fill would make use of my background and skills at a policy level. But the company was looking for someone who was more technical and could help out at the tactical level,” said Andy, who requested anonymity in order to talk about his experience with a federal contractor. “Too many times people in these private sector companies don’t actually understand how to leverage government executives and government executive expertise.”
Andy’s story likely will be repeated by hundreds of federal executives over the next year.
If you’ve spent any time on LinkedIn over the last month, you may have seen what seems to be a constant stream of executives leaving federal service. Whether they’re retiring or they took the deferred resignation program or it’s just through normal attrition, the exodus of federal executives feels more acute than ever before.
Just take a look at the numbers:
There are 551 fewer Senior Executive Service (SES) members in 2026 than in 2025, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s new workforce data website. The number of SESers dropped to 7,336 as of Jan. 8, 2026, from 7,887 in August 2024.
Meanwhile the pipeline of people at the General Schedule, or GS-14 and GS-15 levels, who are in line to become SESers, also saw significant one-year reductions.
The reduction of employees at the GS-14 level comes after years of growth. For example, in 2019, agencies had 117,600 GS-14s, but the 8,000 drop between 2024 and 2025 basically erases all the growth since 2023.
The changes to employees at the GS-15 level are less dramatic, but still erases growth, albeit smaller growth, since 2021.
The reduction of senior leaders isn’t all that different than what agencies saw across the board last year. There are 219,000 fewer federal employees in 2025 than in 2024.
Interestingly enough, OPM says the median age of the federal worker remains at 47 years old, but the percentage of federal employees who are eligible to retire dropped to 13.5% from 15%. The Small Business Administration and NASA have the largest percentage of employees, more than 25% respectively, who are eligible to retire.
OPM says 105,858 retired from federal service in 2025. The Defense Department saw the largest number of employees leave via retirement at 31,689, while the departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Justice, Treasury and Health and Human Services all saw more than 6,000 employees leave via retirement.
Pipeline of future leaders narrows
Concerns over the impending retirement wave isn’t new. Good government groups and employee organizations have been highlighting their concerns for decades. But with the combination of retirements, employees taking the DRP, the administration firing probationary employees and people just plain quitting, there is more concern than ever about the pipeline of current and up-and-coming federal managers.
Michelle Sutter, the director of the Senior Executives Association board, spent over 15 years in government before leaving last year under the DRP. Sutter said the one-year reductions in SESers, as well as GS-14s and GS-15s, is worrisome for several reasons.
“In conversations with our members, a consistent theme that we hear is that we have executive-level employees that are literally, at times, doing the jobs of three to four people, and that’s unprecedented, because it tells us that regardless of whether you’re at the operational level or the executive level, you’ve got people functioning in roles sometimes that are outside of their daily operations that they would normally do,” Sutter said in an interview with Federal News Network. “The effect of this is it puts stress on the leaders. It makes it difficult to focus on mission delivery. If you’re having a tough time focusing on mission delivery, it makes it difficult to provide services to the American people. It also creates a stressful situation and leads to burnout because leaders are in a position where it’s difficult to lead effectively when you’re trying to manage daily operations, doing multiple roles yourself, and then you’re expected to lead teams and manage programs and make sure that you meet the needs of the agencies.”
Sutter said GS-14s and GS-15s, who are more at the operational level, are facing similar challenges.
While these GS-14 and GS-15s may now have more opportunities to step into acting or temporary roles that would help them prepare to move into the SES, burnout, cuts to training and education opportunities and the need to deal with constant change remain a big challenge for these employees.
Sutter said the pipeline of senior managers who are ready to move into the SES has also been narrowed.
“We need to really focus on our career senior executives. I think over the next year, success is really going to depend on stabilizing leadership teams being disciplined about the use of different roles, whether they be acting or permanent, and really investing in executive development and recognizing that executive effectiveness is critical to mission delivery,” Sutter said. “This is not about routine federal leadership as it was in the past. How agencies support career executives now will absolutely shape continuity, performance and leadership capacity well beyond the transition.”
Sutter added that SEA was pleased to see OPM coming out with new training and education programs. She said SEA hopes agencies have the funding and give employees the time to take advantage of these courses.
Advice for those joining the private sector
For those executives jumping on the wave of leaving federal service, the private sector may be just as challenging. But the experiences of Andy and others demonstrate what executives need to consider as they move into industry.
“The job market is pretty tough for a lot of people today. It’s flooded. It’s kind of a buyer’s market at the moment,” Andy said. “It’s easy to say, you really need to make sure that, that you’ve got the right fit. But for somebody who really needs a job and needs the income, that may be easier said than done. But I would say, ideally, you really should be conscious about that fit aspect. The one thing that I found as I talked to other government executives, who had worked with industry, is they made a similar comment that they thought part of the challenge was that a lot of times people in these companies don’t actually understand how to leverage government executives and government executive expertise.”
Tim Teal, the CEO and founder The Bellwether Group and a former National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command official, posted some solid advice on LinkedIn about what federal executives should keep in mind as they are leaving government.
Teal said most of the exits he’s seen were not about competence. They were about mismatched expectations. “The executive thinks they are there to advise and shape strategy. The company expects immediate impact,” he said. “In government, authority is derived from role, statute, and mission. In industry especially government contracting sector, authority is derived from revenue, margin and growth.”
Another rule of thumb Teal highlighted was about reputation. He said if you think your reputation will protect you from layoff or other challenges, you are incorrect. Teal said reputations open doors. Performance keeps them open.
“The most successful former government leaders I know didn’t cling to status. They learned the business. They tied their value to outcomes. And they never confused respect with immunity,” he wrote to Federal News Network in an email. “The biggest mistake I see is people negotiating the title before they understand the business. If you do not know how the company makes money, who buys from them and where they are hurting, you are walking in blind. Don’t accept roles with vague charters. If no one can clearly explain what success looks like in six months, that role probably will not last six months.”
As for Andy, who is now going out on his own as a consultant, he said while his experience was definitely eye opening, he doesn’t blame the company or himself for things not working out. But he does offer one piece of advice: “Trust your gut. I did have some sort of ticklish feelings in my gut, like, that’s not the answer that I was looking for.”
The Defense Logistics Agency is initially focusing its use of artificial intelligence across three main mission areas: operations, demand planning and forecasting, and audit and transparency.
At the same time, DLA isn’t waiting for everyone to be trained or for its data to be perfect.
Adarryl Roberts, the chief information officer at DLA, said by applying AI tools to their use cases, employees can actually clean up the data more quickly.
Adarryl Roberts is the chief information officer at the Defense Logistics Agency. (Photo courtesy of DLA).
“You don’t have a human trying to analyze the data and come up with those conclusions. So leveraging AI to help with data curation and ensuring we have cleaner data, but then also not just focusing on ChatGPT and things of that nature,” Roberts said on Ask the CIO. “I know that’s the buzzword, but for an agency like DLA, ChatGPT does not solve our strategic issues that we’re trying to solve, and so that’s why there’s a heavier emphasis on AI. For us in those 56 use cases, there’s a lot of that was natural language processing, a lot around procurement, what I would consider more standardized data, what we’re moving towards with generative AI.”
A lot of this work is setting DLA up to use agentic AI in the short-to-medium term. Roberts said by applying agentic AI to its mission areas, DLA expects to achieve the scale, efficiency and effectiveness benefits that the tools promise to provide.
“At DLA, that’s when we’re able to have digital employees work just like humans, to make us work at scale so that we’re not having to redo work. That’s where you get the loss in efficiency from a logistics perspective, when you have to reorder or re-ship, that’s more cost to the taxpayer, and that also delays readiness to the warfighter,” Roberts said at the recent DLA Industry Collider day. “From a research and development perspective, it’s really looking at the tools we have. We have native tools in the cloud. We have SAP, ServiceNow and others, so based upon our major investments from technology, what are those gaps from a technology perspective that we’re not able to answer from a mission perspective across the supply chain? Then we focus on those very specific use cases to help accelerate AI in that area. The other part of that is architecting it so that it seamlessly plugs back into the ecosystem.”
He added that this ensures the technology doesn’t end up becoming a data stovepipe and can integrate into the larger set of applications to be effective and not break missions.
A good example of this approach leading to success is DLA’s use of robotics process automation (RPA) tools. Roberts said the agency currently has about 185 unattended bots that are working 24/7 to help DLA meet mission goals.
“Through our digital citizen program, government people actually are building bots. As the CIO, I don’t want to be a roadblock as a lot of the technology has advanced to where if you watch a YouTube video, you can pretty much do some rudimentary level coding and things of that nature. You have high school kids building bots today. So I want to put the technology in the hands of the experts, the folks who know the business process the best, so it’s a shorter flash to bang in order to get that support out to the warfighter,” Roberts said.
The success of the bots initiative helped DLA determine that the approach of adopting commercial platforms to implement AI tools was the right one. Roberts said all of these platforms reside under its DLA Connect enterprisewide portal.
“That’s really looking at the technology, the people, our processes and our data, and how do we integrate that and track that schematically so that we don’t incur the technical debt we incurred about 25 years ago? That’s going to result in us having architecture laying out our business processes, our supply chain strategies, how that is integrated within those business processes, overlaying that with our IT and those processes within the IT space,” he said. “The business processes, supply chain, strategies and all of that are overlapping. You can see that integration and that interoperability moving forward. So we are creating a single portal where, if you’re a customer, an industry partner, an actual partner or internal DLA, for you to communicate and also see what’s happening across DLA.”
Training every employee on AI
He said that includes questions about contracts and upcoming requests for proposals as well as order status updates and other data driven questions.
Of course, no matter how good the tools are, if the workforce isn’t trained on how to use the AI capabilities or knows where to find the data, then the benefits will be limited.
Roberts said DLA has been investing in training from online and in person courses to creating a specific “innovation navigators course” that is focused on both the IT and how to help the businesses across the agency look at innovation as a concept.
“Everyone doesn’t need the same level of training for data acumen and AI analytics, depending on where you sit in the organization. So working with our human resources office, we are working with the other executives in the mission areas to understand what skill sets they need to support their day-to-day mission. What are their strategic objectives? What’s that population of the workforce and how do we train them, not just online, but in person?” Roberts said. “We’re not trying to reinvent how you learn AI and data, but how do we do that and incorporate what’s important to DLA moving forward? We have a really robust plan for continuous education, not just take a course, and you’re trained, which, I think, is where the government has failed in the past. We train people as soon as they come on board, and then you don’t get additional training for the next 10-15 years, and then the technology passes you by. So we’re going to stay up with technology, and it’s going to be continuous education moving forward, and that will evolve as our technology evolves.”
Roberts said the training is for everyone, from the director of DLA to senior leaders in the mission areas to the logistics and supply chain experts. The goal is to help them answer and understand how to use the digital products, how to prompt AI tools the best way and how to deploy AI to impact their missions.
“You don’t want to deploy AI for the sake of deploying AI, but we need to educate the workforce in terms of how it will assist them in their day to day jobs, and then strategically, from a leadership perspective, how are we structuring that so that we can achieve our objectives,” he said. “Across DLA, we’ve trained over 25,000 employees. All our employees have been exposed, at least, to an introductory level of data acumen. Then we have some targeted courses that we’re having for senior leaders to actually understand how you manage and lead when you have a digital-first concept. We’re actually going to walk through some use cases, see those to completion for some of the priorities that we have strategically, that way we can better lead the workforce and their understanding of how to employ it at echelon within our organization, enhancing IT governance and operational success.”
The courses and training has helped DLA “lay the foundation in terms of what we need to be a digital organization, to think digital first. Now we’re at the point of execution and implementation, putting those tools to use,” Roberts said.
President Donald Trump put defense contractors on notice today. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said his administration is capping executive compensation at $5 million and prohibiting companies from doing stock buybacks and paying out dividends to shareholders.
President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday evening putting these restrictions in place at a policy level.
“All U.S. defense contractors and the defense industry as a whole, BEWARE: While we make the best military equipment in the world (no other country is even close!), defense contractors are currently issuing massive dividends to their shareholders and massive stock buybacks, at the expense and detriment of investing in plants and equipment. This situation will no longer be allowed or tolerated!” President Trump wrote in a post this afternoon. “Also, executive pay packages in the defense industry are exorbitant and unjustifiable given how slowly these companies are delivering vital equipment to our military, and our allies. Salaries, stock options, and every other compensation are far too high for these executives.”
President Donald Trump wants to cap how much defense contractors pay executives. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Trump said going forward, until these companies build new and modern production plants for military equipment, no executive should be allowed to make in excess of $5 million.
The limiting of executive compensation isn’t a new idea. President Barack Obama called on Congress to limit executive competition to $400,000. In 2013, the White House said under current law, government-reimbursed contractor pay is tied to a formula that mimics the compensation levels of top private-sector CEOs, which has grown by more than 300% since 1995.
An hour later, President Trump sent out a second post taking specific aim at Raytheon, now known as RTX. He said Raytheon has been “the least responsive to the needs of the [DoD], the slowest in increasing their volume, and the most aggressive spending on their shareholders rather than the needs and demands of the U.S. military.”
Trump said if Raytheon wants to do further business with the government, it will not be allowed to do any further stock buybacks.
“Either Raytheon steps up, and starts investing in more upfront investments like plants and equipment, or they will no longer be doing business with [DoD],” President Trump wrote.
An email to RTX seeking comment was not immediately returned.
The defense giant said 54% of its $80.8 billion in revenue came from its defense business worldwide in 2024.
In fiscal 2025, USASpending.gov shows RTX held 1,652 contracts worth more than $7.2 billion. The Navy and Air Force are among RTX’s biggest DoD customers.
RTX is known for providing systems like Patriot, National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) and Upgraded Early Warning Radars.
Federal procurement experts question whether the executive order would even be legal and how this would “chill” the markets.
“So much of this ignores that the speed to build/buy/repair is often the fault of the government, not the contractor,” said one industry expert, who requested anonymity.
President Trump went even further in a third post, calling on Congress to increase the DoD’s fiscal 2027 budget to $1.5 trillion.
“This will allow us to build the ‘dream military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us safe and secure, regardless of foe,” the president wrote. “If it weren’t for the tremendous numbers being produced by tariffs from other countries, many of which, in the past, have ‘ripped off’ the United States at levels never seen before, I would stay at the $1 trillion dollar number but, because of tariffs, and the tremendous income that they bring, amounts generated that would’ve been unthinkable in the past … we are able to easily hit the $1.5 trillion number, while at the same time producing an unparalleled military force and having the ability to, at the same time, pay down debt, and likewise, pay a substantial dividend to moderate income patriots without our country!”
DoD requested $848.3 billion for fiscal 2026 which was slightly lower compared to its $849.8 billion request in 2025.
Industry associations like the Professional Services Council, the National Defense Industrial Association and Aerospace Industries Association all declined to comment or didn’t respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The Defense Information Systems Agency isn’t just talking about meeting Secretary Pete Hegseth’s goal of “speed to capability.” It’s holding contracting officers and program managers accountable.
By March, at least 40% of all task or delivery orders let through the General Services Administration’s schedules program or an agency blanket purchase agreement must use at least one “acquisition accelerator.” By September, 80% of all task and delivery orders issued through GSA or their own BPA must use these tools to speed up the acquisition process.
“It’s oral proposals or presentations. It is confidence ratings. It’s about reaching consensus as soon as a presentation is provided instead of waiting a couple [of weeks]. It’s saying, ‘No, you’re doing it now and you have an hour,’” said Doug Packard, DISA’s procurement services executive, at the recent Forecast to Industry day. “It’s best suited where you have 20 firms submit an offer and you get the two that are best suited to meet that requirement. You have a couple of things to talk to them about that aren’t minor. You can pick the firm and talk with just them, not the other 19, and that saves us months in trying to get us to who is the awardee.”
While Packard didn’t have any specific metrics, he estimates that DISA is shaving weeks off acquisitions timelines, specifically during the source selection phase.
DoD issues 31 FAR deviations
DISA is receiving some additional policy support to expand the use of these accelerators. The Defense Department’s Office of Pricing, Contracting and Acquisition Policy issued the first set of deviations to the Federal Acquisition Regulation to begin implementing the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and the FAR Council’s overhaul of the 40-year-old regulations.
On Dec. 18, John Tenaglia, the principal director of DPCAP, signed 31 class deviations that will be effective on Feb. 1.
“[T]hese class deviations retain DoD-specific statutory direction and direction determined necessary for sound procurement within the new, streamlined RFO structure,” Tenaglia wrote in the Dec. 19 memo. “The [revolutionary FAR overhaul] Phase 1 changes represent actions we can take unilaterally, in advance of formal rulemaking, to reduce regulatory and procedural burden on both our workforce and on industry. Issuing this first tranche of class deviations now provides a preview of the kinds of changes you can expect to see next month once we release the remaining class deviations.”
Among the 31 deviations DoD initially issued are updates to FAR Part 6, competitive procedures, Part 10 for market research and Part 12 for commercial products and services.
“Each class deviation reflected below consists of the revised DFARS part with its associated solicitation provisions and contract clauses, followed by the revised procedures, guidance and information (PGI),” DoD wrote on its FAR deviation website. “The line out documents reflect the current DFARS and PGI with markings to identify high level changes to the official versions at 48 CFR chapter 2 and published on the DPCAP DARS website. The portions of the regulation and PGI that are proposed for removal are struck through. Regulatory text and guidance that have been revised are retained in their original form.”
DoD plans to issue a second tranche of deviations later this month and throughout 2026.
In the coming months, the Pentagon will issue the deviations for FAR Parts 8 and 16. DISA is applying its acquisition accelerators to contracts under these sections.
So far, 23 civilian agencies have issued FAR Part 8 deviations and 18 have issued Part 16 updates.
OFPP seeking feedback through Jan. 12
OFPP and the FAR Council also have issued FAR Companion guides and practitioner albums to help the training and education of the acquisition workforce on the new rules.
Additionally, OFPP Administrator Kevin Rhodes held a series of roundtables with contractors, industry associations and others to gain their perspectives of the FAR overhaul. OFPP says these contractors and associations “shared feedback on five priority goals: increasing competition, reducing costs, accelerating the acquisition system, changing cultural norms and deploying best practices.”
Rhodes said in a statement that “the feedback we received will help inform our efforts for the next phase of the RFO.”
OFPP is accepting more feedback through Jan. 12 through its IdeaScale on ways to continue to improve the FAR across the five priorities.
“Please share a specific buying practice that should start, stop, continue, adjust, or scale in the new era of federal acquisition. Your idea does not need to be new, it only needs to address a real issue or practice that matters to you or your organization that can improve federal buying today,” OFPP wrote in asking for feedback.
As of Jan. 6, public and private sector stakeholders have submitted 86 ideas, ranging from ensuring the “rule of two” remains in place to expanding oral presentations and streamlined source selection beyond IT acquisitions to limiting the flow down requirements to small business subcontractors.
The use of streamlined source selection and oral presentations are examples of what DISA is requiring of its contracting officers in 2026.
Packard said DISA tested out these about 11 different accelerator tools over the last 18 months and determined they worked for both the agency and industry.
Carlen Capenos, the director of the Office of Small Business Programs at DISA, said at the DISA event that the accelerators don’t just benefit the agency, but contractors too.
“We hear often from small and large business that if they’re not going to win, they want to know that fast, the idea of failing fast. So we see step things where you have to provide X, Y and Z, and if you don’t have that, well, then we don’t need you to put together a full-blown proposal because you don’t have the ability to ever win. Or if there’s somebody that’s so much better that has a better solution that we’re talking about, instead of all the check marks, we can eliminate the rest of it and go fast,” she said. “There’s a lot of those things that are really great for small business when they just want to get in front of folks to say, ‘I have the solution. Let me articulate it for you.’ So there are those that really like that point. Our office has done a couple trainings with the contracting folks that have set these up, and they run through it once a year, twice a year, where they provide it to anybody who wants to sign up for it.”
Packard said now that DISA has tested out these accelerator concepts, even winning a protest, it’s time to apply them to increase the “speed to delivery” and attract more commercial companies into DoD.
Let’s start with the good news: artificial intelligence may NOT be the buzzword for 2026.
What will be the most talked about federal IT and/or acquisition topic for this year remains up for debate. While AI will definitely be part of the conversation, at least some experts believe other topics will emerge over the next 12 months. These range from the Defense Department’s push for “speed to capability” to resilient innovation to workforce transformation.
Federal News Network asked a panel of former federal technology and procurement executives for their opinions what federal IT and acquisition storylines they are following over the next 12 months. If you’re interested in previous years’ predictions, here is what experts said about 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The panelists are:
Jonathan Alboum, federal chief technology officer for ServiceNow and former Agriculture Department CIO.
Melvin Brown, vice president and chief growth officer at CANI and a former deputy CIO at the Office of Personnel Management.
Matthew Cornelius, managing director of federal industry at Workday and former OMB and Senate staff member.
Kevin Cummins, a partner with the Franklin Square Group and former Senate staff member.
Michael Derrios, the new executive director of the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University and former State Department senior procurement executive.
Julie Dunne, a principal with Monument Advocacy and former commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service.
Mike Hettinger, founding principal of Hettinger Strategy Group and former House staff member.
Nancy Sieger, a partner at Guidehouse’s Financial Services Sector and a former IRS CIO.
What are two IT or acquisition programs/initiatives that you are watching closely for signs of progress and why?
Brown: Whether AI acquisition governance becomes standard, templates, clauses, evaluation norms, 2026 is where agencies turn OMB AI memos into repeatable acquisition artifacts, through solicitation language, assurance evidence, testing/monitoring expectations and privacy and security gates. The 2025 memos are the anchor texts. I’m watching for signals such as common clause libraries, governmentwide “minimum vendor evidence” and how agencies operationalize “responsible AI” in source selections.
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) phased rollout and how quickly it becomes a de facto barrier to entry. Because the rollout is phased over multiple years starting in November 2025, 2026 is the first full year where you can observe how often contracting officers insert the clause and how primes enforce flow-downs. The watch signals include protest activity, supply-chain impacts and whether smaller firms get crowded out or supported.
Hettinger: Related to the GSA OneGov initiative, there’s continuing pressure on the middleman, that is to say resellers and systems integrators to deliver more value for less. This theme emerged in early 2025, but it will continue to be front and center throughout 2026. How those facing the pressure respond to the government’s interests will tell us a lot about how IT acquisition is going to change in the coming years. I’ll be watching that closely.
Mike Hettinger is president and founding principal of Hettinger Strategy Group and former staff director of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management.
The other place to watch more broadly is how the government is going to leverage AI. If 2025 was about putting the pieces in place to buy AI tools, 2026 is going to be about how agencies are able to leverage those tools to bring efficiency and effectiveness in a host of new areas.
Cornelius: The first is watching the Hill to see if the Senate can finally get the Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets (SAMOSA) Act passed and to the President’s desk. While a lot of great work has already happened — and will continue to happen — at GSA around OneGov, there is only so much they can do on their own. If Congress forces agencies to do the in-depth analysis and reporting required under SAMOSA, it will empower GSA, as well as OMB and Congress, to have the type of data and insights needed to drive OneGov beyond just cost savings to more enterprise transformation outcomes for their agency customers. This would generate value at an order of magnitude beyond what they have achieved thus far.
The second is the implementation of the recent executive order that created the Genesis Mission initiative. The mission is focused on ensuring that the Energy Department and the national labs can hire the right talent and marshal the right resources to help develop the next generation of biotechnology, quantum information science, advanced manufacturing and other critical capabilities empower America’s global leadership for the next few generations. Seeing how DOE and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) partner collaboratively with industry to execute this aspirational, but necessary, nationwide effort will be revelatory and insightful.
Cummins: Will Congress reverse its recent failure to reauthorize the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF)? President Donald Trump stood up the TMF during his first term and it saw a significant funding infusion by President Joe Biden. Watching the TMF just die with a whimper will make me pessimistic about reviving the longstanding bipartisan cooperation on modernizing federal IT that existed before the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
I will be closely watching how well the recently-announced Tech Force comes together. Its goal of recruiting top engineers to serve in non-partisan roles focused on technology implementation sounds a lot like the U.S. Digital Service started by President Barack Obama, which then became the U.S. DOGE Service. I would like to see Tech Force building a better government with some of the enthusiasm that DOGE showed for cutting it.
Sieger: I’m watching intensely how agencies manage the IT talent exodus triggered by DOGE-mandated workforce reductions and return-to-office requirements. The unintended consequence we’re already observing is the disproportionate loss of mid-career technologists, the people who bridge legacy systems knowledge with modern cloud and AI capabilities.
Agencies are losing their most marketable IT talent first, while retention of personnel managing critical legacy infrastructure creates technical debt time bombs. At Guidehouse, we’re fielding unprecedented requests for cybersecurity, cloud architecture and data engineering services. The question heading into 2026 is whether agencies can rebuild sustainable IT operating models or whether they become permanently dependent on contractor support, fundamentally altering the government’s long-term technology capacity.
My prediction of the real risk is that mission-critical systems are losing institutional knowledge faster than documentation or modernization can compensate. Agencies need to watch and mitigate for increased system outages, security incidents, and failed modernization projects as this workforce disruption cascades through 2026.
Sticking with the above theme, it does bear watching how the new federal Tech Force hiring initiative succeeds. The federal Tech Force initiative signals a major shift in how the federal government sources and deploys modern technology talent. As agencies bring in highly skilled technologists focused on AI, cloud, cybersecurity and agile delivery, the expectations for speed, engineering rigor and product-centric outcomes will rise. This will reshape how agencies engage industry partners, favoring firms that can operate at comparable technical and cultural velocity.
The initiative also introduces private sector thinking into government programs, influencing requirements, architectures and vendor evaluations. This creates both opportunity and pressure. Organizations aligned to modern delivery models will gain advantage, while legacy approaches may struggle to adapt. Federal Tech Force serves as an early indicator of how workforce decisions are beginning to influence acquisition approaches and modernization priorities across government.
Dunne: Title 41 acquisition reform. The House Armed Services Committee and House Oversight Committee worked together to pass a 2026 defense authorization bill out of the House with civilian or governmentwide (Title 41) acquisition reform proposals. These reform proposals in the House NDAA bill included increasing various acquisition thresholds (micro-purchase and simplified acquisition thresholds and cost accounting standards) and language on advance payments to improve buying of cloud solutions. Unfortunately, these governmentwide provisions were left out of the final NDAA agreement, leaving in some cases different rules the civilian and defense sectors. I’m hopeful that Congress will try again on governmentwide acquisition reform.
Office of Centralized Acquisition Services (OCAS). GSA launched OCAS late this year to consolidate and streamline contracting for common goods and services in accordance with the March 2025 executive order (14240). Always a good exercise to think about how to best consolidate and streamline contracting vehicles. We’ve been here before and I think OCAS has a tough mission as agencies often want to do their own thing. If given sufficient resources and leadership attention, perhaps it will be different this time.
FedRAMP 20x. Earlier this year, GSA’s FedRAMP program management office launched FedRAMP 20x to reform the process and bring efficiencies through automation and expand the availability of cloud service provider products for agencies. All great intentions, but as we move into the next phase of the effort and into FedRAMP moderate type solutions, I hope the focus remains on the security mission and the original intent to measure once, use many times for the benefit of agencies. Also, FedRAMP authorization expires in December 2027 – which is not that far away in congressional time.
Alboum: In the coming year, I’m paying close attention to how agencies manage AI efficiency and value as they move from pilots to production. As budgets tighten, agencies need a clearer picture of which models are delivering results, which aren’t, and where investments are being duplicated.
I’m also watching enterprise acquisition and software asset management efforts. The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets (SAMOSA) Act has been floating around Congress for the last few years. I’m curious to see whether it will ultimately become law. Its provisions reflect widely acknowledged best practices for controlling software spending and align with the administration’s PMA objective to “consolidate and standardize systems, while eliminating duplicative ones.” How agencies manage their software portfolios will be a crucial test of whether efficiency goals are turning into lasting structural change, or just short-term fixes.
Derrios: I’ll be watching how GSA’s OneGov initiative shapes up will be important because contract consolidation without an equal focus on demand forecasting, standardization and potential requirements aggregation may not yield the intended results. There needs to be a strong focus on acquisition planning between GSA and their federal agency customers in addition to any movement of contracts.
In 2025, the administration revamped the FAR, which hadn’t been reviewed holistically in 40 years. So in 2026, what IT/acquisition topic(s) would you like to see the administration take on that has long been overlooked and/or underappreciated for the impact change and improvements could have, and why?
Cummins: Despite the recent Trump administration emphasis on commercialization, it is still too hard for innovative companies to break into the federal market. Sometimes agencies will move mountains to urgently acquire a new technology, like we have seen recently with some artificial intelligence and drones initiatives. But a commercial IT company generally has to partner with a reseller and get third-party accreditation (CMMC, FedRAMP, etc.) just to get access to a federal customer. Moving beyond the FAR rewrite, could the government give up some of the intellectual property and other requirements that make it difficult for commercial companies to bid as a prime or sell directly to an agency outside of an other transaction agreement (OTA)? It would also be helpful to see more FedRAMP waivers for low-risk cloud services.
Cornelius: It’s been almost 50 years since foundational law and policy set the parameters we still follow today around IT accessibility. During my time in the Senate, I drafted the provision in the 2023 omnibus appropriations bill that required GSA and federal agencies to perform comprehensive assessments of accessibility compliance across all IT and digital assets throughout the government. Now, with a couple years of analysis and with many thoughtful recommendations from GSA and OMB, it is time for Congress to make critical updates in law to improve the accessibility of any capabilities the government acquires or deploys. 2026 could be a year of rare bipartisan, bicameral collaboration on digital accessibility, which could then underpin the administration’s American by Design initiative and ensure important accessibility outcomes from all vendors serving government customers are delivered and maintained effectively.
Derrios: The federal budgeting process really needs a reboot. Static budgets do not align with multi-year missions where risks are continuous, technology changes at lightning speed, and world events impact aging cost estimates. And without a real “return on investment” mentality incorporated into the budgeting process, under-performing programs with high sunk-costs will continue to be supported. But taxpayers shouldn’t have to sit through a bad movie just because they already paid for the ticket.
Brown: I’m watching how agencies continue to move toward the implementation of zero trust and how the data layer becomes the budget fight. With federal guides emphasizing data security, the 2026 question becomes, do programs converge on fewer, interoperable controls, or do they keep buying overlapping tools? My watch signals include requirements that prioritize data tagging/classification, attribute-based access, encryption/key management and auditability as “must haves” in acquisitions.
Alboum: Over the past few years, the federal government has made significant investments in customer experience and service delivery. The question now is whether those gains can be sustained amid federal staffing reductions.
Jonathan Alboum is a former chief information officer at the Agriculture Department and now federal chief technology officer for ServiceNow.
This challenge is closely tied to the “America by Design” executive order, which calls for redesigned websites where people interact with the government. A beautiful, easy-to-use website is an excellent start. However, the public expects a great end-to-end experience across all channels, which aligns directly with the administration’s PMA objective to build digital services for “real people, not bureaucracy.”
So, I’ll be watching to see if we meet these expectations by investing in AI and other technologies to lock in previous gains and improve the way we serve the public. With the proper focus, I’m confident that we can positively impact the public’s perception and trust in government.
Hettinger: Set aside the know and historic challenges with the TMF, we really do need to figure out how to more effectively buy IT at a pace consistent with the need of agencies. Maybe some of that is addressed in the FAR changes, but those are only going to take us so far (no pun intended). If we think outside the box, maybe we can find a way to make real progress in IT funding and acquisition in a way that gets the right technology tools in the hands of the right people more quickly.
Dunne: I think follow through on the initiatives launched in 2025 will be important to focus on in 2026. The formal rulemaking process for the RFO will launch in 2026 and will be an important part of that follow through. And now that we have a confirmed Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator, I think 2026 will be an important year for industry engagement on topics like the RFO.
Sieger: If the administration could tackle one long-overlooked issue with transformative impact, it should be the modernization of security clearances are granted, maintained and reciprocally recognized for contractor personnel supporting federal IT initiatives.
The current clearance system regularly creates 6-to-12 month delays in staffing critical IT programs, particularly in cybersecurity and AI. Agencies lose qualified contractors to private sector opportunities during lengthy adjudication periods. The lack of true clearance reciprocity means contractors moving between agency projects often restart the process, wasting resources and creating knowledge gaps on programs.
This is a strategic vulnerability. Federal IT modernization depends on contractor expertise for specialized skills government cannot hire directly. When clearance processes take longer than typical IT project phases, agencies either compromise on talent quality or delay mission-critical initiatives. The opportunity cost is measured in delayed outcomes and increased cyber risk.
Implementing continuous vetting for contractor populations, establishing true cross-agency clearance reciprocity, and creating “clearance portability” would benefit emerging technology areas such as AI, quantum, advanced cybersecurity, where talent competition is fiercest. From Guidehouse’s perspective, we see clients are repeatedly unable to staff approved projects because cleared personnel aren’t available, not because talent doesn’t exist.
This reform would have cascading benefits: faster modernization, better talent retention, reduced costs and improved security through continuous monitoring rather than point-in-time investigations.
If 2025 has been all about cost savings and efficiencies, what do you think will emerge as the buzzword of 2026?
Brown: “Speed to capability” acquisition models spreading beyond DoD. The drone scaling example is a concrete indicator of a broader push. The watch signals for me are increased use of rapid pathways, shorter contract terms, modular contracting and more frequent recompetes to keep pace with technology change.
Cornelius: Governmentwide human resource transformation.
Julie Dunne, a former House Oversight and Reform Committee staff member for the Republicans, a former commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration, and now a principal at Monument Advocacy.
Dunne: AI again. How the government uses it to facilitate delivery of citizen services and how AI tools will assist with the acquisition process, and AI-enabled cybersecurity attacks. I know that’s not one word, but it’s a huge risk to watch and only a matter of time before our adversaries find success in attacking federal systems with an AI-enabled cyberattack, and federal contractors will be on the hook to mitigate such risks.
Cummins: Fraud prevention. While combating waste, fraud and abuse is a perennial issue, the industrial scale fraud revealed in Minnesota highlights a danger from how Congress passed COVID pandemic-era spending packages without the same level of checks and balances that were put in place for earlier Obama-era stimulus spending. Federal government programs generally still have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to preventing improper payments, such as by using better identity and access management and other security tools. Stopping fraud is also one of the few remaining areas of bipartisan agreement among policymakers.
Hettinger: DOGE may be gone, or maybe it’s not really gone, but I don’t know that cost savings and efficiencies are going to be pushed to the backburner. This administration comes at everything — at least from an IT perspective — as believing it can be done better, faster and cheaper. I expect that to continue not just into 2026 but for the rest of this administration.
Derrios: I think there will have to be a focus on how government needs and requirements are defined and how the remaining workforce can upskill to use technology as a force multiplier. If you don’t focus on what you’re buying and whether it constitutes a legitimate mission support need, any cost savings gained in 2025 will not be sustainable long-term. Balancing speed-to-contract and innovative buying methodologies with real requirements rigor is critical. And how your federal workforce uses the tools in the toolbox to yield maximum outcomes while trying to do more with less is going to take focused leadership. To me, all of this culminates in one word for 2026, and that’s producing “value” for federal missions.
Sieger: Resilient innovation. While 2025 focused intensely on cost savings and efficiencies, particularly through DOGE-mandated cuts, 2026’s emerging buzzword will be “resilient innovation.” Agencies are recognizing the need to continue advancing technological capabilities while maintaining operational continuity under constrained resources and heightened uncertainty.
The efficiency drives of 2025 exposed real vulnerabilities. Agencies lost institutional knowledge, critical systems became more fragile, and the pace of modernization actually slowed in many cases as talent departed and budgets tightened. Leaders now recognize that efficiency without resilience creates brittleness—systems that work well under ideal conditions but fail catastrophically when stressed.
Resilient innovation captures the dual mandate facing federal IT in 2026: Continue modernizing and adopting transformative technologies like AI, but do so in ways that don’t create new single points of failure, vendor dependencies or operational risks. It’s about building systems and capabilities that can absorb shocks — whether from workforce turnover, budget cuts, cyber incidents or geopolitical disruption — while still moving forward.
Alboum: Looking ahead, governance will take the center stage across government. As AI, data and cybersecurity continue to scale, agencies will need stronger oversight, greater transparency and better coordination to manage complexity and maintain public trust. Governance won’t be a side conversation — it will be the foundation for everything that comes next.
Success will no longer be measured by how much AI is deployed, but by whether it is secure, compliant and delivering tangible mission value. The conversation will shift from “Do we have AI?” to “Is our AI safe, accurate and worth the investment?”
Nearly 85% of the CFO Act agency chief information officers left over the last 12 months. The turnover across the community is unprecedented.
But, generally speaking, federal technology and cybersecurity policy coming from the Trump administration has been relatively modest in calendar year 2025.
For a change, federal acquisition dominated the news cycle from the overhaul of the Federal Acquisition Regulations to the Senate confirmation of Kevin Rhodes to be the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to the General Services Administration’s OneGov enterprise contract initiative and increased scrutiny of consulting contractors and value-added resellers.
With so much going on across the federal sector, Federal News Network asked a panel of former federal executives for their opinions about 2025 and what federal IT and acquisition storylines stood out over the last 12 months.
The panelists are:
Jonathan Alboum, federal chief technology officer for ServiceNow and former Agriculture Department CIO.
Melvin Brown, vice president and chief growth officer at CANI and a former deputy CIO at the Office of Personnel Management.
Matthew Cornelius, managing director at Workday and former OMB and Senate staff member.
Kevin Cummins, a partner with the Franklin Square Group and former Senate staff member.
Michael Derrios, the new executive director of the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting at the George Mason University and former State Department senior procurement executive.
Julie Dunne, a principal with Monument Advocacy and former commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service.
Mike Hettinger, founding principal of Hettinger Strategy Group and former House staff member.
Nancy Sieger, a partner at Guidehouse Financial Services Sector and a former IRS CIO.
Here are the 2024, 2023 and 2022 year in reviews as well, in case you were interested in comparing previous responses.
What are two specific accomplishments in 2025 within the federal IT and/or acquisition community? Please offer details about those accomplishments and why you thought they had an impact and what changes they brought.
MC: The administration’s concerted push to work more directly with commercial-off-the-shelf software leaders is one of the most significant changes in the federal acquisition landscape in a long time. Not only have these steps reduced costs, but direct relationships between enterprise software leaders and government customers has led to less confusion about product roadmaps and capability assessments, while providing opportunities for the government and American’s leading tech companies to solve problems in a collaborative way that improves both mission readiness and global competitiveness.
Matthew Cornelius is the managing director at Workday and former OMB and Senate staff member.
The Department of Energy became the first cabinet-level agency in the history of the U.S government to go live on a true human capital management software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. This is an historic step forward for human resources transformation and showcases the ability of leading commercial SaaS solutions to meet stringent federal security and functional requirements at scale that will transform mission readiness for DoE and its agency peers.
MB: AI moved from “policy talk” to governed buying. OMB issued two major April memos that together pushed agencies from experimentation toward repeatable governance and acquisition patterns — what must be documented, who must be involved, and what vendors must provide. Why it mattered for acquisition is because it’s a forcing function for standard solicitation language, evaluation factors, data rights/lock-in protections, privacy involvement and risk controls in AI buys.
The late-2025 “AI procurement guardrails” conversation got louder, especially for large language model (LLM) providers. By December 2025, reporting highlighted OMB procurement guardrails focused on what agencies should demand when buying AI tools, including large language models, and set near-term timelines for agencies to update acquisition policies. Why it mattered is it signaled that LLM procurement is being treated as a special class of risk/assurance problem — not just another software buy.
KC: The FAR rewrite and FedRAMP 20x initiatives made a lot of progress. While the impact of the FAR overhaul and FedRAMP changes may not be felt immediately, these changes should make it easier for agencies to acquire technologies to better meet their missions. FedRAMP’s purpose is to accelerate cloud adoption, but it has become a barrier for commercial cloud companies that want to work with agencies. Even when agencies do have access to FedRAMP’ed cloud solutions, they tend to lag behind the latest versions sold to commercial customers due to the cost and time it takes to get authorizations to operate (ATOs).
MH: The GSA OneGov initiative stands out as one of the more significant things to have happened in federal IT and procurement this year, with more to come as we go into 2026. What started out as just a handful of companies participating has grown into something more significant with 15 OneGov deals having been announced and while we maybe haven’t yet seen the full extent of what it can do in terms of changing buying and selling habits, I suspect we will see those changes as we go into next year. The FAR overhaul is another significant and related piece of this puzzle, which we will again begin to see more from in the next year.
JD: Revolutionary FAR overhaul (RFO) and OneGov activities
NS: I’m watching closely how agencies move from basic zero trust architecture (ZTA) compliance to operationalizing mature, integrated zero trust capabilities across all five pillars: identity, devices, networks, applications and data. The 2025 accomplishments in zero trust adoption created a foundation. In 2026, it will become clearer which agencies can achieve the cultural transformation and cross-domain integration that true zero trust requires.
The real change this brought was cultural. IT professionals moved from viewing zero trust as a security mandate to recognizing it as an enabler of hybrid work and cloud adoption. This shift helped agencies reduce attack surface across government networks and establish replicable patterns that smaller agencies could follow, expanding access to advanced security capabilities across the federal enterprise.
In 2025, the federal government moved beyond AI policy development to actual governance implementation. OMB’s updated guidance, combined with agency-level chief AI officers and cross-functional AI governance boards, created accountability structures that didn’t exist before. What impressed me most was how Treasury and IRS established AI testing and validation protocols that balanced innovation with responsible use.
This brought tangible changes; agencies now have repeatable processes for AI risk assessment, bias testing and human oversight integration. It shifted the conversation from “should we use AI?” to “how do we use AI responsibly?” enabling mission delivery while maintaining public trust.
JA: 2025 was the year of agencies moving beyond AI pilot programs and onto large-scale deployment. As AI became embedded in day-to-day operations, it quickly became clear that success hinges on strong foundations — like high data quality, governance and scalable infrastructure. Agencies that invested in these core building blocks moved toward more sustainable and responsible AI implementations. The result was greater confidence in AI outcomes, improved interoperability and a clearer path for long-term innovation across government.
This shift in priorities is already delivering tangible results. One agency I worked with this past year consolidated 47 intake channels and five legacy platforms into a single system of record, improving data collection efficiency by 80%. By unifying data and workflows, the agency created a strong foundation for scaling AI across the mission and driving measurable outcomes.
This year also brought renewed momentum to enterprise acquisitions. Initiatives like GSA’s OneGov enabled agencies to move away from fragmented purchasing and toward coordinated, enterprisewide agreements. These agreements reduced friction, improved visibility and delivered better value for taxpayers, reflecting the growing demand for simpler access to modern IT solutions. Together, these changes signaled a cultural shift in federal AI adoption — one that prioritizes speed, collaboration and measurable outcomes over complexity.
MD: I think the most significant accomplishment is DoD’s launch of CMMC 2.0 because of how it will shape acquisition strategy, contracting practice and supply-chain resilience across the federal enterprise. As I said in a recent white paper on the subject, the acquisition impact of CMMC is systemic because it will influence how agencies define capable sources, how solicitations are written, how proposals are evaluated and how performance is monitored. Certification is now a qualification threshold for industry and a practical tool for risk reduction in government agencies. But it will also be a costly investment, especially for small businesses. However, I also think civilian federal agencies will eventually look to adopt portions of CMMC at some point, so it behooves any contractor looking to do business with the federal government to explore getting certified at the right time depending on where they’re at in their life cycle.
What technology, acquisition initiative or program surprised you based on how much progress it made or how the pieces and parts came together and why?
MB: FedRAMP tried to become faster and more outcome-oriented through its 20x pilot. GSA launched FedRAMP 20x in March 2025 and continued publishing implementation updates and pilot details through 2025. Separately, GSA reported record authorization pace in 2025 and linked progress to the shift toward modernization, including the 20x pilot. Why it mattered for acquisition is agencies and vendors saw real pressure to reduce authorization friction and move toward automation-based validation and a “security over paperwork” posture, as described in FedRAMP’s own updates.
DoD cybersecurity requirements for contractors hit a concrete implementation runway through the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program. DoD’s CMMC implementation began Phase 1 in November with a multi-phase rollout plan over three years, as described by the DoD CIO and reflected in associated rulemaking discussion. Why it mattered is it moved CMMC from “coming soon” into real solicitation/award gating, changing competitive dynamics for federal suppliers supporting defense programs.
NS: What genuinely surprised me in 2025 was the bold reimagining of FedRAMP through the “FedRAMP 20x” initiative. After more than a decade of incremental changes, GSA’s new leadership assembled a federal technical team of security experts, platform engineers, and data scientists who fundamentally redesigned the authorization framework to be cloud-native and automation-driven with continuous security validation.
Nancy Sieger is a partner at Guidehouse Financial Services Sector and a former IRS CIO.
In my federal agency CIO role, I thought for years the FedRAMP authorization processes were bureaucratic and slow-moving, yet in 2025 the program demonstrated that radical transformation was possible. From Guidehouse’s perspective, what made this remarkable was the cultural shift toward transparency and genuine stakeholder collaboration. This demonstrated that even deeply entrenched federal compliance programs can evolve rapidly when there’s bold leadership, technical expertise and willingness to rethink established processes rather than just optimize them.
KC: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was surprising in almost every way and was far more impactful than I expected, even if some of its initial claims about government savings were overstated.
MC: I have been incredibly impressed with the reorganization across GSA’s key federal acquisition programs. Elevating the importance, competence, criticality and talent within GSA to drive true consolidation, efficiency, cost savings and standardization across the governmentwide technology procurement landscape has been a long overdue effort that has already delivered enormous outcomes. I’m not surprised that this has been successful, more so just heartened to see the pivot back to bolstering and strengthening GSA’s ability to be the true innovator and key negotiator in the federal technology acquisition landscape as a worthy and worthwhile sign of confidence in this vital agency.
MH: I was pleased to see progress made related to implementation of the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act, which was signed into law in January 2025. While there’s still a way to go toward full implementation, the federal CIO has been designated as the federal service delivery lead as required by the law, and the requirements of GSDIA were incorporated into the annual Circular A-11, Section 280 update, meaning agencies should account for the requirements of GSDIA in their fiscal 2027 budgets. Once we get the agency high impact service providers (HISP) service delivery leads in place, which should happen early next year, GSDIA, working together with 21st Century IDEA and a host of administration policies, should serve to accelerate the path to better, more efficient customer experience.
JD: The revolutionary FAR overhaul (RFO) was a huge effort to publish all the FAR model deviation text by the end of the fiscal year (Sept 30). The FAR Council and the GSA team deserve a lot of credit for getting that done.
The OneGov strategy was announced in April 2025. By the end of the year, GSA had announced 15 agreements. It’s unclear at this point how much agencies are able to leverage these agreements, but it’s impressive that GSA put together that group of agreements over the course of eight months. I’m sure there are more announcements to come.
JA: This year, it became clear that AI cannot scale securely without zero trust. I was struck by how quickly AI governance converged into a shared, nonnegotiable priority. As more agencies deployed AI, cybersecurity risks became impossible to ignore. Zero trust shifted from policy guidance to an operational must, forcing agencies to rethink both their architecture and procurement strategies as they work toward the 2027 mandate.
MD: I’m a bit biased on this one but I’m going to have to say State’s Evolve program. The request for proposals was issued three years ago in December 2022, and given the sheer complexity of the technical program and contract structure, a two-step advisory down select process associated with the highest number of proposals State has ever managed at one time, along with the ambitious size of the award pools, the fact that the department was able to start making contract awards this summer was a tremendous accomplishment.
What emerged as the biggest technology/acquisition challenge of 2025 that will have an impact into 2026 and beyond?
KC: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has acknowledged that “our acquisition system is only as good as our workforce.” Yet we saw many experienced contracting officers leave the federal government in 2025 through the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and other attrition. We also lost many of the newer, more tech-savvy feds who had been hired into places like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and GSA’s Technology Transformation Service (TTS). That will make it harder to successfully modernize government in 2026 and beyond. While some flashy, high-priority procurements may still speed along, more mundane federal IT upgrades will likely suffer.
MC: One of the key provisions of the FedRAMP Authorization Act was around collapsing and consolidating various security assessment frameworks to achieve greater reciprocity between agencies and create scale for critical technologies that can truly serve foundational missions in any agency. While much of the effort (rightly so) has been on automation and streamlining the authorization process so more innovative solutions can enter the federal market, for the “big bets” the administration is making on foundational infrastructure and platforms across both civilian and defense sectors, seeing how OMB (and GSA, DOD, etc.) better collaborate and consolidate on accreditation priorities and processes to speed reciprocity and time to value for these key investments should be a paramount priority.
JA: Growing complexity is a technology and acquisition trend that shows no signs of slowing. Agencies are trying to navigate AI adoption, massive amounts of data, cybersecurity mandates, procurement reform and workforce changes, all while delivering mission-critical outcomes.
Without strong governance, we risk repeating past mistakes like technology sprawl, duplication, and unmanaged threats — only at a much larger scale and with greater negative consequences. Moving into 2026, success will be defined less by the launch of new initiatives, and more by the ability to govern technology investments to deliver sustained value. The administration’s PMA objective to “eliminate data silos and duplicative data collection” will help.
MB: Late 2025 reporting described Pentagon efforts aimed at rapidly scaling small drone procurement and using competitive approaches to accelerate production—explicitly framed as overcoming traditional procurement friction. Why it mattered is it’s a visible example of the broader push to shorten cycles, broaden vendor bases, and buy more like the commercial market — especially for fast-evolving tech.
Melvin Brown is the vice president and chief growth officer at CANI and a former deputy CIO at the Office of Personnel Management.
MH: The personnel and related budget cuts that happened as a result of DOGE have been and will continue to be the greatest challenge as agencies look to prioritize IT modernization, but without a full staff and in many cases smaller budgets. While I feel we are on the backside of the cuts, the challenges associated with this will carry forward into 2026 as we look to rebuild our IT personnel and budgets.
JD: The acquisition workforce has been working through a lot of change this year from the RFO to reductions in force and retirements. We ask a lot of these folks so as we move into the new year, I hope these folks are given the tools and leadership support to drive forward with important initiatives like the RFO, buying commercial and expanding the industrial base. There will be a lot of uncertainty ahead, especially as agencies issue their supplements under the RFO process and they work through another uncertain appropriations process.
NS: DOGE’s push to consolidate IT infrastructure, eliminate redundant systems and mandate shared services will reach critical implementation phases in 2026. I’m watching whether the one-size-fits-all efficiency model can accommodate mission-specific requirements, particularly in national security, law enforcement and regulatory agencies.
The consolidation becomes more acute as consolidation efforts move beyond transactional systems and into complex operational environments such as cybersecurity operations centers, cloud platforms and data centers. These environments are tightly coupled with mission delivery. Bureaus such as the IRS have legitimate mission-specific technology requirements that commodity shared services may not address.
Potential trade-offs of the shared-services centralization that will need to be well designed may be first, impacts to agency/bureau agility both in timelines and innovation, as one-size-fits-all may not work with unique mission needs. Another trade-off is the concentration of risk to a single point; resiliency will be key! Lastly, I’ll say the distance from the customer and potential additional bureaucracy in governance with cross-agency coordination will need to be carefully managed to not suppress time to market on changes and innovation.
MD: In my opinion, the biggest technology/acquisition challenge has (and will be) the rush to adopt and use AI to support federal missions. While there is significant upside to leveraging AI in the government space, there still seems to be a readiness gap in terms of appropriate governance, well-defined use cases, proper training and workforce preparedness, the availability of clean data and policy ambiguity. These issues need to be addressed as agencies are testing out AI to ensure the adoption of new tools does not exacerbate existing friction or result in throwing money at problems by addressing symptoms versus the root causes.
At the recent Professional Services Council’s Vision Conference, one of the presentations on acquisition trends highlighted as many as 10 agency specific multi-award technology contracts that have been cancelled or put on indefinite hold.
These included COMET 2 from the General Services Administration, the Army’s Modern Software contract and the IRS’s digital services blanket purchase agreement.
The leaders of the vision team said agencies made the decision to cancel these and other contracts based on the requirements outlined in President Donald Trump’s executive order from March calling for the consolidation of contracts.
One of those acquisition programs that is bucking the cancellation trend is the Army’s huge multiple award contract for professional services.
The service said in a Dec. 19 posting on SAM.gov that it will proceed with the Marketplace for the Acquisition of Professional Services (MAPS) contract after all.
The Army had shelved the program back in March when the White House issued the EO.
“We are pleased to announce that after careful consideration the Government has decided to PROCEED forward with the MAPS acquisition!” the Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground wrote.
MAPS would bring together two existing contracts, IT Enterprise Solutions-3 Services (ITES-3S) and Responsive Strategic Sourcing for Services 3 (RS3), and would have a 10-year life with a $50 billion ceiling.
The Army planned to combine the two contracts in MAPS back in 2024. Instead of recompeting its RS3 as a vehicle called Ascend and moving to version four of ITES-3S, the Army wanted to create its own broad-based professional services contract. Baker Tilly says in a blog post that the Army awarded RS3 in multiple phases between 2017 and 2019, with 260 companies currently participating in the $37.4 billion vehicle. The advisory firm says the service awarded ITES-3S in 2018 and includes 135 companies, and it has a $12 billion ceiling.
The Army had considered moving its requirements that MAPS will address to OASIS+ since there is some overlap of professional services requirements. Under MAPS, the Army is looking for a wide variety of IT and engineering professional services, including program management, business process reengineering, cybersecurity and many others. Baker Tilly says while more details are coming, it believes “MAPS is currently proposed as a full and open competition with small business reserves. The government intends to make 100 awards in total, 20 awards per domain with an unknown number of small business reserves for each of the five domains.”
Now MAPS is back on tap and the Army will hold an industry day on Jan. 28 at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to discuss the rebooted solicitation.
The Army’s decision comes as the General Services Administration is opening an on-ramp and expanding its OASIS+ contract.
GSA to expand OASIS+
GSA said it will enter phase 2 of OASIS+ on Dec. 4. This means the updated multiple award professional services contract will add five new service domains across all six current contracts. OASIS+ eventually will have 13 total domains. The five news ones are:
Business administration
Financial services
Human capital
Marketing and public relations
Social services
GSA says this expansion is a direct response to the market research and feedback it received from federal and industry partners.
“Through in-depth spend analysis, customer engagement and a formal request for information (RFI) that was posted on June 17, 2025, GSA identified critical service areas that represent a significant portion of unmanaged government spending,” GSA said in a release.
GSA expects to release the RFP for OASIS+ phase 2 on our about Jan. 12. Additionally, on Dec. 16 the agency posted draft scorecards outlining the evaluation criteria for all 13 domains combined under the six solicitations.
In its first year, OASIS+ saw agencies obligate more than $366 million through 102 task orders, according to GSA’s data-to-decisions dashboard.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Air Force accounted for the biggest agency customers based on total task orders, awarding 31 and 29, respectively, in fiscal 2025.
Deloitte Consulting won the most task orders with four, and Leidos won the largest task order for $219 million.
And speaking of GSA contracts, its Polaris small business governmentwide acquisition contract is moving forward. As of Dec. 3, agencies can place task orders against Polaris service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) and Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) pools.
Among the IT services included on Polaris are:
Artificial intelligence and automation
Cloud and edge computing
Distributed ledger technologies
Immersive and emerging technologies
“More awards in both pools are expected in Fiscal year 2026. Through this approach, GSA can ensure strong program oversight, manage vendor onboarding effectively and create room for additional opportunities,” wrote Larry Hale, GSA’s assistant commissioner in the Federal Acquisition Service’s Office of Information Technology Category (ITC), in a blog post. “Polaris was built from the start with flexibility in mind. The contract includes key features that help it stay current and responsive, such as on-ramps, no contract ceiling, and technology refresh capabilities.”
GSA still is reviewing bids for the small business and women-owned small business pools.
GAO dismisses AI contract protests
Another program that has garnered a lot of interest and attention received some good news last week as well.
The Government Accountability Office dismissed the protest by AskSage of GSA’s awards to artificial intelligence providers under its OneGov initiative.
GAO rejected the complaint not on its merits, but because it doesn’t have jurisdiction over contract modifications. GSA modified its schedule contracts with Carahsoft to offer access to AI providers for $1 or less.
“Under the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) and our bid protest regulations, we review protests of alleged violations of procurement statutes and regulations by federal agencies in the award or proposed award of contracts for the procurement of goods and services, and solicitations leading to such awards,” GAO wrote in its decision. “Once a contract is awarded, our office will generally not review protests of allegedly improper contract modifications because such matters are related to contract administration and therefore not subject to review pursuant to our bid protest function.”
GAO says because AskSage challenges the reasonableness of the modification of the schedule contract between GSA and Carahsoft, “AskSage’s protest raises matters of contract administration and therefore is not subject to review pursuant to our bid protest function.”
GAO also determined that AskSage isn’t an “interested party” and therefore not in a position to challenge the modifications.
“To challenge the scope of a contract modification, a protester must demonstrate its direct economic interest with respect to its status as an actual or prospective offeror,” GAO stated. “Here, AskSage is a subcontractor or supplier to Carahsoft, not an actual or prospective offeror for the FSS contract between GSA and Carahsoft that has been modified.”
Nic Chaillan, the founder of AskSage, wrote LinkedIN that there are always loopholes when it comes to federal acquisition rules.
“We are obviously right on the merits. Sad day for America. Now [F]ortune 500 can build a $1 dollar unlimited offering in a contract modification for 12 [months], get agencies locked in and charge billions [in] year 2. Uncompeted. Sad day,” Chaillan wrote in response to others’ comments. “Sad to watch the administration letting those shenanigans happen.”
AskSage filed protests with GAO in August, claiming the awards for access to Anthropic and OpenAI tools violated several laws and regulations, including the commercial item pricing requirements under FAR Part 12 and CICA.
GSA said at least 43 agencies have taken advantage of the low-cost OneGov agreements for AI tools.
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