While previous administrations have pledged to restructure the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), a top official from the General Services Administration (GSA) said on Thursday that “this time is different” due in part to advances in technology.
Josh Gruenbaum, who heads GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), joined the Leidos Supplier Innovation & Technology Symposium on Aug. 7 in Oxon Hill, Md., where he shared an update on the Trump administration’s Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO).
The RFO aims to modernize the FAR, which is the rulebook that Federal agencies follow when purchasing everything from software to military equipment.
The effort – directed under an April executive order from President Donald Trump – is being led by the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) in partnership with GSA, the Department of Defense (DoD), and NASA as members of the FAR Council.
“This initiative could not be going at the pace and with the success that it is without the folks over at OMB OFPP, our colleagues over at NASA and DoD, who, you know, it’s consistent collaboration, meetings, and discussions in a really productive way, and people are taking it seriously,” Gruenbaum said.
Part of the reason why people are taking the FAR overhaul seriously, Gruenbaum believes, is because of the Trump administration “being business-focused.”
He explained that the administration is looking to lower the barrier for smaller, cutting-edge businesses to be able to do business with the Federal government – many of which would not be able to afford the time and money it takes to navigate all the existing hurdles.
“Because of the folks who are around this and the business common-sense lens that we are all being encouraged at the very top from the White House to deploy, I feel really good about it,” Gruenbaum said, adding, “I also feel really good about it because technology is different today.”
The FAS chief explained that artificial intelligence and agentic tools can help reduce some of the “really tough, laborious, monotonous human labor” involved in the acquisition process.
“Subject matter experts still very much need to be involved in this process, legal, policymakers, business folks, but to be able to lower and go faster through agentic tooling with the lens that this administration is encouraging, I do think this time is different, and I do think it’s going really well,” Gruenbaum said.
Leidos CEO Tom Bell, who moderated the conversation, stated that his company is fully supportive of the Federal government working “better, faster, and cheaper” to deliver services to Americans.
“On my earnings call earlier this week, I talked about the fact that we welcome a more empowered GSA, and we welcome a revitalized FAR that is better, faster, and cheaper for the American public to get what they need out of the Federal government,” Bell said. “So, good on you. Keep going.”
As for what’s next for GSA, Gruenbaum said that the goal is to get “GSA back to its core roots” of being the back office of procurement in the Federal government.
Going back to those roots, he said, has allowed the agency to roll out initiatives such as OneGov, which is aimed at modernizing and streamlining Federal IT acquisitions.
Under the initiative, GSA has recently announced Federal agency service pricing discounts with Oracle, Elastic, Google, Adobe, Salesforce, Docusign, OpenAI, and Amazon Web Services. Gruenbaum teased that those announcements “are going to continue with a very robust pipeline.”
“We’re kind of restructuring what FAS looks like to be able to retrofit the agency and the subpart to be able to answer those calls. But then, what’s really exciting on top of it is all of the systems and technology optimizations that are going to be overlaid on that to make these things run on a more sensible way with cutting-edge technology,” he said.
“So, what’s in store? I mean, what’s in store for us is to continue to clear up the cavity because there’s more work to do, and this is going to be an administration-long effort,” Gruenbaum concluded.