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.

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.

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.

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?”

The post AI may not be the federal buzzword for 2026 first appeared on Federal News Network.

© Getty Images/Greggory DiSalvo

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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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