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.

“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.”

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Congressional appropriators are seeking less aggressive budget cuts for the IRS than what the Trump administration has proposed.

Members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, in the latest package of spending bills for fiscal 2026, are also renewing efforts to shrink federal office space.

Funding for the State Department remains relatively unchanged, despite a massive reorganization carried out last year.

Meanwhile, lawmakers want agencies to use artificial intelligence tools to speed up the delivery of public-facing benefits and services.

Here are a few highlights from the FY 2026 spending bills on Financial Services and General Government, as well as National Security and the State Department.

Less dramatic cuts for the IRS

The spending package still includes budget cuts for the IRS, but less severe cuts than what the Trump administration and House Republicans proposed.

The minibus would give the IRS an $11.2 billion budget for the rest of fiscal 2026 — a $1.1 billion, or nearly 9% cut from current spending levels. This would be the fourth consecutive year the IRS has seen spending cuts or a flat budget.

Republican appropriators said the spending package “restrains the IRS,” while investing more funds in public-facing taxpayer services.

IRS would spend $3 billion on taxpayer services — about $256 million above current spending levels. But its enforcement budget would shrink to $5 billion — about a $439 million cut compared to current levels.

The Trump administration proposed a $9.8 billion annual budget for the agency — more than a 20% spending cut from current spending levels.

In recent years, the IRS has tapped into a multi-billion-dollar modernization fund from the Inflation Reduction Act to address shrinking annual appropriations. Moving around these funds, however, leaves the IRS with less funding to address long-standing problems with its outdated IT systems.

Democrats on the appropriations committee said the spending deal rejects “poison pill” provisions from earlier proposals. That includes a provision that would block the IRS from creating its own free tax filing software.

The IRS officially shut down Direct File, the agency’s free online tax filing platform that ran for two years, and is exploring alternatives operated by tax preparation companies. The spending bill grants the IRS authority to make new hires more quickly to help address backlogged tax returns.

Under this spending deal, the Small Business Administration would also receive a $1.25 billion budget under this spending deal, rejecting the Trump administration’s plan to cut its funding by over 40%.

GSA funding to offload underutilized office space

Lawmakers are calling on the General Services Administration to accelerate its plans to offload underutilized federal office space. The spending deal, however, falls short of what GSA officials have said is necessary to address a multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog.

The spending bill allows GSA to spend $9.7 billion from the Federal Buildings Fund. That fund includes rent payments GSA collects from agencies working out of GSA-owned facilities. Included in those funds, GSA receives $166 million in funding for new federal construction projects, and $934 million for federal building repairs.

In a joint explanatory statement, appropriators wrote that they are concerned that deferred maintenance costs for federal real estate are “rising at an unsustainable rate.”

The spending deal would require GSA to conduct a study examining the “administrative and regulatory burdens” GSA faces in the real estate disposal process, and to brief the appropriations committees on its findings.

GSA currently has about $24 billion in deferred maintenance projects. Ed Forst, GSA’s newly confirmed administrator, recently told a Senate panel that about $6 billion is “urgently needed” within the next year or two to address the deferred maintenance backlog. The maintenance backlog, he added, is “likely underestimated,” and will only grow if left unaddressed.

The Public Buildings Reform Board, which advises GSA on underutilized federal properties it should sell or offload, recently told a House subcommittee that GSA will need about $50 billion to address a backlog of deferred maintenance and repairs in federal buildings.

GSA currently receives about $600 million annually to address those needs. Given those spending levels, the board estimates GSA’s portfolio would have to shrink by about 80% to keep up with its maintenance backlog.

The spending deal would give $3.6 million to the Public Buildings Reform Board. The board is set to disband by the end of this year. Members of the board, however, say their work is far from finished, and have asked Congress to consider reauthorizing the board.

The spending bill also supports President Donald Trump’s executive order designating classical architectural styles as the preferred style for new construction projects.

AI tools to deliver public-facing services

The spending bill also focused on GSA’s government IT portfolio, and directs GSA to help deliver benefits and services to the public more quickly through AI tools.

The spending bill awards $1.4 million to GSA’s Office of Technology Policy to make federal websites more accessible for people with disabilities, as required by Section 508 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.

“As the nation’s population ages, there will be more people with disabilities who rely on accessibility tools to access government resources. This underscores the importance of making Federal websites, apps, kiosks, and other technology accessible in the coming decades,” the joint explanatory statement states.

More than half of all federal websites have at least one accessibility issue, according to data collected in 2024 by GSA and the Office of Management and Budget.

The spending package also directs GSA to help agencies improve their public-facing benefits and services through AI tools. The spending deal, however, doesn’t put any funding behind this goal.

“Congress recognizes the importance of improving customer satisfaction for constituents seeking information about benefits and government resources,” appropriators wrote in their joint explanatory statement. “The agreement encourages the GSA to work with federal agencies to develop improved customer experiences when interfacing with their government on its progress toward issuing this guidance.”

State Department funding intact, spares independent agencies from elimination 

Lawmakers are proposing modest budget cuts for the State Department, despite going through its largest reorganization in decades.

The minibus gives the State Department a $9.7 billion operating budget, an essentially flat budget compared to the department’s current $9.8 billion operations budget.

The minibus requires the State Department to give Congress quarterly updates on staffing levels, hiring and attrition for its civil service and Foreign Service ranks. The State Department laid off nearly 1,350 employees last summer. It also eliminated or consolidated hundreds of offices and programs.

The bill also rejects the Trump administration’s deep cuts planned for some independent agencies — including the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which includes Voice of America. But it doesn’t address the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development last year. All USAID programs spared from elimination have been folded into the State Department.

Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the spending package reflects “tough negotiations under extremely challenging circumstances,” but is a “significantly better outcome than another yearlong continuing resolution.”

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the “appropriations process continues to move forward and advance priorities of the American people.”

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said the minibus rejects “extreme cuts to humanitarian aid programs.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said that with this spending package, lawmakers “are advancing President Trump’s vision of a golden age defined by security, responsibility, and growth.”

The post Shrinking federal office space, more agencies spared from major cuts: Highlights from latest spending bills first appeared on Federal News Network.