Lurita Doan, administrator of the General Services Administration, offered a bleak description of the agency’s condition in June, the month she began her new job at GSA.
“When I came onboard, GSA had experienced one of its worst years in its 58-year history,” Doan said. “Our customers were leaving, our budget was a mess, we flunked our audit, our morale was at an all-time low, and our annual revenues had plunged $4.5 billion.”
Since then, conditions at the agency have improved, by her own account. “That’s because we have had the courage at GSA to face our most pressing problems,” Doan said. GSA received a clean audit in November, and a reorganization of the agency is progressing.
However, Doan has not had an extended honeymoon in her first six months. Some of her decisions have created controversy in the federal contracting community and aggravated other agencies and, most recently, lawmakers. Describing herself as no Washington, D.C., insider, Doan has earned a reputation for being outspoken and unbridled in some of her actions.
“Lurita is a bit of a lightning rod,” said Jim Williams, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service.
Doan defends her actions as necessary for streamlining an inefficient federal procurement system.
A component of that system is GSA’s assisted-services business, in which the agency’s employees have a hands-on role in helping other agencies plan and manage large procurements. Revenue from that business fell 40 percent from fiscal 2004 to fiscal 2006, from $7.2 billion to a projected $4.3 billion, according to documents Federal Computer Week obtained.
Before Doan took over as administrator, GSA officials received more bad news about the agency’s weak financial condition. Fiscal 2006 revenue for GSA’s Information Technology Fund was down 26.7 percent, or $597.5 million in January, compared with the agency’s forecasted numbers. All of GSA’s regional offices reported revenue shortfalls. The 11 regions reported $1.6 billion in revenue for the IT Fund as of January. Their revenue goal was $2.2 billion.
There were several reasons for the shortfall, said Marty Wagner, acting deputy commissioner of FAS. One factor was inappropriate growth. GSA had a rapidly growing contract business until 2004, Wagner said. But some contracts failed to meet regulations.
Another factor was a shift in agencies’ buying behavior. GSA had been under a harsh spotlight after its inspector general investigated the agency’s client support centers and found that employees in many of those offices had been violating various federal contracting rules. Some blame GSA’s loss of business on a subsequent Get It Right program, which they say emphasized contracting compliance at the expense of customer service. That emphasis slowed GSA’s response to agencies’ needs, and customers found alternatives to GSA.
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