Q&A: Mary Davie

Written by Harrison Donnelly

MIT 2011 Volume: 15 Issue: 4 (May)

Mary Davie is the assistant commissioner for the Office of Integrated Technology Services (ITS) in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS).

The Federal Acquisition Service provides buying platforms and acquisition services to federal, state and local governments for everything from office supplies to motor vehicles to information technology and telecommunications products and services.

As the ITS assistant commissioner, Davie is responsible for the largest fee-for-service IT procurement and services operation in the U.S. government. She leads a highly skilled and diverse workforce that manages more than 7,000 contracts, providing access to relevant and timely IT and telecommunications products, services and solutions to defense and civilian agencies, as well as to state, local and tribal governments.

Before her current position, Davie served as assistant commissioner for Assisted Acquisition Services, responsible for managing the acquisition of $3.5 billion in information technology and professional services products, services and solutions to federal agencies worldwide.

Davie has also served as the acting assistant commissioner for marketing and business development in FAS. She led business development and marketing efforts intended to increase agency awareness and satisfaction with GSA products, services and solutions. She was responsible for developing strategy, planning for new business, and leading teams to develop customer-focused, integrated solutions.

An active advocate of the use of Web 2.0 and social media tools to improve government acquisition, Davie was a founding member of the Better Buy Project and has contributed to the Better Buy Blog. Davie began her career with GSA in 1989. She has two Bachelor of Science degrees in business finance and business management from Virginia Tech, and a Master of Business Administration with a focus in technology management from the University of Phoenix.

Davie was interviewed by MIT Editor Harrison Donnelly.

Q: What is the mission of the Office of Integrated Technology Services?

A: ITS’s mission is to excel at providing customers easy access to IT solutions through quality industry partners, with the goal of reducing acquisition time, costs and risks and helping the government fulfill its IT-related mission requirements. We also work closely with agencies, such as in the case of the Future COMSATCOM Services Acquisition [FCSA] program, when they have specific needs that may overlap with and benefit the rest of government at the same time.

In total, we do about $24 billion in flow-through in IT- and network-services-related solutions for the federal government, as well as state and local government support. I like to say that people should think about us more broadly than just an organization that develops IT and telecommunications contracts. Really, it’s about how we add value and help structure solutions specific to an agency’s needs that also could support government more broadly.

Our vision is to achieve “Great Government through Technology.”

Q: Understanding that your office serves all federal agencies, could you give readers an overview of your work with the military in particular?

A: The Department of Defense is the largest FAS customer in pretty much every area. That’s true in my office as well. Some of the things that FAS has focused on and supported DoD with include logistics support in Afghanistan, providing supplies and working with organizations such as the Defense Logistics Agency to get supplies to the warfighter. We have a General Supplies and Services organization storefront in Kuwait, for example.

We look across defense procurement and acquisition policy broadly to see how we can provide DoD with IT solutions either through our contracts or the Assisted Acquisition Services program. We work closely with DoD on implementing the Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy [DPAP] office guidance and policy. When DoD is deciding what kind of contract vehicle to use or if they need acquisition assistance, we can ensure that we are lock-step with them.

As far as our Alliant government-wide acquisition contracts [GWACs], Air Force is our largest customer. We’re seeing an uptick in DoD use of Alliant and our other GWACs. The Navy just issued some guidance that approved the Alliant and Alliant Small Business GWACs as a strategic source of supply for consideration, alongside their Seaport-e contract.

In addition, the VETS contract is aimed at small, disadvantaged, veteran-owned businesses, and we’re working on the VETS-II contract. That’s a very important contract for us. It provides all-government access to veterans in the IT community. The VETS GWAC was specifically created to help strengthen opportunities for small technology firms owned by service-disabled veterans and to help DoD agencies reach their socioeconomic goals.

Network Services is another one of our programs that works very closely with DoD. We’re delivering services through our 11 regional offices, as well as in the territories. The satellite work we’re doing with the Defense Information Systems Agency [DISA] is supported through our Schedule 70 program, as well as indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity [IDIQ] contracts to focus on their unique requirements.

Q: This issue of MIT also contains a guide to GSA IT acquisition services. What message would you most like to emphasize to those military and industry readers who receive it and keep it as a reference?

A: If you look across all the solutions contained in the guide, it’s really the full range of IT and telecommunications support services that an agency may need. We like to say that the solutions that we have in place can easily meet more than 80 percent of the government’s IT needs. That applies to DoD as well.

Some of what we have heard from our DoD customers around the country is the misconception that they are not able to take advantage of our contracts. We’ve worked closely with DPAP, which has issued guidance that DoD customers absolutely can use GSA solutions, and are encouraged to do so when it’s in the best interests of the department. We even create these solutions with DoD in mind.

If you look at the Alliant GWAC, it was created on not only the federal enterprise architecture, but also the DoD enterprise architecture standards. We have also worked closely with DoD to develop requirements for our E-mail-as-a-Service offering, including the ability to handle Secret email in the cloud. We’re not just creating solutions based on what we think the latest need is, but with very close communication with folks from DoD CIO offices, acquisition offices and chief financial officers, to meet DoD’s specific IT needs.

We really believe that ITS’ portfolio of solutions today runs the full gamut, including cloud computing, data center consolidation and sustainability. It’s just a matter of working with our DoD customers to help them figure out the best solution for each individual requirement.

Q: Why should military agencies work through your programs rather than other available acquisition vehicles?

A: It’s up to each DoD program and buyer to do the analysis of their specific requirements on a case-by-case basis. My background is in assisted acquisition services, where we help agencies with the many choices and options available. It comes down to looking at what you are trying to do, in what time period, and what industry partners you would like to give the opportunity to compete. You look at what kind of requirements you have and what type of contracting it lends itself to.

If you look at a GSA schedule or GWAC, those are different solutions for different requirements. Schedules are about procuring commercial services and products. GWACs can be more flexible. You have access to 59 contractors on Alliant, for example, all of which are highly qualified IT companies. You can do any kind of contracting— cost type, firm fixed-price or a combination of the two. You can get the ODCs [Other Direct Costs] you need that are integral to the project on that contract.

There are definitely choices on solutions. Before an agency considers putting in place an entirely new contract, they should focus on what is already out there. Instead of taking the many months to put a new contract in place and administer it, as well as the internal cost and the cost to industry, agencies can just focus on the task order.

GSA provides more than access to contracts. We can also help agencies do scope reviews and determine which contract would be most appropriate. We provide templates so that agencies are not trying to figure out on their own how to structure the task order for the first time. We can help with terms and conditions, and there is flexibility for DoD customers to put their own specific terms and conditions in those contracts.

If customers need additional acquisition expertise, we have Assisted Acquisition Services, which uses these contracts constantly. They can help with everything from requirements analysis, market research, and making an acquisition strategy determination, all the way through conducting proposal evaluations, making the award, and even doing after-award project management.

GSA solutions are about the entire spectrum of the acquisition life cycle. It’s not just that we have a lot of contracts out there. We’re really putting contracts in place with the services around them, to help agencies get what they need.

Q: A recent industry workshop indicated concerns with the FCSA program, which GSA developed along with DISA. How would you assess the rollout and next steps for this program?

A: First let me say that the GSA leadership is very pleased with the progress of the FCSA program and our partnership with DISA. What we did with DISA was to look at our expiring satellite contracts, and the contracts DISA had, and saw that there were plenty of options. We are able to create custom solutions with pieces specific to DISA but also meet 90 percent of what federal agencies are buying in this space.

We now have 10 contractors under the Schedule 70 program, and DoD has recently competed 37 task orders for satellite bandwidth. We are seeing an uptick not only in interest, but also in the solutions that we’re putting in place with the IDIQs coming online. It’s a matter of persuading people to migrate over.

It’s probably true everywhere that when you put out a contract, it’s change. People need to understand the contract vehicle, how to use it, and what it can provide. When they see the price, they may say, “That’s a lot more than we were paying.” But often, especially with the GSA schedule programs, those prices are negotiated as a starting point, from which additional discounts can be sought.

Despite some industry concerns, satellite service pricing is actually in line with market expectations. Average pricing for the awarded task orders is consistent with increases in market pricing from the 2006 prices for previous task orders with similar requirements.

When you have a specific requirement that you’re going to place under a GSA schedule contract, that’s where you get into the real cost negotiations, because you have specific terms and conditions defined. You’ve got a delivery point, the requirements and needed outcomes defined, and you can get into negotiating the best price for your requirement. You have some task orders on the DISA contract that are coming to the end of life, so they will need to be reworked and re-competed under this new solution set. It’s standard that when you put in place a new contract, there’s going to be some transition time associated with new orders being place against it.

Q: From your perspective as a major business partner of the military, what changes can you observe in the military market for information technology?

A: We’re all facing a lot of similar challenges across government. I know DoD is very cost conscious. We’re all facing budget cuts, and looking at different ways of contracting for IT. When we start talking about things like cloud services, data center consolidation, sustainability and security, all of those things apply across the board.

DoD is such a large buyer with such a critical mission that we are ensuring that we work closely with the DoD customer community to help solve their needs. We work with those ideas in mind—that we have shrinking budgets and have to find more efficient ways to do contracting, as well as to better define our outcomes and better develop relationships with the industry partners that ultimately deliver the solutions.

If I look at my organization today, with Networx, GWACs and things like the Smart- Buy/DoD Enterprise Software Initiative, it’s really about evolution, and how our solutions need to evolve to meet changing market needs and the changing government environment. We're going to continue to leverage the solutions that we’ve got in place today, because they’re broad enough to take advantage of things like cloud computing. We look very broadly, and then it’s just a matter of bringing in the right people with the right technical skills to help structure those solutions.

I want DoD to know that GSA is ready to be its primary acquisition partner for budget-conscious solutions.

Q: You have been a prominent proponent of the role of social media technology in government acquisition. What is your vision for what this technology can accomplish?

A: How much time do we have? This is kind of my passion. I have an IT and acquisition background, but I don’t know how I came to be such a user of social media. Maybe it’s my personality—I’m open and outgoing, and I saw this as an incredibly effective and potent way to be able to communicate broadly. To me, it started with the fact that we now have platforms that enable cross communication and collaboration with people you may not have met before or would not have had the opportunity to meet in any other way.

I’ve been in government for 22 years, and I can say that through the use of collaborative technology and social media platforms, I’ve been able to connect with more people in industry and government than I ever had before. That’s interesting, because in GSA our whole mission is to work across industry and government agencies. I’ve been doing that for a long time, and had lots of contacts already. But this is an opportunity to be able to connect across government—because we all have the same challenges and are buying the same things.

You hear about the shrinking acquisition work force and the challenges we have with skills, the complexity in our buying, and the increase in the number of buys that we’re doing. There has got to be a better way not only to share information, but also to reach out to industry to say we really need your help.

Right now we’re focused on how to reach a broader industry audience to help in the pre-RFP stage, with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy’s [OFPP] MythBusters campaign and the federal CIO’s IT reform plan point number 25—standing up methods of communication to increase collaboration so that the government gets better requirements up front and better outcomes at the end. We’re doing that here in ITS. We recently kicked off planning for our Network Services 2020 program, which is the future of government telecommunications. We’re using the BetterBuy Wiki to get input and ideas, and we just launched another wiki for an IT commodity buying center.

There is tremendous opportunity to use tools like wikis, blogs and Twitter to put out broadcast announcements about what we’re doing—everything from a specific acquisition to what is going on in the world of IT solutions. There are webinar tools, which you could potentially use to do industry days over the Web. These tools would not replace all of the tools and methods we use today; they augment them and help us reach broader audiences. We’re looking at all those things in the acquisition life cycle, to get better information and make better buys.

Q: How can your office help military and other agencies cope with tightened budgets?

A: We’ve talked a lot about the cost-effectiveness of using contracts that are already in place as well as the services we can provide around those. The SmartBuy program is an example where we’ve worked with the DoD Enterprise Software Initiative to put in place blanket purchase agreements [BPAs] for different categories of software, for things like database management, network management and geospatial.

We’ve had a couple hundred million dollars in spend across the SmartBUY BPAs. The government spends about $11 billion on software each year, so a couple of hundred million doesn’t sound like a lot. But we have realized a cost avoidance of $1 billion, which is a huge savings to the American taxpayer.

We’re working with DoD and OFPP on an initiative under the federal strategic sourcing umbrella that will allow us to reach more government and software providers, and look at how that impacts things like what we’re doing with software-as-a-service and cloud. These initiatives become very tightly woven with a big focus on aggregation and leveraging.

GSA has just put in place an office supply strategic sourcing set of BPAs that is really starting to take off. We get tiered volume discounts, so the more agencies come to use these contracts, the better the deals are going to be for everyone. We have one for express ground delivery services, and we’re working on one in my portfolio on wireless plans and devices that may include smartphones, but also tablet devices. Those are some ways that we’re specifically influencing the prices we’re paying, and so enabling agencies to use those dollars in other ways.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?

A: We appreciate the partnership that we have with DoD. It’s a very important customer for us, and everything we do is with the DoD customer in mind, to support the warfighter. We look forward to continuing to work with DoD—me especially, as I evolve this program and portfolio in terms of what we can do. ♦

Back to Top