The General Services Administration has released a request for information that could allow the agency to track cloud-buying trends across the federal government.
The RFI is requesting feedback from vendors about how and what agencies are buying in respect to cloud services, with that information possibly leading to cloud services being given their own special item number (SIN) under GSA’s Schedule 70.
According to GSA, Schedule 70 is the most widely used acquisition vehicle for government IT, providing access to more than 5,000 industry partners.
“When people buy things, they may buy this product or that product which is part of their cloud, but it’s not [listed as] cloud,” said Maynard Crum, acting director of GSA’s Office of Strategic Programs.
Currently, Schedule 70 does not allow the GSA to track purchases under a “cloud” description.
Crum said that most cloud products are purchased under task orders – some $800 million worth— and a SIN will allow GSA to track products purchased as well as financial information tied to those purchases.
“While commercial cloud computing services are currently being sold on IT Schedule 70 through several different SINs, the cloud computing services market is sufficiently mature to offer differentiated and vetted cloud computing services through a single SIN,” the RFI states. “This effort would support the OMB ‘Cloud First’ policy by enabling agencies to take full advantage of cloud computing benefits to maximize capacity utilization, improve IT flexibility and responsiveness, and minimize cost.”
The RFI went live on FedBizOpps Wednesday afternoon. GSA will take comments through August 6.
