GSA’s OneGov strategy won quick raves from federal IT leaders. Will it have staying power?

Nearly a year ago, the General Services Administration set out to redefine how the government buys technology products and services through a new contracting vehicle dubbed OneGov. 

In about nine months, the GSA struck nearly two dozen OneGov deals with technology firms offering their products at significant discounts. As the initiative heads into the one-year mark, IT leaders are reflecting on the first chapter with praise, but also confusion over how the program works and its long-term viability in the government IT space. 

Deals were rolled out last year as new and old technology companies looked to expand their footprint in government. New entrants to the government — like OpenAI and xAI — started by introducing government-specific product suites that eventually evolved into the vendor offerings of OneGov.

The strategy, launched last April, came amid the Trump administration’s simultaneous push to cut federal spending and reduce the workforce, while also rapidly integrating artificial intelligence and other technologies into everyday government workflows. 

The GSA has touted these deals as part of this mission, offering agencies a streamlined approach to major AI vendors like Anthropic and Perplexity, to longtime government contractors such as Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks. Unconventional companies like Uber and cybersecurity firms have also struck deals. 

The deals, often touting near-zero prices, are drawing excitement from the IT community, but also prompting debate over whether this is just a honeymoon phase. 

Federal IT leaders warm to OneGov

The early days of the initiative were marked by mostly positive reaction from both inside and outside government, with many agency chief information officers signaling they were ready to make the jump. Following a rush of deals in the second half of 2025, this winter brought the first series of supposed success stories of the early OneGov deals. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, for example, was the first agency to use the OneGov deal with Amazon Web Services, which offered agencies direct incentive credits totaling up to $1 billion for cloud services and modernization support. 

GDIT, a systems integrator managing CMS’s hybrid multicloud environment, assisted in the deal by onboarding agency workloads to the cloud with the pre-negotiated OneGov rate. 

Patrick Newbold, CMS’s chief information officer, said during a FedScoop-produced GDIT Emerge event earlier this month that the decision to use the OneGov vehicle was a “no-brainer.” 

“Simple question — would you rather 50 different agencies negotiate … for similar services? Or would you like one, on behalf of all of the federal government, and take advantage of the economies of scale?” Newbold said. 

CMS is also contracting with Oracle for its cloud infrastructure under a OneGov deal, Newbold noted. When asked how he facilitated the cultural shift for OneGov, Newbold said the agency “didn’t have a choice,” given that 160 million Americans rely on their services. 

“To me, it was not necessarily a risk,” Newbold said, adding the deal was “the change that we need to make.” 

The OneGov initiative aims to put GSA at the center of government IT purchasing, acting as the “one buyer” for federal agencies. For decades, agencies have negotiated separate contracts for the same software or services, often paying different prices for identical products. 

“That fragmentation drives up costs, slows modernization, and makes it hard to manage risks,” Heather Stier, an IT acquisition and vendor senior advisor at GSA, said during a panel at ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation ELC 2025 in National Harbor, Md., in December.  

By centralizing purchasing power at the GSA, agency leaders have framed the initiative as a way to reduce duplication and secure the best value for IT services. The GSA estimates agencies can save 70% to 90% on tools agencies already use.

OneGov is “more than pooling contracts,” Stier said, but rather changing how the federal government approaches technology acquisition as a whole. 

Brian Peltier, deputy chief information officer and chief AI officer for the Social Security Administration, was particularly complimentary about OneGov’s potential to speed adoption when speaking at the ACT-IAC event. 

OneGov is “going to change the game,” Peltier said. “We’ll have to start looking at, not just what do we want, but what’s out there on that marketplace that we can pull in quicker, because that speed to market is going to be more effective for us to deliver modernization.” 

At the Department of Transportation, the agency selected Google Workspace as its collaboration suite under a five-year contract, valued at $89 million. The contract was possible because of the OneGov deal savings, according to Google and Carahsoft executives. Initial users were moved to the workspace in about 22 days, according to the GSA, with the remaining 50,000 DOT workers expected to migrate this year. 

Hesitation lingers

Still, some former and current government IT officials said they are concerned that the contracting vehicle leaves agencies’ specific missions out of the equation and creates more confusion about which agency is responsible for holding technology firms accountable under their contracts. 

Mike Horton, who most recently served as the Department of Transportation’s acting chief artificial intelligence officer, emphasized contracts should be tied to agencies’ tailored needs, which vary widely across government. Under the OneGov model, GSA is responsible for crafting the blanket agreements, with pre-negotiated rates and standardized security terms included. 

“My contractor has to have a statement of work that is tied to what it is I need them to be able to do,” Horton said. “It can’t be a general statement of work for the entire federal government because I need them to do different things than what you need them to do, even though we’re using the same product.” 

Horton, who left the DOT in November, said the OneGov deals may boost “efficiency by consolidating the contract,” but could also lead to “operational inefficiency” if GSA contracting officers are between the agency and vendor.  

The former acting CAIO suggested this could muddy accountability if an agency needs assistance in enforcing the terms of a contract. 

“If you want me to be efficient, I have to have the hammer at the point where I need them to meet the goals, meet the weekly scrum that we’re doing [and] meet all of those requirements to my satisfaction in the contract,” Horton added.

Another current AI leader in government claimed GSA has long had customer service issues, warning that this could persist under the OneGov model. 

When “you have a problem, you’re calling somebody’s voicemail who’s not in your food chain, and they have no incentive to provide you with exceptional customer service,” the leader told FedScoop. 

Agencies’ independence

The GSA and those involved on the vendor side have pushed back on these concerns, arguing the relationship and communications between agencies and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) remain intact under these deals. 

Lawrence Hale, acting assistant commissioner for the GSA’s Office of Information Technology Category, wrote in a statement to FedScoop this month that the agency “does not see itself as a middle-man for day-to-day product support.” 

“Agencies continue to work directly with OEMs and their partners for implementation and operational support,” Hale wrote, adding the agency’s role is to “negotiate enterprise pricing, terms, and accountability up front — not to replace vendor support channels or agency relationships.” 

Mission-specific tasks, such as data use, integration, and deployment, remain at the agency level, according to Hale. 

Felipe Millon, the head of OpenAI’s government sales, echoed this sentiment in an interview with FedScoop last week. Aside from GSA’s role in the contractual paperwork and negotiated terms, Millon said government agencies are going directly to the company. 

“Agencies own their accountability and performance,” Millon said. 

A source involved in vendor discussions with GSA acknowledged there have been “whispers” of concern surrounding GSA “inserting themselves,” but noted this is not how the program was designed or implemented.

When something goes wrong with their platform, agencies “call us; they don’t call GSA,” said the source, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the nature of the initiative. 

The GSA, according to the source, “sort of views themselves as a conduit to get agencies what they need, but [in] the ultimate relationship and deployment and onboarding, there is no GSA person [acting as] a hall monitor in the room.” 

A government reseller executive, who asked to remain anonymous to be candid, said there may just be “confusion” in the market that has led to the “overcomplication” in how to use OneGov. To the executive, OneGov is still “like any other line item” on the GSA schedule.

“You’ve got the executive orders floating around out there, you’ve got all of the GSA press releases … lots of articles about OneGov … these agencies are sort of going, ‘Oh wait, this is huge,’ but is it?” the executive said. “They kind of miss the reality … it’s a very straightforward transaction from the government perspective.” 

Shifting tone on resellers’ role

As part of the push to simplify the IT acquisition process, GSA maintains the OneGov structure focuses on working directly with OEMs. From the start, the strategy’s leaders indicated the mission could disrupt the longtime role of value-added resellers. 

Nine months into the program, GSA leaders are shifting their tone, emphasizing that the transition may not happen as quickly as some expected. 

In June, Hale said the GSA was trying to “flip” the relationship between OEMs and resellers. But several of the early OneGov deals, like Salesforce for its Slack product, OpenAI, Tenable Cloud Security, Microsoft 365, and Google Gemini, involve Carahsoft, one of the largest government IT resellers. 

When pressed by FedScoop months later, Hale said the early OneGov deals were in partnership with resellers, noting that getting a major OEM on the GSA’s Multiple Award Schedule “takes time,” and their new roles are being worked out. 

“The OEMs don’t have the capabilities to do the roles that resellers did,” Hale told FedScoop at ACT-IAC’s December event. The GSA leader used cybersecurity as an example, a responsibility traditionally shared between OEMs and resellers. 

Hale later clarified in a statement to FedScoop this month that the role of resellers “hasn’t disappeared,” but rather it’s become “more focused and more intentional.” 

“Resellers and integrators continue to deliver critical services like implementation, customization, migration, training, compliance support, and cleared personnel,” he said, adding, GSA recognizes it is “a transition period.” 

“Shifting from long-standing contracting models to an enterprise approach takes time,” he said. 

The reseller executive said their company hasn’t seen a significant change yet. 

Millon acknowledged that most of OpenAI’s OneGov contracts to date still involve a reseller, noting “there’s a little bit of a balance” between the “desire and practical realities of how quick we can move.” 

He pointed to the company’s deal with the Department of Health and Human Services, which was the first agency to take advantage of its $1 OneGov offer. While the deal is through OneGov and Carahsoft, Millon said the ChatGPT-maker still “works very closely” with HHS. 

“We are still very much doing the training directly and enabling and providing support,” he said. Carahsoft is “providing the contracting vehicles and some of the scheduling and providing some support and some value-added services, but we’re still delivering the services.” 

Though several deals involve resellers, not all do. The OneGov deal with Perplexity AI, an AI-powered search engine, marked the first AI platform last November to sign a direct deal with the GSA and offer the product on the Multiple Award Schedule, rather than through a reseller. 

Notably, Perplexity is also one of three AI platforms to have received FedRAMP Low authorization after the GSA began prioritizing the cloud security review for AI companies. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise and API Platform, and Gemini for Government, also received Low authorizations in recent weeks. 

Pricing structure beyond initial AI deals remains unclear

As the AI deals rolled out last summer and fall, prices seemed to get lower with each deal as companies edged one another out. And while it is early, there’s little clarity on whether these deals will last beyond the initial offerings. 

OpenAI was the first to strike a deal of this kind, offering its ChatGPT Enterprise product for $1 per agency for one year last August. Anthropic followed with the same offer, which expires in August of this year. Elon Musk’s xAI is offering its Grok models for 42 cents for 18 months, while Google is charging agencies 47 cents for its AI platform through 2026. 

The price points quickly sparked concern over the potential for vendor lock-in, a past issue in the govtech space. 

“They’re trying to lock me into their product,” Horton said of the deals. “They’re trying to make me build infrastructure and workflows in my organization off of their product, so that later on, when it turns from $1 a year to being a million dollars a minute, that I’ll still be locked into them and it’ll take me too much time and effort to pull them out of the process.”

Agencies typically spend about 80% of their IT budgets on the operations and maintenance of existing IT systems, according to the Government Accountability Office. 

“If the platforms were eating the cost of integration, I would say, ‘yeah, it’s a great idea,’ but they’re not,” the previous AI leader said. 

Emily Murphy, a former GSA administrator, said these costs are not necessarily “hidden.” 

“Many of the OneGov deals represent steep discounts for licenses,” Murphy told FedScoop. “If an agency paid full price for the license, they’d still have to pay for the integration or maintenance if they needed it. Other deals offset costs by offering credits. Ultimately, a deal is only good if you get something you need for less than you were willing to pay for it.”

These deals followed a monthslong push by private technology executives to strengthen Silicon Valley’s once-tumultuous relationship with the Trump White House and, in turn, influence policy and government use. 

When asked about future pricing for OpenAI, Millon said the company can provide quotes to agencies, though he could not provide estimates to FedScoop due to the competitive nature of the space.

Larger agencies, like the Department of Veterans Affairs and HHS, are likely to receive better pricing than a commercial customer due to their scale, Millon said.

FedScoop reached out to other AI companies with OneGov offerings for insight into how their deals could evolve when the initial period expires, but did not hear back by publication time. 

A spokesperson for Microsoft, which signed a 36-month OneGov deal for discounted products, said the company is “committed” to the strategy, but did not provide specifics about post-expiration plans. 

Nevertheless, technology integrators are expected to remain in the process as either part of the contract or through “complementary arrangements,” Hale said. 

The early deals were intentionally time-bound to lower the barrier to entry, the GSA leader added, stating that the agency will evaluate demand, performance, and market conditions before deciding the path forward upon expiration. 

Looking ahead, GSA appears to be shifting toward other types of IT products in more recent OneGov deals, including some cybersecurity firms. Hale told FedScoop the AI deals allowed agencies to explore new capabilities at low risk, and as tools become integrated into workflows, cybersecurity becomes a central focus. 

Hale affirmed GSA sees OneGov lasting beyond any one administration, stating the strategy is “built on structural procurement principles” and is embedded in GSA’s statutory role.

“OneGov is being institutionalized as a durable way of doing business,” he added, “not a temporary initiative.”