Tuesday Insight – April 11th, 2023: Will In-Depth Industry Input Stave Off Protests for GSA’s OASIS+ Contract?

Apr 16, 2023

The General Services Administration is weeks away from releasing the solicitation for the next great multiple award contract, OASIS+.

The final request for proposals will be a culmination of thousands of comments and feedback from industry and government and two draft solicitations.

Tiffany Hixson, the assistant commissioner for the Office of Professional Services and Human Capital Categories in the GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, said the final RFP will reflect the last two years of work to get OASIS+ in the best place possible.

“Given the amount of feedback that we got, it took us most of January and February to process that and so then we issued a second draft RFP on March 6. And the intent of that draft really was to say, ‘this is what we heard, here are the things that changed, here’s why we changed them based on feedback that we had received from an industry,’” Hixson said in an interview with Federal News Network. “We did host an industry day on March 15 to walk all of the offerors through what was in the second draft and what we’re trying to accomplish through some of the strategy changes. We had about 2,700 attendees at that event, which was really spectacular. We’re still getting feedback from industry on that second draft and we are crossing our T’s dotting our I’s, getting these last minute changes into the final RFP so we can get ready to release it.”

OASIS+ will replace the popular OASIS professional services contract. In fiscal 2022, agencies obligated about $12.9 billion through 530 task orders against the contract. Since 2015, agencies have obligated more than $55 billion through more than 3,600 task orders.

GSA had hoped to release the final RFP for OASIS+ by March 31. But Hixson said the timeline is now a few weeks away, given there were some specific features that required the agency’s senior procurement executive’s attention.

The changes from the first draft to the second draft to the final solicitation is driven by industry feedback and comments. GSA received more than 2,200 questions after the first draft. It also released a survey asking for industry input around specific elements of the acquisition strategy. The survey garnered 680 responses.

Hixson said the quantity of feedback helped drive both change and reinforced GSA’s strategy.

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