How the Federal Enterprise Applications and Shared Services Market is Transforming

The Federal Marketplace for Enterprise Business Systems, Applications, and Shared Services is currently undergoing the largest transformation since the e-Government Act was launched over two decades ago.  Significant changes are being institutionalized on how the government buys goods and services from the vendor community, including significant actions, authorizations, and mandates to accelerate acquisition processes, reduce the burden of compliance requirements, and shift acquisition strategies from traditional FAR and small business socio-economic friendly to rapid, streamlined more prototype friendly formats. This includes significant increases in the use of Other Transaction Agreement (OTA), Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), and SBIR / STTR Programs to identify and field new technologies and solutions that can advance the government mission, create additional cost efficiencies, enhance service delivery, and improve the customer experience.

In the Federal Human Capital Management space, the OPM Federal HRIT Modernization initiative serves as a key example on how the Government plans to consolidate business systems across the Federal Enterprise. Today’s marketplace has over 100 different core HR and personnel management systems, creating significant operational challenges in processing transactions and performing reporting activities across the Federal Workforce. The Federal Government also has an increasingly continuing need to modernize its core payroll systems, developed using mainframe technologies over 50 years ago and currently used to process payroll for most of the Federal workforce. While the acquisition effort for the OPM HRIT Modernization program is already in the works, there will be plenty of additional opportunities across the Federal government to facilitate transition of data, processes, and regulations across the Federal Agencies into a new cloud enterprise wide application technology platform.

Recent moves to realign the Federal Government include increasing use of Federal Shared Service Centers. Moving to shared services environments, successfully demonstrated by the largest private sector customers, can improve service efficiency, increase self-sufficiency, reduce overall cost, and improve the overall customer experience. Under these initiatives, the government can increase integration of new digital technologies, including AI tools and autonomous intelligent agents into new, high performance, customer centric service delivery models. Recent announcements made by the Department of Transportation (1DOT) and the Treasury (Treasury Common Services Center), will require significant help from industry to achieve the transformation goals and objectives set forth under these long-term program initiatives.

In the OTA and CSO marketplace, the Department of Defense and Select National Security Agency customers have shifted acquisition strategies to increase use of these vehicles for new technology implementations, upgrades, cloud migrations systems consolidations, and large portfolio sustainment efforts.

Recent research on the number of active OTA and CSO programs reveals that over 350 active acquisition programs with a total combined program value of $43B+ are currently in use across the Federal Government. With many of these programs serving as open vehicles for new call orders to be issued, the dynamics of new acquisition efforts across the Department of Defense will shift to focus more on technology solution capabilities and product demonstrations. With multiple call orders initiated over the past few months that are currently moving through the evaluation process, the Army PEO Enterprise serves as a primary example of how the Army Open Solicitation (AOS) Commercial Solution Opening acquisition process is being used to identify and procure modern technology offerings and leverage innovation in IT service delivery methods.

Top 10 Federal Departments & Agencies	# of Programs	Total Published Ceiling Value
Army	90	$                 23.8 B
Air Force	103	$                 13.8 B
Navy	28	$                    1.9 B
Commerce / NIST	1	$                    1.6 B
Defense	92	$                    1.4 B
Homeland Security	9	$                   419 M
Transportation	6	$                   138 M
State	2	$                      60 M
GSA	1	$                      25 M
HHS	15	$                        8  M
Totals	347	$                  43,1 B

At Catapult Growth Partners, our team of expert Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Enterprise Shared Services industry leaders bring expert understanding of current and emerging vendor technology and services marketplace offerings. Our network includes thousands of established contacts and long-standing relationships with key stakeholders and influencers across the Federal Civilian and Department of Defense marketplace. Our experience working across the immense contractor community, including small, mid-size, and large businesses, can help your organization identify new teaming partnerships to help improve positioning and build competitive differentiators for new business opportunities on the road ahead.

When you are ready to take the next step, let's connect to begin on the journey together to help our government transform and achieve its long term vision, goals, and objectives.