Bibb: GSA focused on critical issues
Loss of revenue, reorganization issues and improving relations with Congress are among the most important topics for the agency's survival, acting administrator tells colleagues.
A strategy group of General Services Administration executives is focusing on five areas that it considers critical to the agency’s present and future, including the agency’s relationship with Congress and the proliferation of acquisition vehicles popping up across the government, according to a GSA memo.
Acting GSA administrator David Bibb, in an April 12 memo to GSA employees, listed the five key areas as:
"Under these circumstances, new vision and strategies are imperatives for progress and even survival," Bibb wrote. But such periods of change have caused the agency to emerge stronger, he added.
Also in the memo, Bibb wrote that he met with Lurita Alexis Doan, President Bush's nominee for the GSA administrator post.
“I am very, very pleased with the president’s choice. She is obviously more than capable, knows GSA well (having served as a GSA contractor through our schedules program), is extremely knowledgeable about many technical aspects of our businesses, and has a contagious enthusiasm for GSA and its mission,” he wrote.
Bibb said he considered Doan’s nomination and the approval of FAS reorganization “great news.”
The decreased revenue hurting the agency’s business lines. GSA is involved in "extensive and intensive" talks with the agency's key customer, the Defense Department, and with the oversight agency, the Office of Management and Budget;
The creation of the Federal Acquisition Service, which recently received congressional approval;
The proliferation of acquisition vehicles developing across the government in the past several years and the improvement of its own contracting services;
An improved and more strategic approach toward relations with Congress by being closer to the agency's oversight committees; and
Relations with the federal courts, including rent issues and legislation introduced at the courts’ request.
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