An in depth look at interagency contracting

So I thought maybe we could just start.

So we're going to spend a lot of time on NASA Suite because it was just awarded and get your reflections, insights with regard to The whole process, but also what comes next and the task orders and that sort of thing.

But to start, I think it would be great to do a little history of interagency contracting and GWACs and how this all came to be where we are now.

Maybe it could – you learn the lessons of the past so you don't hopefully repeat them in the future maybe.

I don't know.

Anyway, so the push to consolidate sort of in a certain sense goes back in time to like the early 90s and even the 1980s, the idea that there's mandatory sources in a certain sense.

Maybe they're not going that far but you want to talk about how things used to be and how they've changed? Yeah.

Yeah.

And maybe we can look at the 90s because that's really when soup got started.

Because it's the new version that just got awarded is soup six.

So this is the sixth generation of the contract.

And soup got started in the 90s right before a lot of the federal acquisition regulation took effect during the Clinton administration.

And during the Clinton administration, there was this overarching notion of entrepreneurial government, that it would be great for there to be kind of competition in the contracting space.

And so the OMB at the time was kind of encouraging agencies.

to create vehicles.

And so NASA created SUP, and that really got going.

GSA was obviously creating its own contracts.

Department of Transportation had a GWAC.

The Commerce Department had one.

NIH got rolling with the CIOSP contracts.

So that was kind of encouraged.

At the same time, the individual agencies started creating their own vehicles.

And so there was this like massive Proliferation.

Proliferation of contract vehicles, many of which were kind of doing the same thing.

But in the late 90s in particular, this wasn't necessarily viewed as a bad thing.