GSA fully launches transactional data reporting, citing $20M in savings since last year
The General Services Administration is expanding its use of transactional data reporting to all purchases made through the agency’s multiple awards schedule after it generated more than $20 million in savings from a pilot started last year.
GSA announced Monday evening that it is initiating a “full implementation” of the transactional data reporting effort, which requires federal contractors to share data on government purchases made through the agency with the intent of driving better buying decisions.
The agency expanded its TDR reporting requirement last June to 62 additional acquisition categories, known as special item numbers, on top of 67 that had been required previously. GSA said at the time that it would look to build on that expansion in fiscal 2026 by requiring the data reporting universally for multiple award schedule purchases — as it has now done.
Last summer’s initial expansion “resulted in $20.2 million in annual cost avoidance,” GSA said in a press release. It expects that to reach “a projected $50 million with mandatory reporting fully established across the agency.”
Trump administration acquisition officials are leading the charge to unify and consolidate federal procurement under GSA, and they believe the TDR program will be key to understanding spending trends and streamlining governmentwide purchasing in line with that transformation.
“GSA is committed to executing President Trump’s Executive Order to consolidate procurement,” GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement. “This program mirrors what the private sector is already doing, and will lead to smarter purchasing, helping us streamline procurement.”
Moving to a broader, full implementation of transactional data reporting will “equip our contracting officers with comprehensive data on purchased items and their prices so they can negotiate effectively and serve as uncompromising fiduciaries of taxpayer dollars,” added Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service.
GSA established the TDR requirement in 2016. A decade into piloting the rule, the program has faced regular criticism from the agency’s Office of the Inspector General in roughly a half dozen audits since 2015. As recently as last July, the GSA IG published a report that cautioned against a full rollout of the program, saying the Federal Acquisition Service “has never effectively implemented TDR and has never made it functional,” citing “persistent issues with TDR data quality,” limited evidence of use in actual pricing decisions, a lack of price competition for orders below $250,000, and more.
