Performance summary

Mission and Vision

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Agency Performance Goals

The U. S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) strategic goals are aligned with its four major program areas: real estate, acquisition, technology, and shared services. What follows is an overview of key performance trends and insights for each of the four strategic goals, along with GSA’s fiscal year (FY) 2020–2021 Agency Priority Goals. A complete analysis of GSA’s performance in FY 2020 will be included in the FY 2020 Annual Performance Report, which will be published in February 2021.

Strategic Goal #1: Real Estate
Save taxpayer money through better management of Federal real estate

Strategic Objectives:

• Reduce the cost of the Federal inventory of real property.
• Establish GSA as a more cost-effective provider of real estate services for all agencies

GSA is meeting its targets to negotiate leases below average market rates, reduce energy costs, and deliver capital projects on schedule and on budget. GSA’s Lease Cost Avoidance Plan, which was implemented in FY 2018 and focuses on renegotiating longer leases where favorable terms can be obtained, continues to yield favorable results; in FY 2020, aggregate lease costs are 12.6 percent below average market value. GSA also realized a sharp reduction in energy use in FY 2020 that can be attributed to warmer winter temperatures and reduced building occupancy due to COVID-19. GSA continues to surpass expectations for delivering capital projects, with 93 percent of projects currently on schedule and on budget.

GSA will likely miss its performance targets for vacancy rates and operating costs associated with cleaning and maintenance. Vacant space in inventory remains slightly higher than the target of 3 percent, due in part to the Reduce the Footprint and workspace consolidation initiatives, which can result in GSA holding on to vacant space in order to implement longer-term strategic plans with customers. While GSA is slightly above its target, GSA’s vacant space rate still compares favorably to the private sector.

Cleaning and maintenance costs fell short of the 80 percent target for staying within market range. GSA is undertaking a nationwide effort to examine the methods and tools used to procure building maintenance and custodial services in order to lower operating costs without affecting service levels to GSA’s Federal tenants.

While GSA remains diligent in its efforts to decrease the size of the real estate portfolio, GSA realized an increase of 1.6 million rentable square feet (RSF) in FY 2020. In FY 2020, GSA continued to carry 1.9 million RSF of temporary leased space associated with the 2020 Census. In addition, the Federally owned inventory saw increases from the addition of the Department of Transportation headquarters in Washington DC (1.5 million RSF), the transfer of 11 assets totaling 600 thousand RSF from the Department of State for their National Foreign Affairs Training Center, and the activation of building modernization projects. GSA will continue to work with departments and agencies to improve space utilization and lower their real estate costs.

*KPI is aligned to an FY 2020-2021 Agency Priority Goal.
**Third-quarter results (end of June)
↓ denotes that lower value is the desired direction

Strategic Goal #2: Acquisition
Establish GSA as the premier provider of efficient and effective acquisition solutions across the Federal Government

Strategic Objectives:

• Design and deliver GSA products and services that yield measurable savings while aligning with customer mission objectives and changing market demand.
• Make it easier to do business with the Government by simplifying processes and streamlining access for our customers and suppliers.
• Enhance customer access to qualified small and socio-economic businesses.

GSA provides efficient and effective acquisition services across the Federal Government. To make doing business with the Federal Government easier, GSA consolidated its Multiple Award Schedule (MAS), which is a long-term Government-wide contract with commercial companies that provides access to millions of commercial products and services at fair and reasonable prices. Since the consolidation began, 99 percent of vendors have transitioned to the consolidated MAS and MAS sales continue to grow. As a result, both supplier satisfaction and customer loyalty scores improved in FY 2020. A strong partnership between Government and the private sector helps ensure that customer agencies have access to a robust market of qualified vendors.

GSA strives to provide customers with widespread access to small business, including economically disadvantaged and women-owned small businesses. GSA’s MAS customers continue to work with small businesses at a rate substantially higher than GSA’s target of 33 percent. GSA also met its acquisition goals for contract dollars awarded to small businesses and socio-economic businesses through prime contracting. In August 2020, it was announced GSA received an “A+” from the Small Business Administration (SBA) for the FY 2019 Small Business Procurement Scorecard, making it 10 consecutive years that GSA has earned an “A” or “A+” rating. FY 2020 SBA ratings will be published in Spring 2021.

*KPI is aligned to an FY 2020-2021 Agency Priority Goal.

Strategic Goal #3: Technology
Improve the way Federal agencies buy, build, and use technology

Strategic Objectives:

• Lead Government-wide technology modernization initiatives.
• Drive more efficient and innovative Government procurement of technology services.
• Lead implementation of technical standards, policies, and strategies.

GSA is making noteworthy progress in leading Government-wide technology modernization initiatives. The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is one of GSA’s critical technology offerings. FedRAMP-authorized vendors offer cloud services that allow Federal agencies to securely and quickly meet their mission needs. Through FY 2020, GSA exceeded its cumulative performance goal by reaching 193 FedRAMP customer agency system authorizations.

GSA also saw an increase in the percent of major information technology (IT) project spend across the Government with GSA involvement. In FY 2020, GSA was involved in 29 percent, or $2.6 billion, of existing major IT projects where the agency was not previously involved. This represents a meaningful increase from FY 2019 and FY 2018 where 23 percent and 22 percent were respectively achieved.

GSA continues to spearhead other key initiatives, including Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS), Centers of Excellence (CoEs), and cloud.gov.

• EIS is the $50 billion, 15-year, best-in-class acquisition vehicle that serves as a one-stop shop for infrastructure modernization for telecommunications and IT. EIS services and solutions include: carrier Ethernet, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), unified communications, cloud services, managed security services, wireless and mobility services, software-defined networking, and Internet Protocol 6 (IPV6).
• CoEs are established with partner agencies to accelerate IT modernization across the Government, improve the public experience, and increase operational efficiencies. To accomplish these objectives, the IT CoE centralizes top Government technology talent, leverages private-sector best practices, and operates with a teaming mindset to collaborate across Government departments and agencies. Based on a phased approach, the goal is to build capability and then allow agencies to manage the ongoing effort. In FY 2020, GSA established 21 new CoEs in partnership with organizations such as the Department of Labor, Government Accountability Office, National Institutes of Health, NewPay Program Management Office, GSA Information Technology Category, and the Surface Transportation Board. The CoEs continue to be at the forefront of helping agencies initiate programs into enterprise data analytics and artificial intelligence prototypes.
• Cloud.gov provides agencies with rapid deployment and accelerates the authority to operate assessment for modern web applications. GSA launched the Cloud Information Center to support expanding agency use of cloud solutions and to provide agencies with acquisition guidance, templates, and policy documents to simplify procurement of cloud products and services.

GSA is also providing agencies with information, guidance, and tools that facilitate successful implementation of Federal policy on IT optimization. GSA rapidly supported agencies during the transition to mandatory telework due to COVID-19. GSA’s Identity and Trusted Access division provided assistance to Federal agencies to work through the challenges associated with onboarding and expiring Personal Identity Verification credentials in an environment of maximum telework. This assistance included educating executives on technically feasible solutions, making recommendations to the Office of Management and Budget, and coordinating with FAS and service providers to adapt to the new approaches.

Strategic Goal #4: Shared Services
Design and deliver expanded shared services within GSA and across the Federal Government to improve performance and save taxpayer money

Strategic Objectives:

• Develop new organizational capabilities to understand customer demand and deliver integrated offerings to support common business processes Government-wide.
• Promote adoption of shared services by agencies through policy, guidance, and benchmarking.
• Support the overall mission of GSA by investing in our employees and modeling how we deliver internal support services, while providing guidance across Government.

GSA currently provides a substantial number of shared services across Government, such as Assisted Acquisition Services (AAS), EIS, Travel Services, and Fleet Services. AAS and Travel Services (e.g., City Pair, e-Gov Travel Services, and FedRooms) are well established. AAS is a full-spectrum, cradle-to-grave acquisition project and financial management service provider that agencies can use to guide the procurement and acquisition processes for a broad array of services and products. EIS is growing rapidly as a means for agencies to modernize and realize cost efficiencies in their IT and telecommunications infrastructure.

Fleet management represents an opportunity for growth as a GSA-provided shared service. As part of the Agency Reform Plan, and with a strong commitment to fleet efficiency, GSA completed 11 fleet studies to determine if leasing vehicles from GSA is more cost-effective for participating agencies. These studies were conducted during FY 2018 and FY 2019, involving more than 190,000 vehicles owned by other agencies. In FY 2018 and FY 2019, GSA consolidated more than 3,500 agency-owned vehicles into its leased fleet. In FY 2020, GSA has consolidated an additional 1,597 vehicles, exceeding the annual target, even in light of mandatory telework orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. GSA will continue to work with interested agencies in removing administrative barriers that may impede progress toward fleet vehicle consolidation.

GSA continues to make progress toward establishing Government-wide standards for mission support functions following the Federal Integrated Business Framework (FIBF). The FIBF enables the Federal Government to better coordinate and document common business needs across agencies. Business standards are critical to establishing shared solutions and services; once there is cross-agency consensus on standards, the Government can converge on a common solution. In FY 2020, GSA has moved 21 components to the next stage of the FIBF standards development process. With multiple functional areas achieving initial baselines in FY 2020, GSA, in collaboration with the Business Standards Council, focused on agreement on cross-functional, end-to-end business process touchpoints. These help ensure agencies have definitions and organizational buy-in around the connections and hand-offs between functional areas.

The quality of GSA’s internal shared services remains strong and has improved employee satisfaction for the third consecutive year (from 5.16 in FY 2018 to 5.49 in FY 2020). GSA’s employee satisfaction with the services provided by the agency’s administrative functions (IT, Human Resources, Finance, and Acquisition Management) is among the highest for CFO Act agencies and continues to improve each year. FY 2020 accomplishments include earning an “A+” on the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act scorecard; automating thousands of hours of transactional work in the finance function and across the agency to free up valuable time for higher-value work; improving workforce planning (100 percent of GSA organizations progressed at least one level on the Workforce Planning Maturity Model in FY 2020); and investments in training and technology that allowed GSA to seamlessly transition to a fully virtual workforce when the COVID-19 pandemic began. GSA maintains its position as a resourceful incubator of innovative solutions for shared mission-support services.