GSA launches tech service for agencies

The General Services Administration wants to become the place federal agencies go when they need help with IT — and Tuesday it launched a new offering called the Technology Transformation Service to help make that happen.

The new service — added to GSA’s two other long-running service lines of business, the Public Buildings Service and the Federal Acquisition Service — will house and be based on the work of the agency’s tech-focused teams: 18F, the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, and the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies. The aim is to build on GSA’s commitment to and leadership in assisting other agencies with IT development and modernization, and provide a foundation for government’s larger digital transformation.

“Improving technology services is one of the federal government’s biggest shared challenges,” GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth said in a release. “By creating the Technology Transformation Service, we are demonstrating our long-term commitment to help agencies create accessible, efficient, user-centered and secure technology.”

Turner Roth appointed Phaedra Chrousos, formerly associate administrator of OCSIT, as the Technology Transformation Service’s first commissioner. Her deputy will be Aaron Snow, executive director of 18F.

The new service will continue the work of the teams of which it’s comprised, helping “agencies figure out how to build, buy, and share user-centered and emerging technology solutions,” Turner Roth wrote in a GSA blog post. 

“They have helped agencies develop specific technology solutions, while also helping agencies rethink the way they use technology to serve the American public. More and more, agencies are looking for this kind of assistance,” the post says.

The new service will complement GSA’s other IT-related offices, Turner Roth wrote. FAS’ Office of Integrated Technology Services will continue to lead efforts around governmentwide IT acquisition; the Office of Governmentwide Policy will coordinate interagency IT policy and shared services;and GSA’s Office of the CIO will remain in charge of internal IT services and operations.

“Today is the first day of a new era in our agency,” Turner Roth’s post reads. “Just as we were the first agency to put the internet on every desk 20 years ago, and the first to move to the cloud five years ago, we continue to blaze a trail providing cutting-edge technology support to our partner agencies.”

The Technology Transformation Service comes months after President Barack Obama’s budget request revealed plans to house a rotating $3.1 billion IT Modernization Fund in GSA

“The Technology Transformation Service is the ‘launchpad’ to set us up for the next big expedition for the federal government in technology,” Turner Roth wrote. “We have to create a smart government that provides seamless experiences designed for the user first. Creating the Technology Transformation Service builds a great foundation for the federal government’s modernization efforts.”