The General Services Administration (GSA) recently announced that it “will modernize federal acquisition by consolidating the agency’s 24 Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) into one single schedule for products and services.” According to a press release issued by the GSA, “[t]he MAS transformation is part of GSA’s Federal Marketplace strategy to make the government buying and selling experience easy, efficient and modern,” and “[i]t supports GSA’s strategic goal to establish the agency as the premier provider of efficient and effective acquisition solutions across the government.”

Under MAS (also commonly referred to as Federal Supply Schedules and the GSA Schedules), the GSA “establishes long-term, governmentwide contracts with commercial firms offering more than 10 million commercial supplies and services that federal, state, and local agencies order directly from GSA Schedule contractors, or through the GSA Advantage!^® online shopping and ordering system.”

According to the GSA, approximately $31 billion dollars “is spent through MAS each year.”

The GSA’s transition to a consolidated schedule reportedly will take place over the course of Fiscal Years 2019 and 2020.