Charlotte Phelan, assistant commissioner for the Office of Strategy Management and Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration (GSA) laid out the three main goals of the department’s procurement strategy going into the future.
Phelan outlined and addressed the goals of the department at the Better Procurement event hosted by ATARC on Feb. 16.
“Our agency’s guiding word for 2023 is, deliver. My job is to deliver on the products and projects that will help make procurement better – In fact, we’re currently focused on three goals,” stated Phelan.
The agency is working on the following three goals that will encapsulate the needs of the department’s different offices.
- Adding tremendous value to customer’s mission
- Enabling and supporting a thriving, innovative, compliant, and resilient marketplace
- Making it easy to do Business with Federal Acquisition Service (FAS)
Phelan explained that the importance of adding value to customers comes as part of wanting to “drastically simplify the customer’s journey while maintaining exceptional acquisition quality,” stated Phelan.
She also added that they want to build confidence with vendors to assure them that “products have been vetted [and] comply with all the necessary legislation Such as Made in America, or section 889,” stated Phelan.
Phelan concluded her remarks by detailing how she and her office have been working on making people-centric procurement websites that better cater to the needs of the users.
“We’re starting [to] integrate customer experience at the beginning of the development. The buy.gsa.gov website was built using a human-centered design and is constantly being updated based on user feedback. We’re providing a consolidated online experience that simplifies market research and helps with acquisition and we put more digital resources into an easily searchable location,” stated Phelan.
