EXCLUSIVE: GSA to reduce tech services arm by 50%, eliminate non-statutory work

All non-critical and non-statutorily required work will cease at the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services as part of a 50% reduction of the office, according to Director Thomas Shedd.

In his prepared remarks for a Thursday afternoon town hall, which were obtained by FedScoop, Shedd said that to deliver technology at GSA in a “more focused and streamlined way,” moving forward TTS will support only work that is required by statute and policy, fits into the Trump administration’s definition of critical, and is prioritized by the leadership at GSA “in accordance with the priorities of the administration.” Everything else will be eliminated, per Shedd.

“What this means is that in short order TTS will be smaller in size – at least 50% smaller,” he said.

Additionally, any contracts that support the work that falls outside of the established bounds “will be terminated” and any job functions that are deemed non-essential will be cut.

“This process has started,” Shedd said in the prepared remarks. “You’ve already had to say goodbye to some of your GSA and TTS colleagues,” he said in reference to ongoing layoffs that have impacted the organization. 

He continued: “I will also note that to get towards our target reduction number, even if a product is noted as continuing it doesn’t mean that team won’t see a reduction.”

The prioritized and remaining TTS programs include Login.gov, FedRAMP, Cloud.gov, statutorily required websites, the Integrated Award Environment, the Office of Regulatory Oversight, the Centers of Excellence, the Presidential Innovation Fellowship Program, the U.S. Digital Corps, operations and other “special projects.” 

Shedd said that Login.gov will continue to receive support “in this moment” to accelerate the team’s roadmap and specifically focus on potential changes to “unblock the fraud detection work that the team wants to do and is ready to do.” 

TTS is also looking to revamp FedRAMP to “unlock more throughput,” with Shedd pointing to the need to onboard more software into the government. Additionally, he said that the barrier for cloud products into the ecosystem needs to be low. 

“We want to have economies of scale with our purchasing power and our infrastructure engineering investment across the federal government,” Shedd said. “Cloud is the way to do that. Specific to infrastructure services, GSA leadership is thinking through what GSA’s government-wide role in cloud technology will look like, and Cloud.gov will be a part of that.”

Following the reductions in force (RIFs) at the TTS-managed U.S. Digital Corps, Shedd said that the program, along with the Presidential Innovation Fellowship program, will both continue. 

Shedd also said that the remaining team at the whole of TTS, following the agency’s reduction of full-time employees, will be employed to support the list of prioritized programs and projects that he listed. 

“It will be hard, and it is hard to submit to this process – but it is what must happen,” he said. 

A GSA official told FedScoop that the TTS team should be a smaller team that is explicitly focused on building products and services that make sense to be built internally.

It is understood that GSA is looking to offset repetitive processes in everything that it does, whether or not it’s critical, following suit with President Donald Trump’s directives to focus the government on only critical core services. 

This past weekend, 18F — an internal team of engineers and tech consultants that worked to develop open-source tools to improve digital services government-wide — was shuttered as part of the ongoing RIF efforts.

In his remarks, Shedd pointed wholly to metric-based reasoning for shuttering the office, saying that 18F “was not and has not been fully cost coverable.” He stated that in fiscal 2024, the program was short approximately $18 million and in fiscal 2025, 18F lost $5 million due to a shortfall in recoverable dollars from partner agencies. 

“Despite the losses the team was incurring, 18F with their recent hourly prices were on the very high end of the technology consulting market,” Shedd said. 

He continued: “With a planned hourly price increase to get closer to break even, 18F would have been some of the most expensive technology consultants in the United States and cost partner agencies far more than they would spend by using external consultants.”