GSA touts new procurement automation tool

The CODY bot, a tool used to streamline procurement processes at the General Services Administration, is now ready for use across the federal landscape after three years of buildout.

CODY aggregates prerequisite data into a checklist, according to GSA officials familiar with the tool, enabling staffers to see if a vendor has met all representation requirements — ensuring there is no active federal debt against a vendor, and no exclusionary or responsibility cautions to trigger notifications.

The agency primarily tracks how many hours the bot saves in a year rather than the costs saved, according to one of the officials. GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian posted on X that the bot’s completion resulted in the cancellation of a $423,000 contract.

“President Trump’s GSA is at the forefront of leveraging technology for government to produce tools that boost productivity and our employee’s potential,” Ehikian said in a statement to FedScoop.

The bot was built in-house, an agency official said. Work began on CODY — a nod to the Irish origins of the name meaning “helpful one” — in 2022.

GSA is sharing the automation code for CODY with other agencies that use Robotic Process Automation programs and “similar RPA technology,” sources familiar with the project said. 

Automation software from UiPath that mimics actions that an individual would perform on a computer was used to help build CODY, a GSA official said. Another agency source said that the CODY team built the tool — in part — within side applications like Python, Adobe and some Google scripting.

“All of those combined to make one process that is, on the surface, automation,” one of the officials said. “It’s a bot, what everybody commonly refers to as a roboto or a bot. But in the background, there’s lots of different technologies that are going into it.”

Another official said that from an acquisition perspective, the CODY bot is an automation tool that doesn’t need to be tailored by different agencies just for use. Everyone in acquisition across the government is able to get the same benefit from the tool as is, regardless of the system used within an agency. 

“Some of our automations are very system specific and would need to be tailored for another agency to use some of them quite substantially,” the official said. “But CODY is the perfect example of an automation that everyone is doing it exactly the same way across acquisition in the federal government.”

Sources familiar with the project confirmed that the tool was first showcased during GSA’s first Friday demo day, a new internal demonstration program at the agency where offices can show how they’re using software and technology. 

The inaugural demo day followed an announcement from Technology Transformation Services Director Thomas Shedd that TTS would face a 50% reduction in staff. 

The Washington Post reported that Shedd said during a meeting that he needed “wins to defend,” with DOGE representatives on the lookout for notable achievements. 

Before demo days were announced, Shedd said the GSA would only take on work that was statutorily required and aligned with Trump administration priorities. 
Last week, GSA announced internally that there would be more staff cuts to TTS, including to the Office of Regulatory and Oversight Systems program.